Santa Marta Day 3

On our third day in Santa Marta we planned to do a walking tour, but as the guide never showed up, we were just walking around alone in the city. On the long promenade at the beach, a big group of policemen were patrolling and talking to people, others were driving quads in the sand and getting people out of the water because a storm was coming. I asked them, if there was any particular reason for the strong presence of police on a seemingly calm Sunday, they said that there were a lot of crime in the city, and they are warning people about it, though we never felt unsafe walking around.

As it started raining, we went to a juice bar next to our hostel and had a very tasty juice, with some tropical fruits that we had never heard of. The owner, a very cute lady also gave us some some snack that I would compare to a corndog.
In the afternoon we went to the house where Simon Bolivar died, which has been turned into a museum with a botanical garden, a huge memorial for him, and contemporary paintings. We could feel, that it was a very important place for Colombia, as it was very well preserved and a lot of information was provided, even in English. The other museums we had visited before had very little and not so informative explanations, and mostly in Spanish only.

The museum was right next to a huge shopping mall, so we decided to check it out. There were a lot of clothing stores, that looked quite expensive, a lot of stores offering unnecessary stuff, pure capitalism. A lot of people were hanging out in the food court, a family even celebrated a birthday there. Our highlight was the Uno Colombia edition and the Colombian version of Monopoly. We also tried McDonald's Postres, which is a McDonald's store, only selling sweets, and the city is full of them, KFC also has it's own postres shop.Read more