Santa Marta

Santa Marta gave me freedom at last from my grumpy hanger-on. I escaped and left him lazy, grumpy, hot and sweaty in Cartagena. At long last. I wanted to go to the beach, try and find a boat to the Caribbean and maybe go to Tayrona Park. I also had to research the Plan B in the event I failed to find a boat, I needed the cheapest route to Martinique. Not easy, Colombia - Fort-de-France tapped into flight search engines were quoting $2000. I was in spitting distance of the islands, there is no way I need to pay that much. There was certainly a cheaper way. I was looking for ferries from Venezuela to Trinidad, apparently there used to be boats but they stopped running.

My journey to Santa Marta was pleasant, a small mini van type bus with a guy selling arepas deep fried and filled with egg and I'm not sure what else(another South American deep fried treat). Music and a film. Getting to this bus was a bit of a nightmare, following confusing directions we found a 'bus stop' for a local bus to the bus terminal. Fully loaded with my daily expanding backpack, I bought a fan and some new shampoo in Cartagena, how I found space for these small items with my backpack already bursting, I have no idea. The scorching midday sun was beating down on me as a waddled through the streets. Humidity was as ever up at full whack. The bus I got on was ancient, rickety, dusty, dirty. The steps where steep, the bus itself already high from the pavement, I nearly had to crawl on, my knees buckling under the weight of my backpack. Assisted, embarrassed, I climbed on and plonked myself down on a threadbare seat. Adieu Cartagena.

The best and worst thing about Cartagena were the horse-drawn carriages that circulated around the city's cobbled streets. They were horrifying, how can one horse pull all that? The carriages themselves were huge but loaded with a driver and a pack of toursists. Hardcore. The poor things in the searing heat and humidity of Cartagena, I couldn't bear to imagine how hard that physical labour was. Lined up in the squares or any small space, waiting for tourists, strapped in with their blinkers over their eyes. I searched for their pained expressions but couldn't see past the eye sheilds. At night in the hostel, I would sit out on the balcony with a book or my laptop. At intervals of no more than 15 minutes they would approach, turn down our street, hooves clapping along the cobbles in that stride of rhythm, getting louder as they neared the hostel and then fading again as they passed by. There was something romantic to me in the idea of these horses, the sound of their hooves on these old cobbled streets, like this had been happening for centuries. Hooves clapping down on the cobbles, these old streets, people like me sitting out on balconies under a starry hot night, only now the horses were ferrying around tourists instead of whoever they carried around before. Cartagena feels steeped in history, the chunky colonial balconied buildings, walled city, cobbled Streets, it's easy to let your imagination run wild.

The horrible contrast between the horses I imagined that coursed through the city before and those that run the tourist trail with their terrifyingly big carriages somehow encapsulated Cartagena, beautiful, historic but a modern day tourist trap. Romantic, if you are there with a lover, but you'll be sharing the romance with lots of other visitors.

Once on the bus I felt free, the hanger-on was a weight, he SERIOUSLY cramped my style. I was happy to be alone, sat in the bus watching the dry green vegetation pass by, small Colombian towns, water. Twilight broke and night started to fall, we finally pulled into the bus station and I once again had to find a hostel.

Santa Marta was dirty, like the worst parts of Cartagena but I kind of liked it. The only thing was, on my first evening I walked past a grotty old house on the way back to my hostel, I hear the desperate meows of tiny kittens, I looked inside the deserted doorway filled with rubbish and saw two little white kittens padding around barely able to see or open their eyes. Filthy. Failing over, weak and too young to walk. Screaming their little lungs out, searching desperately for their mother. Other cats were in this deserted doorway, but they were neither breast feeding nor female as far as I could see. I at first imagined that perhaps the mother had been run over but later came to the conclusion that they had been abandoned. I bought some tuna from a shop across the road but they couldn't eat it. I bought some milk but they dint know what to do with that either. They were not even weened. Locals walking by stopped and asked me what I was doing. Two boys stopped seperately to help me with my kitten saving mission and we talked for a while. To anyone who walked past vaguely interested I desperately tried to convince them to take them home. This failed. I didn't want to leave them meowing away in the doorway searching for their mother all night with other adult cats, mostly male. We managed to syphon some milk into their mouths and they fell alseep in our laps. Tiny, innocent and facing certain death, it was decided, Santa Marta was a kitten saving operation. Not an easy task in a town seriously over populated by cats, the local population seemed to divide into cat lovers and haters. The cat lovers all seemed to already have several of their own at home.

The hostel owner wouldn't let me bring them into the hostel, not even in a box. So we had to leave them to the mercy of fate that night. I woke up at dawn the next day and went to a bakery to buy some juice and ask for an empty box and took them to a vet. The vet said he couldn't help but gave me a syringe for free with which I could at least feed them.

I spent the day at a different hostel, where one of my travel friends happened to be, by pure coincidence we were both in Santa Marta. She was staying in a great backpacker hangout, appropriately named 'Dreamers', with hammocks, a pool and outside kitchen it was aptly named. We spent the day caring for the kittens and chatting, taking a break whilst they were asleep to go to the supermarket and make ourselves some fresh and tasty guacamole.

The kitten saga turned into a desperate nightmare. I took then to the supermarket and sat out with them offering them to anyone who was interested. Mild interest was always extinguished when they saw how young they were. I was told to just leave them and someone would come along and pick them up, but I didnt want to leave them to maybe get picked up, possibly starve, perhaps get eaten by rats, or godknows what. I was getting desperate. I needed to move, I was expected in Martinique. I needed to find a boat or book a flight.

Eventually, just when I was about to lose all hope, I walked into a vet's to replace the lost feeding syringe and the woman who worked there offered to take them. I hope they ended up in safe hands...really hope.

Kitten saga over, I had to continue with my search of how to get to Martinique. I was due there in a few days. I was going to have to fly. I spent the rest of my time in Santa Marta taking a relaxed look around the harbour, beach, shops and market. I hung out with some guys in my hostel, one of whom had been traveling in Venezuela and just crossed the border. I want to go traveling in Venezuela! But seriously.