5th Nov - Medellin to Tacanga

Up at 8. Oh good Lord, I was suffering. Flamin! Stumbled around, packed, found a taxi to get me to the airport. Turns out I'd to catch two flights today, one from here to Bogota and then Bogota up to Santa Marta. Aim is to get in around 2.30 then book the Lost City tour starting tomorrow.

Scammed my way into the lounge for some other airline's VIPs in the airport so managed to get some juice, water, yogurt on board. Then the flight was delayed for an hour. Stress as i might miss my connection. But got to Bogota on time but my flight there was delayed for an hour and a half. Ah crap. Hangover really kicking in now, felt really bad. Got on flight to Santa Marta and it was practically empty so I could relax. We were coming into land and pilot spoke quite quickly in Spanish but I caught "welcome to Barranquilla"... what the hell! We're supposed to be in Santa Marta! Apparently Santa Marta was temporarily closed as they'd had heavy rain... short runway... danger... yadda yadda yadda. So we got deposited on the extremities of the airport in Barranquilla. No shops, uncomfortable seats and no one had the first clue what was going on.

Room from hell

A plan emerged eventually that they'd wait an hour to see if Santa Marta was now open and fly up there. But I had apparently booked with ChavAir and these chavs refused to accept any of this, and surrounded the poor staff and started screaming abuse at them. This went on for an hour. Meanwhile I was feeling as bad as I have for months. Stomach in utter bits. This was the day from hell.

Here's the chavs on the rampage:


Eventually I managed to separate one of the air hostesses from the rabid pack and when I was polite to her, the poor thing started crying on my shoulder! Oh right.

Anyway, she told me that the flying to Santa Marta dream was over and we'd be catching a bus at 6.

Ended up being a long 3hr bus with all the chavs shouting and roaring and I trying not to puke with the hangover, got in at 9. So it took me 13 hrs to get there. The same as the bus from Medellin would've taken. Nightmare.

On that 3 hr bus, all the chavs had eventually fukked off to their ghettos and I was advised by the driver and his co-driver to stay on so they'd drop me somewhere better.
Plus point was that I was actually on a bus, negatives were that it was dark, had no idea where I was, found the Spanish of the driver impossible to understand and I'd no guidebook, phone numbers, Internet access so if the drivers tried to rob me, I was in trouble.

Shouldn't have worried, driver was dead on, dropped me off at a taxi rank and negotiated an excellent price to my hostel!
Landed in the hostel and they'd a dorm room thankfully. And a restaurant. Had steak. Turned out that a Dutch guy runs the restaurant and has by far the best food I've had in south america so far. I ate so so slowly to savour every single bite. Had horsed down a bottle of Malbec too before I even realised. Drunk again. Bed time - end of a horrific day.