The first full day of the trip (I guess it’d be Tuesday since we travelled all of Sunday night and most of Monday) we went to a place where a river meets the ocean. The land we were surrounded by in Santa Marta was desert orange and dusty, and the mountains were spiked with cactuses rather than blanketed in banana trees and avocado trees.
We drove for two hours until we reached the area we were going to spend the day at. It was beautiful.
We had to cross the river to get to the ocean, so we looked like a train of Gringos.
But then the beach was clean and calm and entirely un-touristy, which is my favorite.
You could face the ocean with your feet to the river, or face the river with your feet to the ocean. I did both.
I’ve also resolved to start another Instagram called “Kristina’s Kindle,” with the sole purpose of following my Kindle and what I’m reading every day. Today I think it was Dalsheim’s Producing Spoilers.
This little fellow says hi!
After hours of floating in the ocean, we moved to the river, which was less sticky.
The locals walked around selling fresh fruit and these coconut candy patties. I’m a sucker for coconut, and these included coke, vanilla, leche, and arequipe flavors. Delicious 🙂 (My favorite is always arequipe).
This poor kitty cat was crippled, but it didn’t stop him from begging for food (of course I obliged).
Then we drove to the center of Santa Marta. On the drives between the more affluent, touristy areas, you can see the rampant poverty and socioeconomic stratification that exists within Colombia.
We watched sunset over the ocean at the center.
This is also an area where you can tell they produce/export oil, because they had all of these cargo ships everywhere, and we definitely passed an oilyard at some point on the trip.
We also played soccer with a ball lent to us by the soccer coach, who was training his kids on the sand. We didn’t play with them because, well, obvious reasons.
This little kid was my favorite but, despite several entreaties to have one of the guys conspire to take him and put him in my suitcase, he remained with his mother.
Afterwards we went home and sat on the beach singing and relaxing and comparing sunburns. Definitely a beautiful day 🙂
Traveler at the Edge 