Wednesday 7th August. Santa Marta.

A mixed bag of a day and not a lot to report so, we’ll fall back on some history of this place, to make an entry worth reading, hopefully? We’ve been in Colombia 11 days already!!

Santa Marta was the first Spanish city in South America and is Colombia’s oldest surviving city. Established just 11 months short of 500 years ago. It was discovered by Spain’s Rodrigo de Bastidas. So, rather than trying to summerise, I’ve decided to plagiarise wikipedia and cut and paste the following two paragraphs.

The early explorers

Rodrigo de Bastidas was a well-to-do merchant and mariner from the town of Triana near Seville. Because of a mistake by historian Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Bastidas is still sometimes misrepresented as a notary. He was born around 1465 and married Isabel Rodríguez de Romera sometime before 1500.

The voyage.

After sailing with Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the New World in 1493, de Bastidas petitioned the Spanish Crown to start his own quest to be financed totally with his own money. In exchange for granting de Bastidas the right to explore various territories in the New World, the Crown required him to give them one fourth of the net profits he would acquire. The King and Queen issued a charter that is still preserved in the National Archives in Spain. He sailed to the New World from Cádiz in October 1500 with two ships; the San Antón and the Santa Maria de Gracia. He was accompanied on this voyage by Juan de la Cosa and Vasco Núñez de Balboa.

The man himself, Bastidas.

The apparently beautiful cathedral, inside. But it was locked

Some activities

After enjoying a leisurely breakfast on the roof terrace and after, doing some clothes washing, we are severely limited clothes wise. As mentioned many times, we were only expecting to be here for a few days before picking Poki up. This meant limiting what we could bring, clothes wise, as our clothes boxes in Poki are already quite full.

Anyway, after doing the washing, by this time, when heading off to explore, it started to rain!! Regardless, here are some pics taken during the day and some in the early evening.

The street entrance to the hotel. We can find no information as to when it was built. My guess is the 1920’s, though I could be out by 30years?

The place is pumping in the evening.

We are trying to find a way to visit the surrounding countryside but talking with agents, who are non English speakers is very frustrating via google translate. Maybe we’ll have more luck tomorrow?

Views: 64