Santa Marta (Colombia)

My journey to Santa Marta, located about 225km from Cartagena, started with the bus that I had reserved through the hostel. With the company MarSol. Instead of 12 o'clock, I was already picked up at the hostel at 11 o'clock. No one told me that it would start an hour earlier. Well, okay. I was the only passenger on the bus at first, and since I had just read the negative reviews about the bus company on the Internet shortly before departure, I thought to myself: I hope we arrive safely and in daylight. We then collected other passengers for about an hour until the bus was packed with people and luggage. Then we started quickly, just as the driving style was described on the Internet. After a short toilet break, we reached Barranquilla, another city, at around 2 pm. Here we drove around and constantly stopped somewhere. We were also not really informed about what exactly we were supposed to do here - just as the reviews had stated, well at least that was reliable. Annoyed, I followed the back and forth driving a bit on my offline map. A little outside of Barranquilla, we stopped at a snack stop with toilets, and then we continued and arrived in Santa Marta at around 4:30 p.m. What an ugly city, I thought to myself as I walked to the hostel, which was only 1km away from the bus stop, and thanks to my offline map - maps.me - I quickly found my way. After refreshing myself briefly in the pool, I decided to have dinner at the hostel. I didn't feel like exploring this city at all. Too much traffic, dirty, and boring. I'm ready for the beach and the sea. Time for Tayrona National Park.