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The Hotel Bahia Blanca Is Not Luxury But You're Treated Like Family

Where: Carrera 1-C, Santa Marta, Colombia
March 12, 2009 at 2:29 PM | by The Lost Girl | 0 Comments

Last month, Amanda Pressner gave Jaunted a report on her jaunt down to Colombia. This week, she is giving HotelChatter reviews of the hotels she checked into during her trip. Any questions or suggestions about the Colombia Hotel Scene? Let us know. Enjoy.

Provided you’re willing to shell out the bucks, it’s never that difficult to find a decent night’s sleep, no matter where on the planet you go. But once you put the term “budget” before your title of traveler, well, that’s when you start playing the game of hotel room roulette

Unable to assess the quality of the backpacker lodging in the seaside Colombian city of Santa Marta simply from the web, my guy Jeff and I waited until we’d been dropped off in the city, at dusk, to choose our hotel. After immediately rejecting the so-called best waterfront lodging (we wonder—do the Lonely Planet people actually enter the asylum-like places they recommend so fervently?) we opted for the Hotel Bahía Blanca, a quaint ground-level property with about a dozen rooms flanking a small, but pleasant interior courtyard.

It appeared that we were only two a few guests in residence at the time, but in theory, that meant more personalized attention from the staff.

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The Hotel Caribe Cartagena Looks Grand But Really Isn't

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: Carrera 1a no 2-87, Cartagena, Colombia
March 10, 2009 at 2:33 PM | by The Lost Girl | 0 Comments

Last month, Amanda Pressner gave Jaunted a report on her jaunt down to Colombia. This week, she is giving HotelChatter reviews of the hotels she checked into during her trip. Any questions or suggestions about the Colombia Hotel Scene? Let us know. Enjoy.

In the Bocagrande section of Cartagena, a crook-armed, sea-level stretch of beach primed to sink under the weight of so many tightly-packed, modern high rises, you’ll find the Hotel Caribe, a pastel wedding cake of property that appears left over from another era, a earlier time when the wealthiest Colombians escaped the chill of Bogotá and Medellin to winter along the coast.

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A Holy Night's Stay at the Sofitel Cartagena Santa Clara

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: Calle Del Torno 39-29, Cartagena, Colombia
March 9, 2009 at 4:52 PM | by The Lost Girl | 0 Comments

Last month, Amanda Pressner gave Jaunted a report on her jaunt down to Colombia. This week, she is giving HotelChatter reviews of the hotels she checked into during her trip. Any questions or suggestions about the Colombia Hotel Scene? Let us know. Enjoy.

There’s something a touch naughty about shacking up for the night in a 400-year-old former convent that once housed an order Clarisian nuns. You wonder, as you prepare to spend a weekend living in sin in a room transformed from the women's spartan sleeping quarters into a sexy, 500-thread count love den—what would the sisters say if they could see you now?

Fortunately, while staying at the Sofitel Cartagena Santa Clara may qualify as a religious experience (it’s widely considered the most luxurious hotel in the old city) there’s no need to act discrete or be on your best behavior.

What was once a nunnery in the 1600s, and then a charity hospital in the mid 19th century was painstakingly restored in 1994 and eventually turned into a five-star 121-room property that’s has hosted everyone from the King of Spain, Bill Gates and Mel Gibson to Jasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Mick Jagger.

We can bet that no matter what kind of bad behavior you’ve got cooked up for your stay, you’ve already been trumped by one of these guys—so have at it.

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