Santa Marta

Santa Marta was not originally on our planned itinerary.  Whatever exactly a planned itinerary is when cruising, I think it’s more of a vague concept of an idea of something that could be done should we so choose to do it.  We quickly found ourselves very comfortable and sad to leave.  With guests arriving in Cartagena we had a week to enjoy Santa Marta and then move on.  If we make it back again we will plan to stay longer, maybe next year we will return.  We’ll just add that to the “planned itinerary”.

We did have just enough time to sample the food and mojitos.  It seems that most of the good restaurants with a nice atmosphere to hang out in are generally well hidden until you stumble upon the right streets.  Our first day out, we wandered the streets for several hours and just managed to miss the ones with the inviting restaurants.  We did find several plazas, the gold museum, the chapel and the main shopping district.  Our second day out we were given some directions and discovered Agave Azul.  It’s a great little Mexican restaurant, with 2 for 1 happy our drinks.  It’s not a US tex mex restaurant, but they had amazing dishes full of flavor all for the price of…. Well had I written this when I should have over a month ago I could probably tell you an accurate price, as it is I’m going to take a really good guess and say the meal was about $10 US.  Just a few days before we left we managed to find a walking only street that was just bursting with small café’s.  We wandered into Lulo for some more happy hour (2 for 1) mojitos.  They may have been some of the best in Santa Marta but it will probably require more research to be sure.

Marina Santa Marta felt both comfortable and safe.  The marina just opened this year and many of its facilities are still under construction, but the slips were completed with power and water.  There were no restrooms or any other facility yet completed but they did pick up trash right at your boat on the dock.  Every day we would see a security guard patrolling the docks.  The floating docks and finger piers made getting on and off the boat very easy, which is not always the case with the marina’s down here.  We were given a discounted rate for the week and paid $162.00 for our stay.  The negative aspect of the marina and the stay in Santa Marta all has to do with the wind.  The wind will whip down off the mountains and we often saw 30 – 40 kts of winds for days at a time.  The boat felt safely tied up so this was not too uncomfortable, but the beach is located upwind from the marina and a super fine dusting of sand would coat every surface of the boat inside and out daily.  The sand was highly annoying to say the least, but it wouldn’t stop me from going back, it may however convince me to close up the boat and run the air conditioner next time.