Bogota-Taganga-Sta Marta-Parque Tayrona-Cabo de la Vela-CTG
Feb 9, 2018 15:44:22 GMT -5
scumbuster, caliconnection, and 1 more like this
Post by jafo19d on Feb 9, 2018 15:44:22 GMT -5
We recently went by car from Bogota to la costa. Here's a brief summary of the trip.
We left northern Bogota on a Saturday at about 4:45 am. That helped us to get out of the city incredibly fast but we should have left earlier, the penalty for not leaving 45 minutes later was getting stuck behind trucks on the windy roads near Guaduas.
The new Ruta del Sol (highway 45 I think) lets you bypass La Dorada and Honda which helps. Outside of Guaduas the 4 lane highway starts and it's awesome. Right where the 4 lane starts we saw a guy hanging on to the back of an 18 wheeler - CRAZY! Between Guaduas and Santa Marta I roughly estimate that 40% of the highway is four lane and in great shape. Not counting pit stops for breakfast and lunch I think we spent about 12 hours between Bogota and Sta Marta. The closer you get to Santa Marta, the more speed traps you see so watch out. A great place to stop going both ways is a restaurant call La Brasa in Aguachica.
The first destination was Taganga, right next to Sta Marta with much cleaner beaches. There we took scuba certification lessons that took three days at Tayrona Dive Center. Our instructor was German and spoke English; the fee for the entire course including equipment and book (you keep the latter) was $850k/person. Each day of the course had two dives separated by an interval on land where they give you sandwiches and juice. I know some places first teach you in a pool and then you go out to open water but not here, all your training is in open salt water. By 12:30-1:00 you're back at the beach and at your leisure you go back and watch PADI videos. I asked how much were the dives once you're certified and he said he charges $140k for alumni for 2 dives, this includes all equipment and wet suit, those who didn't receive instruction from him bay $10-20k more.
Taganga does not have any luxury hotels that I know of, we chose the scuba school which charged about USD 10-15/person. No A/C but our rooms had incredible breezes and we never felt uncomfortably hot. The Dive Center doesn't have a large parking garage and the first night the guy told me to just leave it out but there was no way I'm leaving a BMW outside in Colombia so he made space in his small garage. There are plenty of restaurants on the beach. There's one that has decent food and owned by an American and an Australian (the Australian was a sniper in the Australian army).
From Taganga we went to Sta Marta. Santa Marta must have the worst drivers in all of Colombia meaning they are the absolute worst in the entire world except for India. I screwed up and stayed downtown which was a mistake because we just wanted to go to Parque Tayrona - we later found out that there are some nice places to stay in right outside the park. I wish we had done that because even though the park is really close to Santa Marta, traffic is a mess and it took us over an hour to get from the park back to the hotel.
Parque Tayrona was fun. We got there about an hour after opening. My gf and my son had to get out of the car and buy the passes while I waited in the car line which inched forward very slowly. I think they were in line for about 40 minutes, the park was more packed than usual because they were shutting it down for a month in a few days. Foreigners pay more and you can't cheat because they ask for everyone's ID. While waiting in the car a guy in a blue shirt asked if I wanted to rent horses. The trip to the beach ( I forget which one but it's the only one with a restaurant) by horse takes about 1:15 and on foot about 2 hours. If you go by foot take shoes that you don't mind getting muddy. I paid the guy and he gave me a receipt to show to his buddies inside the park.
Once inside the park we drove a 2-3 clicks to the parking area. Just a couple hundred meters from the parking area was another horse rental place who as it would later turn out would have better horses than the guys I met at the gate.
I felt bad for the horses we rented, there are some real tricky places the horses have to go thru and once in a while one suffers a broken leg on that trip.
Our next destination was Cabo de La Vela in la Guajira. We first planned on leaving the car in Rioacha and taking other transport from there because some say that you need 4WD. However we talked to someone who went there on a Twingo and we decided to go in our own car. I recommend stopping in the Exito in Rioacha to buy water and snacks and whatever else including gas because is nothing between there and Cabo de La Vela. Once you get off the paved road as you get closer to Cabo de la Vela kids will string tape across the road and charge you a toll. We stopped a few times to give them candy but mostly blew past them. Some tried to kick rocks at the car.
Eventually as you get really close to Cabo there are no roads and you drive across the desert following trails that shop on Waze and Garmin (though I did decide to risk it and take short cuts. I would have been SOL in some spots had it rained but we did just fine. Once in Cabo look for a decent rancheria and rent hammocks. Some places have small cabins but I rather sleep in a hamock instead of stained matresses. It's worth going to the light house an watching the sun set. Lots of kite surfing there because of the strong winds, kite surfing lessons take about three days.
From there we went to Cartagena. We left Cabo at 6am and I believe it took us about 9 hours. Ran into lots of traffic in Barranquilla and then getting into Cartagena. There we stayed at the Raddison because my aunt has a condo there and my son stayed w/her while my gf and I booked a room. For those of you not familiar with that hotel it's very nice and they don't charge for parking. We spent a few days there and on one day we went diving. We called several places and eventually chose Buzos de Baru they had the best prices which were $280k/person (double of Taganga but slightl less than the other operators in Cartagena). You could tell that the guy in charge was an incredible instructor. He accompanied a man and his son who had only taken the mini course (not PADI certified) while his assistant accompanied the three of us who were certified. During one of our dives there were three wrecks and even though we weren't certified for wrecks he let us go into the larger one.
Feel free to ping me with any questions, the best advice I can give you is to be careful for the speed traps along the coast.
We left northern Bogota on a Saturday at about 4:45 am. That helped us to get out of the city incredibly fast but we should have left earlier, the penalty for not leaving 45 minutes later was getting stuck behind trucks on the windy roads near Guaduas.
The new Ruta del Sol (highway 45 I think) lets you bypass La Dorada and Honda which helps. Outside of Guaduas the 4 lane highway starts and it's awesome. Right where the 4 lane starts we saw a guy hanging on to the back of an 18 wheeler - CRAZY! Between Guaduas and Santa Marta I roughly estimate that 40% of the highway is four lane and in great shape. Not counting pit stops for breakfast and lunch I think we spent about 12 hours between Bogota and Sta Marta. The closer you get to Santa Marta, the more speed traps you see so watch out. A great place to stop going both ways is a restaurant call La Brasa in Aguachica.
The first destination was Taganga, right next to Sta Marta with much cleaner beaches. There we took scuba certification lessons that took three days at Tayrona Dive Center. Our instructor was German and spoke English; the fee for the entire course including equipment and book (you keep the latter) was $850k/person. Each day of the course had two dives separated by an interval on land where they give you sandwiches and juice. I know some places first teach you in a pool and then you go out to open water but not here, all your training is in open salt water. By 12:30-1:00 you're back at the beach and at your leisure you go back and watch PADI videos. I asked how much were the dives once you're certified and he said he charges $140k for alumni for 2 dives, this includes all equipment and wet suit, those who didn't receive instruction from him bay $10-20k more.
Taganga does not have any luxury hotels that I know of, we chose the scuba school which charged about USD 10-15/person. No A/C but our rooms had incredible breezes and we never felt uncomfortably hot. The Dive Center doesn't have a large parking garage and the first night the guy told me to just leave it out but there was no way I'm leaving a BMW outside in Colombia so he made space in his small garage. There are plenty of restaurants on the beach. There's one that has decent food and owned by an American and an Australian (the Australian was a sniper in the Australian army).
From Taganga we went to Sta Marta. Santa Marta must have the worst drivers in all of Colombia meaning they are the absolute worst in the entire world except for India. I screwed up and stayed downtown which was a mistake because we just wanted to go to Parque Tayrona - we later found out that there are some nice places to stay in right outside the park. I wish we had done that because even though the park is really close to Santa Marta, traffic is a mess and it took us over an hour to get from the park back to the hotel.
Parque Tayrona was fun. We got there about an hour after opening. My gf and my son had to get out of the car and buy the passes while I waited in the car line which inched forward very slowly. I think they were in line for about 40 minutes, the park was more packed than usual because they were shutting it down for a month in a few days. Foreigners pay more and you can't cheat because they ask for everyone's ID. While waiting in the car a guy in a blue shirt asked if I wanted to rent horses. The trip to the beach ( I forget which one but it's the only one with a restaurant) by horse takes about 1:15 and on foot about 2 hours. If you go by foot take shoes that you don't mind getting muddy. I paid the guy and he gave me a receipt to show to his buddies inside the park.
Once inside the park we drove a 2-3 clicks to the parking area. Just a couple hundred meters from the parking area was another horse rental place who as it would later turn out would have better horses than the guys I met at the gate.
I felt bad for the horses we rented, there are some real tricky places the horses have to go thru and once in a while one suffers a broken leg on that trip.
Our next destination was Cabo de La Vela in la Guajira. We first planned on leaving the car in Rioacha and taking other transport from there because some say that you need 4WD. However we talked to someone who went there on a Twingo and we decided to go in our own car. I recommend stopping in the Exito in Rioacha to buy water and snacks and whatever else including gas because is nothing between there and Cabo de La Vela. Once you get off the paved road as you get closer to Cabo de la Vela kids will string tape across the road and charge you a toll. We stopped a few times to give them candy but mostly blew past them. Some tried to kick rocks at the car.
Eventually as you get really close to Cabo there are no roads and you drive across the desert following trails that shop on Waze and Garmin (though I did decide to risk it and take short cuts. I would have been SOL in some spots had it rained but we did just fine. Once in Cabo look for a decent rancheria and rent hammocks. Some places have small cabins but I rather sleep in a hamock instead of stained matresses. It's worth going to the light house an watching the sun set. Lots of kite surfing there because of the strong winds, kite surfing lessons take about three days.
From there we went to Cartagena. We left Cabo at 6am and I believe it took us about 9 hours. Ran into lots of traffic in Barranquilla and then getting into Cartagena. There we stayed at the Raddison because my aunt has a condo there and my son stayed w/her while my gf and I booked a room. For those of you not familiar with that hotel it's very nice and they don't charge for parking. We spent a few days there and on one day we went diving. We called several places and eventually chose Buzos de Baru they had the best prices which were $280k/person (double of Taganga but slightl less than the other operators in Cartagena). You could tell that the guy in charge was an incredible instructor. He accompanied a man and his son who had only taken the mini course (not PADI certified) while his assistant accompanied the three of us who were certified. During one of our dives there were three wrecks and even though we weren't certified for wrecks he let us go into the larger one.
Feel free to ping me with any questions, the best advice I can give you is to be careful for the speed traps along the coast.