For our 12 anniversary we decided to visit second oldest town in Colombia - Mompox (or Mompos). It was not easy trip to this town, we took a bus leaving Santa Marta (puerto-to-puerto) at 3 am and arrived in Mompox at about 10 am. Just the trip itself was worth the effort: we drove through a lot of different little towns and when arrived at Magdalena river we took a ferry, which is just an old, not looking reliable flat wooden structure which is moved across the river by a small skiff motorboat. After surviving that experience the bus dropped us off at the Amarillo Casa Hotel - grand looking colonial building. The hotel is situated on the the main waterfront avenue and is a very beautiful building. The time seemed just stopped at least 300 years ago in Mompox. All the buildings in this city were of colonial period and we have not seen any new recent structure. Most of the buildings are beautifully restored, and it was a lot of fun just to walk on the streets and peruse each building with the old court yards, old hispanic style antechambers, little flower gardens and hinging bird cages. This town was a very prosperous river port until Magdalena river changed it's course and the big cargo ships and passenger cruises could not navigate here any more. At this time Mompox turned into another old sleepy town in the middle of Colombia. The heat in the place is unbearable, there are no sane person would walk on the streets between 10 am and 5 pm - the city looks dead at this time because of the heat.
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| The ferry across Magdalena river to Mompox |
February 14 - 15 - Baranquilla Carnaval
We visited Bogota again for 2 times - Kevin needed two skin surgeries done there. At the first visit we bought a new 110v motor for our not yet working watermaker. Second time was fruitful too - we bought some new t-shirts and some of the Sunbrela fabric. We were planning to stay in Santa Marta marina no longer than beginning of February, but those plans were long gone and here we are, driving in the bus on Saturday to the carnaval in Baranqilla. Prices of the hotels were tripled at this time, but we still managed to get a clean room not too far from the downtown. While looking for the starting place of the Parade of the Flowers, we met Elias, a colombian architect who kindly took us to the parade. Next day we went to the parade again and this time we bought seats in the covered area along the Ave. 40 where was a parade. That was much comfortable to watch carnaval. There we met other local family, who shared with us their rum, told stories and taught me traditional colombian dance moves. We spent afternoon with Elias again and he was very kind to take us to the bus station where we caught a bus to Santa Marta. We really enjoyed the Carnaval, but mostly we were so happy to make new friends.
After returning back to Santa Marta we finally found a Spanish teacher, Victoria, with who we had unforgettable two weeks of Spanish classes.
There were three of us students - Kevin, Denise (from Alero) and I. With a great teacher we showed a great progress too. Too bad we did not get this opportunity earlier. However, we tried - we even almost got student visas to get a 30 hours course at the University del Norte in Santa Marta.
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