Santa Marta and the Sierra Nevada

Hi everyone,

We've now been in Santa Marta for 10 days.  Our first week here was spent exploring the city and for the last 3 days we've been in Minca exploring the Sierra Nevada.

Vibrant street art in Santa Marta, particularly outside cafes/bars

Santa Marta is a small city of about 500,000 people.  It's a popular tourist destination, primarily domestically but also internationally.  It's also a market town for the nearby Sierra Nevada.

Live music in the city square

Many attractive bars and cafes

Downtown Santa Marta

Street art extends beyond the cafes

Beef anyone?

More street art

The weather for much of our week exploring Santa Marta was very wet.  Winds were from the west which is quite unusual.  Many roads in the city were flooded.  Eventually the weather cleared up,

Passing thunderstorms in Santa Marta

The Sierra Nevada gets plenty of rain!

On Thursday we travelled to Minca in the Sierra Nevada.  It's about a one hour trip in an air conditioned minibus.  Minca is at about 700m altitude so noticeably cooler than Santa Marta.  It's a cool place with lots of young international tourists and hostels catering to them.  We stayed at Casa Loma which is perched on the side of a hill with great views.

The bus in Minca

Minca Arrival

Minca Park with beautiful small church behind

Duni cafe's chocolate bread is a meal in itself

Up the hill to our eco hostel

Many levels!

View from Casa Loma

Our very own eco hut!

Casa Loma plan

Happy diners with veggie-burger

Wednesday was spent touring.  At dawn we started a bird watching tour with Tony who is a real birding enthusiast.  Turned out so were several of the folks on the tour.  We saw toucans, macaws, parrots, jays, woodpeckers, wrens, finches, kestrels, hawks, eagles and a pygmy owl.  Many of the birds were outrageously colourful.  Sadly our cameras aren't up to high-zoom photography.  It was a great morning. 

Watching the toucans

Amazing track-side flowers

Tony with Nicki and the Ceruleans

That afternoon we took a 4WD tour up into the mountains.  We visited the La Victoria coffee plantation and beer brewery.  The 100+ year old coffee processing plant uses plentiful water and gravity for most of its processing needs.  It works hard on its sustainability and FairTrade credentials.  It harvests coffee from a set of small plantations scattered around the area.  Each has coffee trees protected from the sun by larger avocado and mango trees.  The product is very nice indeed.

4WD at La Victoria

Mainly water-driven mechanisms and processing

From La Victoria we drove up to a native community in the highlands at about 1650m elevation.  The road was definitely 4WD-going in places.  Fantastic views.

Road-side water cascades

Wonderful views across the Sierra Nevada

The native family we met showed us around their shared community buildings.  One at the hill-top had a great view until enveloped in cloud.  The people were very friendly and explained their buildings and aspects of their culture we asked about.  We bought some of their hand-made craft.

Native meeting house

Wisdom, love, respect, heritage

The 4WD drive back to Minca was interesting with the cloud chasing us down the hills.  We were driving in thick fog for a while.  As we approached Minca a thunderstom moved overhead with a deluge of rain.  We dashed into the Lazy Cat restaurant for a great (and dry) dinner.  Recommended.

What a day!

Trust all's well where you are!