The importance of the right hostel

We found ourselves in our second Colombian city: Santa Marta!

We were going to stay here for 3 days. One day to see the city and go to the beach there, one day to go to Taganga (a small village 20 minutes away by bus) and a third day to get ready for the Tayrona National Park and other stops.

I remember a friend of mine asking me why I had so many days there because there was literally nothing to see in the city (she had been there just a few weeks before me). As soon as we arrived, I started feeling that maybe it was too long to stay there indeed. She was right, there is nothing there besides a couple of cute streets right in the centre!

Well, now there was nothing to do about it. We had three days here, let’s make the most of it and then we leave to Tayrona where we would actually have more to see.

Guys, we ended up extended our stay. Not because we loved Santa Marta and there was a lot to do, but because the hostel was incredible and we felt like hanging around a bit longer. We ended up spending two whole days just in the hostel basically and we used that time to plan the rest of our stay in Colombia.

I’ll be honest, in Santa Marta, even a walk around the city is not the most amazing thing to do (do it if you’re here though, at least you get to know another city). It is however an amazing base for the things that there is to do around the city (Palomino, Minca, Tayrona National Park, El Rodadero, etc.).

In our case, we used the first day to walk around (in less than an hour, we had seen the entire city centre), then it started pouring so we went back to the hostel, and when the rain stopped we went for a walk along the bay and the beaches there. We were quickly approached by the police warning us not to go any further down the beach because it was dangerous in that area, so we went back.

The second day, we went to Rodadero and spent the whole day at the Inca Inca beach.

And this was basically it! We ended up not going to Taganga because we read some stuff that really discouraged us. The next two days were spent in the hostel: República!

The vibe in this hostel was the best we ever felt, it was comfortable, people were really nice and there were nice activities every night: yoga, salsa classes, karaoke, pub crawl…every day something different. That’s why we enjoyed our stay in Santa Marta so much!

Then, while in Tayrona, they stored our big backpacks (making it much much easier to walk around the huge park), the same when we went to Minca, so we kept coming back.

On our last day, we actually felt a bit sad to leave because we knew we were not coming back.

As you can see, Santa Marta had everything to be a bit disappointing, but choosing the right hostel made our stay way more enjoyable and made us want to stay in Santa Marta a bit longer.

If you ever need to base yourself in Santa Marta for some reason: República hostel is the place to stay, trust me! 😉

Now, let’s go explore the rest of Colombia before heading to Peru!!