Activity Summary
Tuesday 1st August - Day 301
Taxi to Minca
Lunch at Amora Cocina Saludable
Check in and chilled in hostel outdoor area
Wednesday 2nd August - Day 302
Birdwatching tour with Jungle Joes
Marinka Waterfalls
Drink at the Lazy Cat
Early dinner at Restaurante Santisabella
Thursday 3rd August - Day 303
Travel to Cartagena via Santa Marta
Summary
Minca
Minca is lovely. A nice remote jungle town with walks, waterfalls and a very chill vibe. A bit warm and the mozzies hit Luke hard but otherwise was a great decision to visit post Bogotá and Santa Marta.
Transport
Minca
Taxi: direct from Santa Marta to Minca. Cost P50,000
Public bus: from corner of Calle 11 & Carrera 9. Cost P9,000
Santa Marta
Public bus: from the town centre to Mercado or Mamatoco roundabout. Cost P9,000
Accommodation
Minca - Gui=Neo
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £12
For what it was, the hostel was overpriced. The owner was nice enough and the kitchen meant we could keep it cheap if we wanted but it wasn’t a particularly comfortable place. Fans and a tin roof meant the room was pretty cool in the evening, even if it became an oven during the day.
The location was decent being right in town, rather than being a bike ride up into the more scenic places.
Diary
In another addition of old people's travels, Luke harmlessly rolled over in his sleep and ended up tweaking his neck / back such that lying down and carrying his bag hurt somewhat.
Citing this, an executive decision was made to get a taxi to Minca rather than the cheap public bus. As of today, according to the very excited receptionist, taxi apps had come to Santa Marta and allowed us to be incredibly lazy on our trip to Minca. So after smashing our breakfast and chilling in the room until 11am we ordered our cab which cost P50k (~£10).
Initially this got off to a rocky start when the driver decided to pull over way down the road we were waiting on, bags all in tow. To make a point Nicola was unwavering in her determination to force him up the road but this did not stop her from letting out a surprisingly vocal shout in frustration. The driver eventually crawled up the road.
The drive to Minca turned out to be quite fun. Luke and the driver could not communicate at all, even with the use of Google translate but eventually understood that the driver wanted him to be DJ and play music from home. After failing to connect to YouTube on the guy's phone Luke plugged in Spotify and the guy spent the 30 minute drive hammering away the tunes all the way to Minca. He seemed to enjoy the selection.
Check in wasn’t until 2 so we dropped our bags at our hostel, Gui=Neo, and had some lunch at Amora Cocina Saludable for some half decent sandwiches. We booked our birdwatching tour for the next morning and had a pretty awful coffee / hot drink at Caficosta.
Once able to we checked in and spent the afternoon chilling in the hostel outdoor area. Our room was like a furnace so we had to patiently wait for this heat to leave our room through the windows / tin roof. Dinner was leftover pizza and avo sandwiches. Luke did find a new found fruit appreciation for the super sour lulo fruit.
The room went from being too hot during the day to too cold at night with the fans on. Sadly no Goldilocks zone seemed to exist here but being in remote-ish jungle there weren't any other really better room options that were affordable.
The morning was spent on a birdwatching tour (Jungle Joes) which involved walking up to a home / viewpoint in the hillside that overlooked Santa Marta. A little bit of a steep walk so early on in the day but there was a nice early morning view over the city and the sea in the backdrop.
At the ‘ecolodge’ we were handed unlimited cups of coffee & hot chocolate (for the kids and after paying P5k each) and followed Tony around as he pointed and exclaimed when seeing or hearing a variety of birds nearby. In all honesty it didn’t seem like we saw a lot but there were a lot of toucans flying around. While exciting to see them fly great distances, we had seen so many close up ones in Costa Rica that didn’t really tickle us all that much.
There were some other cool birds we did see; parakeets, woodpeckers, hummingbirds and some really brightly coloured yellow, blue and red birds whose names we have no idea. The red one in particular was super lush.
All in all it was a fun experience but for Luke it was the views over the forested hillsides that won the morning out.
We didn’t really speak all that much to the rest of the group because conversation would be cut short when Tony would see a bird.
Now just after 9am we dropped back at the hostel quickly to get our water based activity gear and went into town to catch a motorbike taxi to the Marinka Waterfalls. Nicola has plenty of experience on the back of a bike and traversing less than ideal dirt tracks around South East Asia but Luke does not. So while it was pretty easy for Nicola, Luke struggled somewhat relinquishing control to the driver for the 20 minutes up the hill. Didn’t help Nicola was afforded a helmet while Luke was left lidless.
He survived. It was a short walk up to the Marinka entrance, paid the P10k each and walked into the area. Nicola was surprised with how well set up the place was with restaurant, toilets and changing room to accommodate tourists flocking for a swim in the waterfalls.
First up was a picture on top of the mesh nets suspended over views of the waterfall. Surprisingly painful to lie on.
The bottom waterfall was the easiest to spend time relaxing in so once changing we initiated ourselves with the cold mountain water here.
The second waterfall was a bit more picturesque and the falling water was pretty entertaining to sit under. It was however a smaller area and seemingly busier so we didn’t spend all that much time here.
We had lunch on the nets and finished with a quick dip in the bottom pool before calling it quits because of a smoker.
Despite being set up for tourists it was surprisingly good fun. We had arrived and spent what time we needed to here before a mass of people turned up so that worked in our favour but it was a fun place to visit.
The walk down took about an hour and was all downhill. The other sites in the area were omitted due to being quite tired and having already gotten some viewpoints in the morning and therefore Luke decided against the hike to Los Pinos.
In town we had a drink at the Lazy Cat where we got chatting to two elderly American sounding women who lived in Santa Marta. One of them had seemingly lived everywhere so gave Luke some good tips for wining in Mendoza / Argentina. Apparently the ‘happy brownies’ are very good there…
Despite the already really long day, it was too early to both eat and go to bed so we once again sat at the hostel outside area researching, watching the kittens play around, grimace at the occasional waft of shit sweep over us and sorted quite a lot of future trip bookings (mainly around the Galapagos).
Our early dinner at Restaurante Santisabella was chosen simply to provide alright food but mainly a substantial amount of it. The pasta didn’t let us down but nothing to rave about.
We were up and out as early as our natural waking time would allow to get to Cartagena for a sensible time. The shuttle bus runs from in town and for P9,000 each it would take us either to the mercado or the Mamatoco roundabout. The benefit of the latter stop was that we could walk to the Berlinastur shuttle that would take us to Cartagena from Santa Marta.
Our big bags were tied to the roof and Luke, as one of the biggest people on the bus minus the obese lady who flat out refused, was squeezed into the back of the bus. At least it was only 30 minutes.
The driver should have been aware we wanted to get off early but Nicola also flagged him down just to make sure. The walk across the roundabout was less fun but not impossible.
The tickets required our passports, paid by card and within 9 minutes we were the sole people on the bus from this stop. This did mean Nicola had far too much time to choose the optimal seat and ended up switching places 3 times. Turned out later we should have been sitting in our designated seats as it did the rounds of the Santa Marta Berlinastur stops but fortunately the bus was half empty so we got to spread out a bit.
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