One thing I'll say about The Hotel Bahia: the AC worked. The TV was a bit fussy, and the Wi-Fi was patchy, but the AC worked. The beds had a flat sheet and a thin knitted afghan on a bare mattress, but the AC worked. The bathroom was tiled floor to ceiling, and the shower was just a showerhead and drain adjacent to the comode, but the AC worked.
We went to a couple of beaches the next day. Santa Marta beach seems less salty than Puerto Colombia and Cartagena--even Taganga, but we'll get to that later. We spend some time at la Playa Blanca, cerca Rodadero, as well.
That night we were(or at least I was) dertermined to find The Dreamer Hostel. So, after getting a little better idea of it's whereabouts, we resumed the search.
We decided that since it was, according to our new information, "...mere steps away from Buenavista, in the centro of Santa Marta" that we would start at buenavista, and search for it on foot. After about 20 minutes, we were pretty certain that it was not anywhere we were looking. We asked some folks and they tried to direct us to a hotel.
'it doesn't exist. That's why they call it the DREAMER Hostel....' said kevin ' why are you so determined to find this place? There are plenty of cheap hotels...'
"because, it's not about price at this point. It's not even about the Dreamer Hostel. At this point, it's for the quest, and the satisfaction of finding it"
'Hmmm...'
"when we find it, you're going to be so glad we kept looking."
We decided to look on the opposite side of buenavista. Just as we were about to head down a new street, a taxi driver stopped to offer his services. We asked if he knew of The Dreamer Hostel, and he said 'the place where all the gringos camp?... It's just over there...'
We kept walking, and asked some men sitting on the sidewalk what street we were on, they seemed to sense that we were travelling (maybe our backpacks gave us away) the jerked their thumbs in the direction of the neighborhood behind them, and told us it was straight and then left. We walked a couple of blocks straight, and then turned left. Kevin made a comment about the high fence around a basketball court obscuring our view of the building behind it (we were looking for a wall with The Dreamer Hostel painted on it) 'oh man, what if that's the place we're looking for and we walked right past it because we couldn't see the wall...' The probability of that being the case, especially given our failure to locate it thus far, was duely noted, and as we reached the corner of the block, I suggested that we check to make sure, so we wouldn't feel like idiots if we ended up having to come back.
'yeah, how can we not... Omigodomigod! It's here. It's $&8?) here! What did I say? What did I tell you? Yeeah!'
Before we even saw the words, there was the painting of an orange sun and crescent blue moon wearing a traditional Colombian sombrero vueltiao.
"I knew we'd find it. And I knew you'd be this excited."
Words cannot describe the surreal experience of opening the door to the sound of music and laughter, and conversation. There was a glow from the center of the courtyard--a swimming pool, and it's reflections were dancing on the walls and faces surrounding it. The proprietor, Miguel, met us as we entered: 'Buenas! Como estan?' We were finally there! We booked two beds -the last two- and settled in for some slightly-more-than-slightly-burnt popcorn and a movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment