A tiny Caribbean fishing village that became Colombia's dive capital
Taganga is a small fishing village tucked into a horseshoe bay five kilometres from Santa Marta, and for decades it was Colombia's best-kept backpacker secret: cheap, beautiful, and home to some of the Caribbean's most accessible scuba diving. The bay is ringed by brown-and-green mountains dropping straight into crystal-clear water, and PADI open-water courses are among the cheapest in the world here. Tayrona National Park — with its boulder-strewn jungle beaches and hiking trails — is 45 minutes away. The village has grown considerably but retains its laid-back fishing-village character.
Taganga has been inhabited by the Tayrona people for thousands of years before Spanish colonisation; the bay's natural shelter made it an important fishing ground. After independence, it remained a small fishing community for centuries, with Santa Marta — Colombia's oldest city — growing nearby. Taganga's transformation into a backpacker hub accelerated in the early 2000s as Colombia's security situation improved and travellers began exploring the Caribbean coast. It is now the main base for diving the coral reefs and shipwrecks of the Caribbean shelf, and for accessing Tayrona National Park.