My time in Santa Marta was limited, so I can only comment on the short time that I passed through there on my way to Taganga and the day and night I stayed there after Taganga. I had heard Santa Marta was better than Cartagena, but I had trouble believing that, but still I decided I better check it out and see if that was true. It wasn’t even close. Cartagena was miles better of a place to travel than Santa Marta. It was more safe, the vibe was better and the old town, architecture and parties in the street were much better in Cartagena.
The best part of Santa Marta was the hostel, Masaya Santa Marta. It was great, it had a rooftop pool, big and nice rooms and it was relatively cheap. The location was good too and it was near Juan Valdez which has great coffee. Asides from that, there wasn’t much to do, see or rave about. Although, I will admit, I wanted to go to Rodadero Beach which looks really nice, but I didn’t have time to make my way there.
When I got there, I enjoyed a few drinks on the rooftop patio of my hostel, met a couple other travelers… one being an absolute lunatic. He was half Colombian and half French and had a funny accent. You could tell he had been on a wicked bender; he thought he could see a tornado forming in the sky. He also said he killed a crocodile in the jungle. After listening to the maniac for a while, I decided to go out and eat, and had a good pizza for cheap at a nice restaurant.
After I ate, I returned and the French Colombian was still there so I chatted with him some more and had a few more drinks on the patio. After drinking with him and a cool German guy, he began to get more aggressive. The French Colombian wanted to fight another guy at our hostel who was much bigger than him. The German and myself decided to go and explore the town, the other guy wasn’t happy that we were going to leave him and he tried to convince us to stay. The German was married to a Colombian and had toured the country twice. He told me a story from the last time when he was in Santa Marta, where a local robbed a tourist at knifepoint, only to be chased down and beaten by other Colombians who came to the rescue of the unfortunate tourist. He said Santa Marta was the sketchiest place he had been in Colombia. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are worse places like Buenaventura and others, but of places tourists frequent, Santa Marta might be the worst. And in my unpopular opinion Taganga is safer and a more fun place to travel to.
We decided to wander around Parque Los Novios, a plaza surrounded by numerous bars and restaurants and nightlife in the street. I wouldn’t say that I felt unsafe, but the one night I had in Santa Marta was the worst I had been harassed in Colombia. The street vendors were pushy in the light of day, but they were even worse at night, with many of them aggressively trying to push their product on you and others trying to rip you off. I have never been offered so much drugs as I had in 24 hours in Santa Marta. Some of the guys would even follow you for a block or two, trying to sell you what they were offering. I wasn’t scared, but they were aggressive, and I did feel like I needed to be on guard a bit more. That being said, Parque Los Novios was a cool area to drink with a number of bars and places with patios lingering onto the street.
I wouldn’t say it was dangerous, but I wouldn’t call Santa Marta safe. There were a few cool looking colourful buildings and it had some charm in the day, but Santa Marta paled in comparison to Cartagena. The beach in town isn’t worth doing more than walking through, although I didn’t get a chance to check out Rodadero which was probably a lot better. And the nightlife was fun but you had to be on guard. If you want to go to Tayrona or Taganga, then sure check out Santa Marta, but otherwise there isn’t much to do and it is anything but spectacular.
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