THE MUS IC FROM CARTAGENA S E EMS TO ECHO ACROSS THE


WATER AS OUR BOAT PUL LS AWAY.


Yesterday evening, I’d stood in Plaza de la Trinidad watching a free Zumba class draw dancers of every age into the street. The air had been thick with humidity, the sultry sound of salsa drifting from open windows. Now, the city noise has faded, swallowed by the slap of the hull against the bay. For a few moments, the Caribbean is all glitter


and open water. Then Tierra Bomba appears on the horizon: first an emerald smudge, then a tangle of mangroves and palms spilling towards the sea. Pelicans wheel overhead. A fisherman lifts his catch from a wooden skiff. Along the shoreline, sandy tracks disappear into villages hidden beneath almond trees where children play football beside grazing goats and women chat in doorways. Fifteen minutes. That’s all it takes to cross from


From left: Isla Grande’s lagoon appears almost black by day — but after dark it comes alive with bioluminescent plankton; Modern high-rises overlook Cartagena's remarkably well-preserved colonial walled city


one of South America’s most-visited cities to an island with no paved roads, no scheduled boat service to the mainland — only private charters and hotel transfers — and a population of just 9,000 people. From the island, the city skyline is still visible, faintly sparkling across the bay. And yet Tierra Bomba feels entirely, improbably, elsewhere. I’m staying at Blue Apple Beach, a converted home


on the southern shore, built using local materials and traditional techniques. Its thatched palapas (open-


sided dwellings) are filled with works by Colombian artists and furniture made by island carpenters. Portia Hart, its British-Trinidadian founder, arrived here in 2016 when Tierra Bomba was being bypassed almost entirely by Cartagena’s tourism economy. “I saw an island that was invisible,” she says, setting down her coffee at a table that looks out directly onto the Caribbean. “It’s minutes from a city full of visitors and yet, nobody was coming. I thought, that can’t be right.” Portia built a beach club, then a hotel and even started a recycling programme, too. The fact that Cartagena is close isn’t always an


advantage — the city’s rubbish arrives here, too, washed in on the tide, glinting in the mangroves, accumulating in the kind of places nobody visits often enough to clear. Portia noticed that Tierra Bomba’s hospitality industry had no glass recycling infrastructure, so in 2018 she founded Green Apple Foundation, an independent non-profit that now runs Cartagena’s first glass-recycling programme. Bottles collected from across the city are ground into sand and turned into drinking glasses and candleholders by a local women’s cooperative before being sold to some of Colombia’s finest restaurants. To date, more than 450 tons of glass have been diverted from landfill. “In a funny way,” Portia says,


NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER – LATIN AMERICA COLLECTION 21


IMAGES: ALAMY


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