As Alex described in her previous post we went to Santa Marta with the aim of visiting the Parque Nacional Tayrona. We didn’t really go into this adventure knowing much about the park but it featured in “The Gringo Trail” by Mark Mann, one of the books I read before heading out here, so we thought we go and have a look for ourselves!
After a long sleepless night we headed over to the market to catch our bus. We did have the option of a door to door transfer with our hostel for the equivalent of £4 each but we opted to pay just over £1 for the local bus. It wasn’t really about the money though as we really wanted to see the journey from a more local perspective.
Motivation aside we wound our way through the market area looking for the intersection of Calle 11 and Carrera 11. It all started to feel just a little less salubrious around us and all of a sudden none of the streets were labelled. To cut a long story short we eventually managed to overshoot our destination by a street and by the time we got to the bus we were sweaty and exhausted. Luckily we had a 40 minute bus ride to recover so we set off and kept our eyes peeled for our stop. As it happened our stop was impossible to miss due to the obvious park entrance, the conductor shouting Parque Tayrona at us and all the other Gringos getting off the bus with us.
