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Arriving at Dreamer hostal in Santa Marta was a bit like arriving at a resort - lovely swimming pool surrounded by the rooms with a bar and restaurant on the fourth side. I felt like my two week vacation had started.
My 4 bed dorm was comfy and had a good fan for when the air con was not on during the day as well as a private bathroom. For most of my stay there was a great Bristish couple there who I sent most of my time with when I was in the hostal.
True to a resort holiday I did not leave the hostal much other than to go to the local mall or on day trips - Santa Marta city was not a thing of beauty apprently....
I had booked my Advanced diving course with Oceano in Taganga so the next morning I headed there by taxi to start my course. My instructor, Tomas, was excellent - Polish and he had been living in Colombia for 12 years. I had one to one lessons with him most of the time which was really good for learning and meant we had plenty of time for normal diving as well.
The first day I was to do 3 dives - Perfect bouyancy, Navigation and Night dive. The first was excellent and I think I have finally mastered my bouyancy problems. I was also complimented on my good breathing technique. I also had no problems with my safety stops which had caused me problems on my last dive in Turkey so I was much happier all round.
Next was my navigation dive which to be honest I was not great at. I had to remember the headings I was at when I got in the water and to be honest after 25 minutes I could remember the numbers. If I ever needed to do this for real I would have to write them down!
My third dive was to be a night dive so I headed back to the hostel for a few hours to do my homework and returned around sunset. Originally it was to be three of us - Estaban was joining as it would be his final dive of the course but just as we were about to leave a Colombian woman turned up and we had to take her as well. Tomas was not happy as he knew nothing about her diving ability and we had to hang around while she suited up. She came complete with her own pink fins and mask and fake boobs (very common in Colombia) which I worried would seriously affect her buoyancy. The night dive went off fine - a full moon meant more light than normal and we got to see lobster, eels and bioluminescence. I felt like Tinkerbell (but fatter!) waving my hand and having gold fairy dust coming off it as the light hit tiny organisms. The late arrival was all over the place banging into us as we feared but otherwise a good dive.
The next day was my final two dives of the course - first being my deep dive which took me down to 32m. Once down there I could feel the effects of the increased nitrogen in my blood stream and felt as though I had had a couple of beers. I had to concentrate harder than I should have when Tomas was doing his high school science experiments - red and orange colours disappear at that depth and look like green and when you crack an egg it stays intact outside the shell.
During the lunch break a freak accident occurred when iguanas in the slope behind the beach hut sent rocks tumbling down the slope a large one of which hit one of the instructors on the back of the head. Patricio had to be rushed back to Taganga and ended up with 4 stitches but it could have been so much worse.
This mean a switch in instructors with Tomas leaving me to take the fun divers with Andrea and Rodrigo taking me, the two OWD students and one of the other fun divers on my drift dive. This dive is supposed to be like in Finding Nemo when the turtles take him into the current and you fly along but the weather had created such a swell that we were fitting to go forward - at times even having to hold onto the sea bed until the swell went our way. My real drift dive would have to wait for another day but I had now completed my dives and after finishing my homework in the local taco bar I was now a certified Advanced diver.
The next day I had planned to get up late, lounge by the pool and sunbathe but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and it was cloudy or rainy all day :(. I still lounged but with out the benefit of sun. After much deliberation I decided not to go to Tayrona as I had already seen jungle and would be seeing a lot of beaches in San Andres and I would save myself the 4 hour walk and a night in a hammock shed with 150 other people, eating overpriced food and being bitten by mosquitos!
Instead I booked 2 fun dives and a couple of nights in Taganga where I would head after my trip to Minca the next day. Minca is in the hills behind Santa Marta and has a cooler climate, waterfalls and coffee plantations. It is only 45 minutes away so we were soon at the coffee plantation after driving past Minca along a very dodgy road. The tour was not as good as Salento and after we were rushed to the Pozo Azul waterfall before it had a chance to rain.
The walk to the waterfall was pleasant and we were then able to swim in the pools between the waterfalls and I watched others jumping off the egdes of the falls. Suitably refreshed we headed back to the van just before the heavens opened and a tropical storm hit. We watched the rain hammer down while having our lunch and then headed back to Santa Marta.
I grabbed my stuff and headed for Taganga to my new hostal and my first time in an 8 bed dorm. The view from the hostal across the bay at Taganga was stunning and there was a fairly easy walk along the shore into town. I met some of the others in the hostal and went into town with them to watch Colombia in the semi final of the Copa America. They were losing at half time and the match then did not restart after the normal interval as a massive storm had hit Chicago forcing them to empty everyone from their seats. After a long wait we were told the wait would be over another hour so we went home to bed instead. Colombia did not get through and Chile went on to win in the final.
My next days diving was plagued by bad visibility due to the rain two days before and on the first dive our group of 7 customers and 2 dive masters managed to lose each other after about 10 minutes. At one point myself and my dive buddy (Andrea the dive master) came across the two kids (13 and 15) and she left them with me as she went to the surface to look for the others and I had to try and keep the kids with me which was not easy as they seem oblivious to the danger of getting lost! The second dive was done at a different site with a little better visibility so was all a bit more relaxed.
Back at the hostel I had a couple of cocktails and went out for a lovely meal before returning to watch the disaster that was the EU referendum - the six hour time difference mean I could want the nightmare in real time while most of the UK slept. Also that night I got bitten to death by what turned out to be bed bugs so that was my third bit of bad luck that day after the poor visibility dive.
I got up early the next morning to head back to Dreamer hostal and waited for my transfer back to Cartagena and my flight to San Andres.
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