CARTAGENA
“the mess that came from being so close to the city gave us the idea for something we’re now proud of.” To understand the island beyond the beach club,
I climb onto the back of a mototaxi driven by a man who introduces himself as El Poeta, and we set off along the dirt tracks that serve as Tierra Bomba’s roads. The island spans nearly eight square miles, and El Poeta has never left. We pass the village of Bocachica, where the 18th-century Castle of San Fernando still guards the mouth of the bay, its battlements trailing bougainvillea. We skirt the shore at Punta Arena, where ramshackle bars tumble towards the ocean, then head down a backstreet lined with little houses painted lemon and coral. The city is visible almost the entire time, glinting
on the horizon. “People ask me if I want to live over there,” El Poeta says, jerking his chin towards the skyline. “I say: why? Everything I love is right here.” We slow for a dog in the road and I notice a scattering of bottles and plastic bags in the bushes — the city, again, sending its calling card. But for long stretches there’s nothing but mangrove- fringed, undeveloped coastline and the sense of a place that’s never been in a hurry. A few days later, I board a boat for the 45-minute
crossing to Isla Barú, and the city retreats a little further. Strictly speaking, Barú isn’t quite an island — the Spanish severed it from the mainland in the 16th century when they cut the Canal del Dique, and a bridge reopened the connection in 2014. You can, if you choose, drive here from Cartagena in an hour, but the roads quickly deteriorate into dirt tracks. The electricity, I’m told, comes on after dusk and shuts off at dawn. The town of Barú is a former palenque — a settlement founded by people who’d escaped enslavement in Cartagena and built a fortified, self- governing community beyond colonial reach. My lodging for the next two days is Agua Barú,
a collection of casitas staggered up a forested hill overlooking the boat-scattered bay of Cholón, where mangroves edge the water and herons pick through the shallows. At dawn, when the island still belongs to the birds, I snorkel in the protected waters of the Rosario and San Bernardo Corals National Natural Park. The reef below me is another world: parrotfish nosing through staghorn coral, a ray drifting across pale sand, a shoal of sergeant majors flickering like a handful of coins tossed into a fountain.
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At Playa Blanca, the island’s most famous
beach, day-trippers and vendors descend, but by late afternoon they’re gone. The beach empties, the water stills and the bioluminescent plankton — that ghostly blue glimmer stirred up by every movement in the shallows — makes nighttime swimming feel faintly magical. “This is what people don’t realise,” says my guide, Camilo, as we wade out into the dark water and watch our arms trail light. “Visitors come for the day and they have no idea what happens after sunset.” On my final morning, I take a yacht further
out still, into the Rosario Islands — 27 in total, scattered across a protected marine park to the south west of Cartagena. The city has disappeared entirely now. There’s nothing on the horizon but water and the faint green thumbprints of islands, some barely large enough to hold a palm tree. The sea changes colour as we go: jade, then turquoise, then a deep, improbable blue. At Isla Grande, the largest island in the
archipelago, we drop anchor to swim in water so clear we can count the fish darting beneath the hull. Canoes appear from the shore selling cold drinks, and a fisherman holds up a freshly caught lobster with an expression of pure pride. Then the engine starts again and we drift on: through Caño Ratón, a mangrove-fringed canal where rays glide along the sandy bottom in the green half-light and out to Isla Arena, a sliver of cream-coloured sand that barely breaks the surface of the sea. We have it to ourselves, nothing but open ocean and the soft collapse of waves on sand. “I’ve been running boat trips out here for 15
years,” says our captain, Rodrigo, cutting the engine and letting us drift. “Cartagena locals all know these islands are here, but ask them the last time they came out,” he smiles. “They always look a little guilty.” On the crossing back, the city re-materialises
slowly, first as a shimmer, then as a skyline, then as the full clatter and colour of Cartagena reasserting itself against the dock. It feels slightly surreal for a moment: all of that out there, all of this here, and only a strip of water between them. Fifteen minutes to Tierra Bomba, 45 to Barú, an hour or so to the open ocean of the Rosarios. Not a great distance. But just far enough.
THERE‘ S NOTHING BUT MANGROVE- FRINGED COAS TLINE AND THE S ENSE OF A P L ACE THAT ’ S NEVER BEEN IN A HURRY
HOW TO DO IT: Nuestra Cartagena offers five nights in Cartagena, including stays at Blue Apple Beach, Agua Barú and Casa Lola, from £1,350 per person, with private transfers. Includes a guided Centro Histórico (Old Town) tour, Tierra Bomba mototaxi experience and a private Rosario Islands excursion with Boating Cartagena. Excludes international flights.
nuestracartagena.com
Clockwise from top left: Playa Blanca on Isla Barú is famed for having some of the whitest sand in the Caribbean; the Rosario and San Bernardo Corals National Natural Park protects Colombia’s most important coral reefs; Isla Barú’s beaches get their bright white colour from crushed coral; scarlet macaws can live for 50 years
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