Neda is getting impatient. It's been a month since we arrived in Taganga, and since then, barring the occasional trip outside our hotel to grab a bite to eat, I've been content to watch the hot, lazy march of days file past our balcony window. If this was a movie, there'd be a time-lapse shot of the sun rising and setting about 30 or so times over the bay of Taganga with me in the foreground lying motionless in a hammock. But Neda is getting impatient.  Binge watching TV shows. Seven seasons of Bones flash by in the blink of an eye... After our dash (yet again) through Central America to catch the ship to Cartagena, this is the first real opportunity to relax and not have any appointments in front of us. I needed the world to shrink to the size of this small town... actually, I was even happy having the whole world be the size of our room overlooking the beach. For Neda, Taganga was too small. Even her bi-weekly ride to Santa Marta was not enough. Although we both agreed we weren't ready to be nomadic again, she needed a larger homebase to settle in - hopefully somewhere with a well-equipped kitchen so she could pursue her love of cooking, instead of eating out of a tiny cube fridge in the room. I felt like I was living with a caged lion, pacing restlessly back and forth in the confined little space of this tiny Caribbean resort-town. To be fair, if Neda wrote this blog entry, it would read, "I felt like I was living with a hibernating bear."  Our friends from the Stahlratte, Simon (with his IV) and Anne I did manage to make it outside of Taganga a few times. We've been keeping in contact with the travelers we met on the Stahlratte and we were surprised that our backpacking friends, Simon and Anne from Germany, were still in Colombia. In fact they were in Santa Marta, just down the road. Because of our glacial travel pace, we've watched all the motorcycle travelers from the Darien Gap crossing zoom past us to points further south. Unfortunately, the reason why they were still in town was because Simon got the dreaded Dengue Fever. It's quite a nasty sickness, with two stages: an initial flu-like period lasting 4 days, and then a critical phase from Day 4-10 when the illness could develop into a fatal Hemorrhagic Fever. I suspect he got bitten in mosquito-infested Cartagena - the incubation period is anywhere from a few days till up to two weeks!  Simon's doctor Wendy and her young son take us for some Dengue Therapy We visited Simon in Santa Marta and found out his doctor was based in Taganga, just down the street from our hotel. So the next time he came into town for his check-up, we also dropped into the clinic to see how he was doing. His doctor was super-nice, she told us she modeled her patient-care style around Patch Adams, the old Robin Williams movie, treating her patients less impersonally and more like friends. We got that sense right away - Because it was the weekend and it was supposed to be her day off, Wendi was going to take Simon and Anne to the beach for some outdoor recuperation. And we were invited too! What a cool doctor!  You don't need to contract Dengue Fever to enjoy a dip in the ocean!  Wendy's son inspects the day's catch  The beaches where we lounged for the day was also a homebase for some local fishermen  We watched as they pulled some of the nets ashore The owner of the Dive Centre where we're staying also invited us out on one of the dives. He lent us some snorkeling equipment and we got to swim around the corals with his scuba customers. It's not the best time of year for scuba, there's a lot of wind and the choppy waters didn't make for clear viewing underwater, but hey, it was free and it was a really nice gesture on the owner's part  < Cue Jaws music > 
 Brain coral  This was the last picture my (not-so) waterproof camera took I was planning to do some dive videography, but unfortunately, my waterproof camera got waterlogged and went belly-up. Second waterproof camera to die a watery death on this trip. That was kind of disappointing. This was all I could salvage before the camera turned into an expensive brick: I like Taganga a lot. I wouldn't have minded staying here to relax a bit longer, but Neda need somewhere a bit more homey so we're packing our panniers and climbing back on the bikes tomorrow to find a more suitable place to settle down for a bit longer!
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