On the buses!

Sunday: We decided to head along the coast today to Santa Marta. We made it to the bus station on the outskirts of town are were immediately descended upon by ticket touts for the various bus companies. We managed to negotiate a price and, feeling quite pleased with ourselves, boarded the bus. On cue, the bus started its engine and so we thought we were off on our journey...not quite! For the next hour, the bus proceeded to crawl its way in a loop around the bus station while the touts rounded up more passengers. Finally, we were on our way up the coast.

The view from the bus window was really something, lush green fields and foliage almost made us feel like we were back in Cheshire, until a corrugated iron house would appear reminding us of our whereabouts. The level of poverty in the country is quite startling, thousands, if not millions of people were made homeless in Colombia's internal conflicts. It's not really safe for us to walk around certain parts of town but from the windows we saw shanty towns and houses built on the edge of the water, surrounded by litter where children play barefoot in the filth. It seems that everyone has something to sell, all of the houses on the main roads double as stores selling street food and drinks, while men and women continually boarded the bus selling snacks, refreshments and jewellery. We also pass through some more prosperous towns where terraced, multi-coloured houses with tiled patios line the clean streets, they seem a sharp contrast to the poorer areas and highlight Colombia's wealth gap.

After 2 hours, we reached Barranquillo, where, unbeknown to us, we were changing buses. We saw our bags being despatched onto the pavement and race off the bus to find out what's going on. Two touts directed us to another bus without explanation but we obediently boarded the bus on the promise that it will deliver us to Santa Marta. The bus then edged its way through the town at snail's pace for over an hour (!) as the touts collected more passengers, finally, with the bus full, we're off again on our journey.

With the help of our accompanying passengers we alight the bus at the right place and take a cab into the beach area to find somewhere to stay. Our 4 hour journey has taken us over 7 hours!

We end up at the Casa Familiar, a family-run hostel with decent rooms equipped with bathrooms and ceiling fans. The location is perfect, a short stroll from the beach where we plan to spend most of tomorrow. Gaining confidence in our Spanish we ask the Hostel owner for a recommendation for dinner and take her advice. The restaurant is fairly basic looking, although there are menus with prices so at least we know we won't be charged 'gringo' prices! The food, however, is AWESOME! Huge portions (which are very welcome as we haven't eaten since breakfast) of prawns in a creole salsa and grilled fillets of fish heaped with garlicy vegetables accompanied by chips and rice. Delicioso!