Santa Marta
Santa Marta, officially the Distrito Turístico, Cultural e Histórico de Santa Marta, is a port city on the coast of the Caribbean Sea in northern Colombia.
It is renowned in Latin American as the place of death of Simón Bolívar.
Getting to Santa Marta
- 01Simón Bolívar
- 02Intercity
It's all the way out of town on the main highway.
Things to do
You can go to the 1 beach near the port. Nearby is the
Where to eat
There are a lot of eating options. They seem to be good at roasting and grilling chicken. They do a good job of grilling beef, tough but flavorful. Seafood is plentiful and relatively inexpensive with lots of shrimp and seafood cocktail vendors. Most varieties of fruit are available even those more common to cold climates.
Getting around Santa Marta the local way
- Get inIf carrying a big backpack, you might be rejected by some colectivo drivers.
- Get inFrom Santa Marta centre to the Terminal de Transporte you can catch a bus/colectivo with the sign "UCC TRANSPORTE" on Carrera 1.
- Get inBuses are available: from Cartagena: 3½ hours from Barranquilla: 2 hours from Medellín: 15 hours from Bucaramanga: 9 hours, COP$80,000 (Copetran, Brasilia) (Jan 2024) from Bogotá: 16 hours from Riohacha: 2½ hours from Taganga: COP$2,000 (Sept 2021) with minibus or taxi for COP$10,000 (Aug 2016) from Cúcuta: 14 hours, COP$120,000-140,000 (Mar 2023) For more comfortable road travel across northern Colombia, a few companies offer air conditioned van services between Cartagena and Santa Marta, with stops in Barranquilla en route.
From Wikivoyage: Santa Marta, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-08.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see file page), Wikimedia Commons.