Day 47 - Leaving Bogotá

So, on Sunday July 26th, after getting back to the house around 4:15am, I had to print out my boarding pass before 4:35am (4 hours before the flight), otherwise I would get charged $25,000 pesos. Afterwards, I finally got to eat a meal for the first time since around 2:00pm the previous day. In the rest of the time, I gathered and fit the last of my things into my suitcase. I realized that I still didn't have a gift for my host family in Bogotá since I wasn't planning on staying with more than one host family. So, in my remaining time before we had to leave for the airport at 7:10, I painted an anchor with Hebrews 6:19 on it in a similar yet slightly different way as the one I had painted for my host family in Barranquilla. However, in the process, I accidentally left one of my paintings that I've been carrying with me for a while cause I didn't finish the final touches until May, and then a painting that was meant for my friend Kylie. Another thing that I left was all of my shower stuff. Thank goodness I brought two razors with me so I didn't have to buy another one when I had to buy more shampoo and conditioner. When I finished the painting, I had about 10 minutes to sit down for a bit before we had to leave for the airport.

There ended up being a lot more traffic than we expected, so we didn't get to the airport as early as we were hoping. Furthermore, I still didn't have any Colombian money and owed people money, so we needed to find a money exchange place. Of course, we walked in the opposite direction trying to find the money exhange place, and it turned out to be on the complete opposite side of where I needed to be. I was so tired and in pain from dancing so much (mainly my knee - I hurt it 4 years ago in Peru and whenever I walk a lot, it starts hurting again. ..apparently it starts hurting if I dance for 6 hours traight as well haha). Also, my backpack was really really heavy becasue I was afraid of passing the weight limit for my check-in bag, so I had a good amount of heavy things in my backpack. Afterwards, Juan Davíd and I said goodbye and I went on to my gate. I was supposed to be there at 6:50, but I ended up arriving at 7:20am. For that reason, though I was kinda hungry again and needed to go to the bathroom, I was afraid of underestimating how long the line would take and missing my flight (all the food places and bathrooms were not in the area that my gate was in, of course). Finally, I got on the plane. I was one of the last to get on. I sat next to a father and daughter, adn it happened to be that members of his family were sitting in front, behind, across, and dioagonally from us...so he was constantly shouting at the people with whom he was traveling. I did, however, manage to get a bit of sleep in those 2 hours.

My plan was to head over to Santa Marta (and more specifically, Taganga) as soon as I arrived to Cartagena, however, I didn't have any time to organize or plan anything out. I assumed the best option would be to go straight to a bus station, but I decided to try to look up the stations to make sure that they even offered busses to Santa Marta (Luckily the Juan Valdéz coffee shop at the airport had wifi). I found one and started to go through with an online booking of the ticket, but then it said that it wasn't found. Because of that, I was afraid of showing up to that station because there was a possibility of not being able to arrive to Santa Marta. So, I decided to ask a security guard, who I later found out was actually a policeman, what the best way to get to Santa Marta would be. He told me that I could go to one of the bus stations or, that there were some vans that left from the airport. He went to talk to one of the van drivers and found that I couldn't go straight to Santa Marta, but I could go to Barranquilla where I could catch another one to Santa Marta. He siad that it would be about the same price at the bus station and that I would probably have to do the same thing at the bus station. The van driver ended up coming over to me and telling me that he was only going to be going to Barranquilla and that he would ensure that I would get on another van that would take me to Santa Marta and that from there, I could take a taxi to Taganga. He promised me a price of $50,000 to get to Santa Marta (so he ended up paying someone to take me to Santa Marta from Barranquilla so that he could ensure me the price). I decided to go ahead and go with him since it'd be a lot easier and since that way, I wouldn't have to take a taxi to get to the bus station.

There was just two of us that were riding in the van with the driver. The other man was a Peruvian living in Colombia who was an art dealer. He goes around to different countries in search of art, mainly indigenous art. So, he's planning on going to New Mexico soon to get native American art. The one nice thing about it being a van instead of a bus was that there weren't separate seats, but rather one continuous cushion. Since the other occupant was in the front seat, I was free to lay down on the seat to take a nap (which was a little bit hard to do cause both men kept wanting to have a conversation all together haha). But I did get to sleep. At one point, I woke up and we were parked. The car was running, but I was the only one in the car. I looked around and noticed we were at a restaurant-like place on the side of the highway. Turns out the two men wanted to get some juice, haha. Once the driver dropped off the man at the place he needed to go, he began to converse with me, asking me what I think about Colombian guys, then asking me if I prefer younger men, to which I said yes. To that he responded, "Oh, so not people like me?" ..cause he was like 40, so that was a little awkward, but he was nice and wasn't creepy. I got transferred to another van with the same company, but I had to wait a bit until they got the van filled with more people. As we were driving through the city, the man kept yelling "Santa Marta! Santa Marta!" to try to get more passengers. Finally, the van became full, which meant that I couldn't lie down on a seat again. Once we arrived into Santa Marta, the driver stopped at a certain place where there were a lot of taxis and told me that this would be a good place to get off and get a taxi to Taganga. He also told me what the taxi ride was worth so that I wouldn't get ripped off, so that was nice. The taxi driver was nice, and also kinda hit on me by telling me I was beautiful (which seems to be common among drivers here, especially when I'm alone - or really just any person in the street or anywhere else that I come into contact with). As we were ariving in to Taganga and were looking down into the city where you could see all the cliffs and the beach he asked if I wanted to take a picture, which painfully brought back the pain of the fact that I have no way to take pictures (except for my computer, which I realized a bit later). But he got me to my hostel, which was nice. I made the reservation only 5 hours earlier, while at the airport. I arrived to Taganga, and to the hostel at around 4:00. The hostel is a realy hippy oriented place. It's called The Alchemist and there are yoga stuff, Hebrew words, mandalas, and pot everywhere. One of the women workers asked me about my plans and I told her that I was still sorting through various dive shops to go scuba diving. She had a place that she recommended that supposedly gives discounts to people from the hostel that I'm at. I decided to give it a go, since there was the possibility of it being at a cheaper price. She ended up tkaing me to the dive shop, where I explained to the man what exactly I wanted to do: an advanced open water course, get as many dives in as possible, and go to the sunken ship, if possible. His prices seemed to be a lot cheaper than the other dive shops that I had encountered and so I decided to go with them and start diving the next day at 8am.

Afterwards, I got some food from the store since the hostel has a kithcen area that the guests can use. When I got backt to the hostel, I made a grilled ham and cheese sandwhich and found out that it is normal for people to smoke pot here. Even the workers smoke pot in the open area, which is a little annoying. It doesn't smell like skunk, but it's certainly not a pleasant smell and I always seem to get stomachaches when I smell it. There are also a cat, a kitten, and a dog that roam aroudn the hostel and take every opportunity to get into the rooms, when possible. The hostel is certainly not the nicest place ever but per night, for a room with air coniditioning (which we're usually only allowed to turn on at night time), it's $16,000 pesos, so $5.62/night, which includes a light breakfast (which I haven't really been able to take advantage of sicne it begins at 8:00 and I have to be at the dive shop at 8, but on Wednesday, July 28th, I was able to take an arepa with me on my way to the dive shop, so that was cool).

After taking a shower and getting ready for bed, I realized that I still had my wristband on from the club the night before. I decided to document it haha, since I didn't have much else to do and since I don't have a way to take pictures unless it's with my laptop.