We stayed in Taganga for an extra day, since we were already a day ahead. After breakfast we took a ride out to the park, but discovering that our previous day’s pass was no longer valid and we would need to pay again to enter (about $35 for foreigners), we decided to go back to our hotel and take a water taxi to the nearby beach, Playa Grande. Not really suiting it’s name, Playa Grande is a relatively small beach with multiple restaurants and chairs set up on the beach. One cool thing was that trees are growing out of the sand right on the shore, so the trees are used as shade for sitting on the beach. Most of the people visiting this beach would be the more well off Colombians, and you could get a bit of a vibe of that. We spent about 4 hours there, relaxing in our chairs, and in my case, swimming a couple of times to cool off. Especially fun for me was when I was leaving the water the second time. I had swam close to shore and when I stood I was surprised to be in only slightly higher than knee deep water. I took another step towards the shore and tumbled in to the water as I was on a large rock at the time. Righting myself from a totally goofy splash I look at the water and three girls about 10-12 years old are just cackling at me. I just laughed with them and made my way to shore.
We returned to Taganga arriving at about 4pm. I relaxed on the hotel patio while Chris took a walk along the boardwalk. I spend a little bit of time researching our next couple of stops, before crashing in the hammock and enjoying the breeze that had started up. A few hours later we walked through town to the far end of the boardwalk and had dinner. Hamburgers. Only the second time this trip that we have had them. We had another live band playing at the restaurant, but this one wasn’t as good as a few in the past. The previous night we had a jazz saxophone player, which had been quite fantastic.
The street dogs wander in and out of the restaurant. Taganga has quite a few of them. Interestingly, the puebla has a decent number of street cats too. In our restaurant, while a couple of dogs looked on in jealousy, this one cat was getting the royal treatment from a dude who was eating there. Eventually, he had a few cats under his table sharing his fish. One of the cats even stretched up and pawed his arm when he wanted more (something our house is too familiar with)
Tomorrow we make the long trek into Santa Marta, our next stop. It will take us at least 30 minutes to go the 15km. For the next week, most of the rides are short, as we are spending a fair bit of time along the coast.
Colombia Motorcycle Ride 