To Santa Marta

20080519

5/19/2008 20:00 PM
Up at 07:00 and out the door at 07:55 to meet the women at their place for breakfast. I couldn’t help taking a few pictures of our street as we walked down it noticing the dozens of wires feeding of one concrete hydro pole servicing several houses. The wires looked a bit like a demented spider had been doing its work with many wires lying on top of other wires as they reached out to their final destination. There are very few grounded outlets here and I’m sure that many electrical outlets, telephone lines, cable tv lines (if that’s what they were) and others must be electrified to some degree. It’s surprising things work as well as they do, although several of the plugs in our apartment didn’t work and some only sort of worked but I’m not sure that’s what their problem was.
We also passed a couple of motorcycle taxis on our street waiting for their passengers to emerge from their houses. This is a far faster way to get to where you’re going than the conventional cabs. Jim took one in Cartenenga (another resort town on the Caribbean that he visited a couple of years ago). When you hire one of these cabs you put on a yellow jacket with the cab’s number on the back of it and a helmet and away you go. I don’t think I’m up to that for some time but we saw one well dressed brave woman sitting in on the back of a bike with her helmet on just as we reached the end of the street.
I think we all were rested up after a busy day yesterday and ready to go again. I met Joanna, one of the agents that I’d spoken to when in Canada and arranging for our accommodation and then met Christina, who I’d also spoken to. Christina is the wife of the owner of the apartment building or maybe of the whole operation.
Our breakfast was quite awhile in coming as there was only one young lady in the kitchen cooking for the five of us and two other guests who showed up from another apartment somewhere. We had a very simple breakfast of Tang, scrambled eggs and two pieces of toast with a small dollop of butter in the middle of the toast. Coffee was some time in coming and was welcomed when it arrived. No seconds though.
Joanna arranged for two of their own cars to take us to the airport but only one arrived so there was a bit of a scramble to get the other one on short order. It all happened though and we arrived at the airport in good time.
I haven’t been able to post any of these notes on my blog as in both cases (the hotel and at the airport) I haven’t been able to hook up to the wireless internet. Hopefully I’ll have better luck in Santa Marta with some of Chris’s help.
After checking in at the airport we had a bit of time on our hands so decided to have a coffee in the general lounge area. A young lady approached us dressed in white and black and seated us in the food fair seating area. We ended up being duped as she took our order for five coffee and charged us 6,000 pesos for each coffee – other food outlets in the food fair had coffee offered at 1400 pesos. I said something about the prices to our delightful young greeter and she only smiled back at me. Shades of Europe from 1972!
The flight to Santa Marta was uneventful and although I had a window seat we were above the clouds for most of the flight except for the last 15 minutes or so while on approach. I noticed huge sections of plantations with evenly spaced rows of trees of some sort, but was too high to even guess what they were. No one that I’ve spoken to since knows either other than they aren’t coffee beans at they usually grow on the side of hills. We guessed mangos.
Chris greeted us at the airport and we caught a couple of cabs to our hotel which is across the road from the beach in a small town just outside of Santa Marta called Rodedero. The rooms are quite sparse and similar to our apartment hotel in Bogota with all floors tiled and the basics for furniture. Quite adequate and comfortable though. No suicide shower here as there is only one tap for water in the shower. People who want a warmer shower usually wait until later in the day after the sun has done its work on the water tower. I’ll try and brave my early morning shower. Prices are very reasonable at $40.00 per night per room. We have a bar fridge as well and bellhop (for lack of a better word) counted each item out in the fridge and had me acknowledge it was all there. We also have a fresh water swimming pool and a restaurant.
We met Chris’s Jenn and she is very nice and beautiful. She had flowers for the ladies and a bead type bracelet for the men as welcoming gifts. She left after a couple of hours for a nap as I’m sure she was very uncomfortable as she couldn’t speak any English at all. Chris seems to manage fairly well now with his Spanish.
The afternoon was spent lounging under a tent canopy of sorts. Everyone went for a swim except Jen, Jenn, Chris and I. The water is calm and the perfect temperature – I’m guessing about 85F. Diane wanted to rent kayaks so I joined her and we paddled along the beach for about 15 minutes and then back. They are open, plastic type kayaks that work well for this type of paddling. Diane hadn’t been in one before so I gave her a mini lesson and she managed quite well.
Late afternoon found us wandering the street near the hotel window shopping and buying the occasional thing. The merchants all try to call you in to their shops but don’t harass. After about an hour of this we decided to have a beer and after that found a seaside restaurant where we had dinner. We all had something different and the food was very good. The price for six of us for food and beverages totaled about $45.00! Amazing!
We were back in our rooms about 20:00 and I decided to stay put but some or all of the others decided to congregate around the pool. I wanted to get these notes caught up and then catch some early shut-eye. I did try an internet café across the street from our hotel again but they still aren’t able to connect to my computer. All my blog notes are done on Word and I was hoping to cut and paste them into my blog but need to be able to get this machine online first. I’m told there is a place in Santa Marta that probably can accommodate me so will try that tomorrow.