Santa Marta
In Santa Marta, I desperately needed to do laundry and reorganise my panniers.
Being precisely five years since leaving Cape Town, I celebrated with a bottle of
wine and a bag of crisps.
Santa Marta – Barranquilla - 110 km
Our day went much as anticipated, apart from a sharp five-kilometre uphill out of
Santa Marta – I didn’t see that one coming!
The road between Santa Marta and Barranquilla ran along a narrow strip of land
wedged between the Caribbean Ocean and Lake Santa Marta and, not surprisingly,
a rather ‘fishy’ area. The lake was chock-a-block with wooden boats, all casting
nets. As expected, the route was lined with traders selling cooked shrimp and fresh
fish. Wooden shacks lined the lake and the ocean’s shores, utterly different from
the mountains I had just returned from.
Barranquilla was a hectic city with crazy traffic, and what looked like dilapidated
buildings. One can’t expect a great deal from an 18,000 pesos room, and I felt it
best to ignore the broken windows and settle in.