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| The Sierra Mountains are a beautiful backdrop to Santa Marta |
Blow the horn! Step on the gas!
Blow the horn! Step on the
gas!
So went our bus tour of Santa Marta, Columbia. This was a new port for
Crystal Cruise Lines so we were pioneering in a sense. The town was much larger
than I expected from the information I’d gained online but it was still
Columbia and all that goes with a Latino culture.
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| The hotel area of Santa Marta |
Many of my pictures of the town itself had to be taken
through the window of the bus which wasn’t always a clear shot through a window
that may have been clean earlier in the morning but now was a bit spattered
with dust. Everything looked dusty in Santa Marta. It was their dry season. The
only thing really green was the cactus growing plentifully on the hillsides.
We passed several large churches and a beautiful cathedral
that would have been fun to look at from the inside if there had been time and
if we had been brave enough to venture out on our own. I had to chuckle as the guide explained that
the bars on the windows were there so that they could open the windows and
allow the homes to “refresh with clean air.” There was nothing mentioned about
safety and the bars certainly wouldn’t have kept out birds or smaller animals.
Lots of stands selling all sorts of things from shoes to
drinks dotted the streets. We drove past a nice boardwalk area that bordered
the beach front and it looked like lots of people were enjoying themselves in
the sun and surf.
Blow the horn! Step on the gas! Okay, the brakes worked too!
‘Nuf said.
About five miles up a small mountain to the other side, we
found the hotel area where a whole new community had sprung up according to our
guide. From a distance they looked very nice and once we were among them, we
could see that they were busy with people who were obviously on holiday.
Another nice beachfront area bordered the sea here and was full of all sorts of
cabanas for those who could afford to pay $10 or so to keep out of the sun.
Originally our tour was to take us to a fishng village but
for some reason our itinerary was changed. I’m guessing perhaps there were too
many who were going to invade the little village and it would have been
overwhelmed. So instead, we were taken to the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino.
It is the place where Simon Bolivar, the great liberator, died on December 17,
1830.
Simon Bolivar was instrumental in winning freedom for Venezuela,
Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from the Spanish Empire and is credited
with helping to lay a foundation for democracy in much of Latin America.
The Hacienda has been made into a beautiful park area and
furnishings and memorabilia can be seen in the rooms. It is also home to some
good looking iguanas that scurried up trees to get a better view of us.
One of
the interesting pieces we saw in a large room was a press that at first I
thought was for grapes. Our guide informed us it was used to squeeze juice from
sugar cane and then the juice would be made into rum.
Blow the horn! Step on the gas! By the time we got back to
the ship I felt like my neck had gotten a good workout. We opted to stay on the
ship for the afternoon. There really wasn’t much we wanted to go back to see
and our comfort zone along with the heat of the afternoon said “no.”
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