Budget Travel
Low Bus Fares, Cheap Hotels
Extreme Geography
Exotic Wildlife

Budget travel around the Santa Marta area and Colombia is normally by bus, not rickety old buses with chickens on the roof, actually the buses traveling between towns and cities are new and modern and the bus stations are larger and more modern than most that I have seen in North America.

The bus station in Santa Marta with a population of 400,000 people is larger, better equipped, more modern with better schedules than the bus station in Vancouver, Canada. But in all fairness, most people in Colombia don’t own a car so they depend on the bus.

My biggest complaint about bus travel in Colombia is they keep the air conditioning turned down way too low, that’s my main reason for traveling with a jacket in Colombia.

There are a number of reasons why you can get around so cheaply, one of the big reasons is simply, Colombia is not a huge country like Canada or the United States so the distances are much shorter.

The bus traveling fron Santa Marta to Bogota takes about 16 hours for less than $50.00 US. The distance I would guess would be about 400 miles and from sea level to over 8000 feet, that gets you half way through Colombia, another day and you would be at the border to Peru, Equador or Brasil, whatever place you choose. Many of the times that I have traveled there has been a good supply of snacks on board, pop and beer. I have always found when on buses that they seem to retain a normal price similar to what you would pay in a store, so I have nothing but good things to say about moving about in Colombia.

The smaller towns and villages are normally served by a smaller size of bus, say from going from Santa Marta to Aracataca, a minivan or a taxi to Minca. The reason you would go to Minca would be to see more birds than almost anywhere else in the world or endemic species found nowhere else. Minca would be the starting off point so this little town is worth a visit.

Of course, wherever you go you will find the biggest or the tallest or the rarest, that is the fact of Colombia. To leave Santa Marta by air is a little more expensive so I don’t consider the airlines a form of budget travel.

Of course hotels play a big role in your travel expenses, the hostels for the younger generation or there are cheaper hotels in all the towns and cities.

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