Sarita on a Shoestring: Santa Marta

22 January 2014 – After having my way with Cartagena, I hopped into an open-top, cherry red, vintage Mustang and high-tailed it on out of there for the North coast. The wind was blowing in my face, the emerald green Caribbean glistening to my left, and Alberto, my chauffeur extraordinaire kept saying, “Its cool baby” as he took another drag of his cigarette. Okay, I confess: it was markedly less glamorous than that. By high tailed it, I mean that I paid $22 for a bus ride to Santa Marta. It took five hours – one of which was spent waiting to decide they were ready to leave.

Santa Marta is another important city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Founded in 1525, it is the oldest surviving city in South America, which is pretty impressive in it of itself. Its history is full of all the ransacking and pillaging of native populations that was so common during the Spanish Conquest, but this isn’t a history lesson, so I’ll leave it at that.

For the most part, the Santa Marta of today is a bustling city with mercados selling you anything you could desire – t-shirts, flip flops, blender tops, mirrors, tv’s, remote controls…

Massive mesquite trees at La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino

One of my highlights of Santa Marta was visiting La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino. This a 17^th century hacienda that was owned by Joaquín de Mier, a Spaniard who was a devoted supporter of Colombia’s independence. This continues to remain a very important place for Colombia because Simón Bolívar, who liberated Colombia and six other Latin American countries, spent his final days and died here.

I particularly enjoyed the centuries old mesquite trees that grew on the pristinely manicured grounds. They towered tens of feet tall and easily dwarfed the mesquites we have in our front yard in Las Vegas. In fact, one such tree would easily fill the entire yard.

Just when I was about fed up with the honking taxis and roaring motos racing by, I found a cozy little alleyway/walking street lined with cute cafes with outdoor seating. With the sun just setting and the heat of the day dying down I gladly enjoyed a fresh mango, banana, and pineapple smoothie with rum in it as an acoustic guitarist and bongo player sang songs in the street. That was followed up by quite possibly the greatest arepa of my life. It was piled high with flavorful carne, pico de gallo and avacodos. The tomatoes were a bit under ripe, but somehow even this added to the flavor. Que rico!