Just back from our weekend in Taganga. We did 4 dives and enjoyed them all although there were certainly drawbacks.
The village of Taganga is a real dump, littered with trash and rubble, but in a beautiful setting, a long bay surrounded by green hills. We made the mistake of actually staying in the village and being eaten alive by the hoards of mosquitos. We should have stayed in Santa Marta itself (just 10 minutes, 3 dollars away by taxi or 20 minutes, 30 cents by minibus), or Rodadero, the beach resort of the other side of Santa Marta full of Colombian package holiday tourists. Neither of these are exactly Caribbean gems but have better accomodation and eating options than Taganga as well as being relatively free from the midges. The only tourists who stay in Taganga are European backpackers on the long haul gringo trail down South America, but it's far from being backpacker central as most of them skip Colombia altogether. It's just a poor Caribbean fishing village.
Despite saying this the people in Taganga were friendly and it was interesting watching the fishing boats come in a dusk when most of the village population came down to the beach to collect their share of the fish.
Apart from fishing and ferrying tourists arround the bay to some uninspiring beaches, diving is the only business in Taganga with 5 or 6 different options. We booked in advance with Poseidon. Once we got there Oceanic and Tayrona looked to have better boats, although nothing to write home about. The Poseidon boat was the standard little launch you get in these places, not much of a motor and no shade. Would have been OK but they squeezed far too many people on board - 12 the first day, 15 the second. Even though some were dropped off at a beach to do mini-courses it was still a nightmare finding enough space amongst the dive bags and legs to get ready to get into the water. Would have been easier if we could have got the tanks ready on shore but they insisted on doing it once the boat was underway.
The group leader was called Junior and he was friendly and professional. There was another grumpy taciturn dive master but luckily she was left to look after a couple doing their open water certificate. The German owner Gerd was looking after another German guy on a course and the 2nd day there was a 4th divemaster with 2 more students.
The 4 dives we did were Torin, Piedra del Medio, Calichan and Cantil, all relatively close to Taganga. I would be surprised if they go often to any of the points further along the coast. They save money and time sticking around Isla Aguja about 20 minutes from the village.
Visibilty was not good, not very Caribbean looking at all. They said it was because of rain but 2 guys who had been there earlier in the year said it had been the same then. Despite this the dives were fun. We saw more moray eels than we have seen anywhere else, 4 or 5 per dive (black & white ones and green, including a baby green one), a flying gunnard which we had only seen before on a night dive, interesting coral, our first conger eel at close quarters, the biggest french angel fish we have seen, some striped shrimps, big oysters and the usual other assortment of caribbean fish.
We were glad we went but I don't think I would recommend Taganga particularly unless you are in the area. Out of the destinations in Colombia we have dived I would put them in this order:
1. San Andres
2. Providencia (probably should be no.1 but we just did 2 easy dives as we were only recently certified)
3. Cartagena - Baru
4. Santa Marta / Taganga
5. Cartagena - Islas del Rosario
Would definitely recommend San Andres & Providencia to anyone.
John & Rocio
