San Andres and Providencia

The islands of San Andres and its little neighbour Providencia are located between the northern Colombian mainland and Nicaragua. They are famous for great diving, clear blue waters and a Carribean/Creole relaxed culture. We headed over for a week to see how it compared to the stunning beaches of the Mexican coast.

I can’t say we fell in love with either island, at least not immediately. San Andres is big and quite busy in the main city area. It has some decent beaches but nothing compared to those we’d just visited in Mexico. Providencia was cute and very sleepy but lacked any real beaches – this may have been due to king tide when we were there but there was almost no sand to be seen at any beach we visited. I have to admit though, looking back on the photos as I wrote this blog I do think maybe we didn’t love it as much as we should have!

To get around the islands we hired a golf cart in San Andres and a scooter in Providencia. Both gave us the freedom to explore the islands and made for really fun days, although the golf cart drove like a wonky shopping trolley.

Our favourite places to see on San Andres were:

Playa de San Luis – a decent and relaxing beach that is walkable from the city centre, though the walk is just on main roads so a bus would be better. You can walk out in the shallow water to a ship wreck Rocky Cay from there but we preferred to just soak up the sun.

To our surprise, Playa Principal the main beach in the tourist centre of San Andres was actually pretty nice. We weren’t planning on checking it out but were glad we did.

Without a doubt the best thing to do in San Andres was just cruising around the island in our golf buggy stopping at little beaches along the way. There are also some popular swimming holes but they were jam packed when we drove past (with buses full of screaming schoolgirls) so we decided to skip them.

Over on Providencia we (overpaid) for a boat to transfer us over to the tiny Cayó Cangrejo (Crab Island). We needed to pay a small entrance fee to the national park to get access to laze around in the small area where you can jump off into the beautiful blue waters and do a little snorkling. In our experience the snorkling was a little overrated but we did see a huge stingray swim by! At one point everyone else had left and we found ourselves enjoying the island to ourselves (plus the national park staff).

A walk around the whole of Santa Catalina island takes no more than an hour or so and felt far more natural and tranquil than the other islands – there are only a few hundred residents and far fewer tourists (and no cars!).

Again though, our favourite day was spent exploring – this time on two wheels as we scootered around the island.

We did briefly check out Rolands Bar on the far side of Providencia which is renowned as an awesome party venue in the evenings. Unfortunately we were staying too far away to be able to check it out in the evening.

Accommodation on the islands is a lot more expensive than on the mainland, especially in Providencia. In San Andres we stayed at the Blue Almond Hostel which is in a residential area about 15 to 20 minutes from the main city. The owners were really friendly and helpful and most guests seemed very chilled so it is probably a good social type of hostel but we were a bit hostelled out and fairly anti-social during out stay.

Options are fewer in Providencia – we stayed at Posada Sunshine Paradise which is on the sleepier Santa Catalina which has no roads and is connected to the main island by footbridge. The island is cute but has only one restaurant (see below) that seemed to open only when they felt like it. That combined with the afternoon storms and lack of other options meant we ate tinned tuna on crackers for three of our four nights staying on Providencia! There aren’t many hostels in Providencia but guesthouses are scattered around the island – it would be worth finding one that is closer to where the two or three restaurants are clustered around. For us getting to those restaurants would have only been possible by getting a moto for 25 minutes or so – not enticing in the storms.

Overall, our guesthouse in Providencia was cute, quiet and comfortable but lacked the homeliness or helpfulness that you’d expect on a small island.

Eating and Drinking

San Andres isn’t a foodie heaven but we enjoyed:

La Regatta – a massive and famous seafood restaurant where we went on our first night (Jen had booked it for my birthday). We shared a massive tasty seafood platter (with fish, lobster, prawns and squid). Service, however, was very poor. It turns out that paying more for a restaurant doesn’t mean friendlier staff.

Coffee Break Cafe – OK this isn’t an awesome hipster coffee shop like we normally recommend but it had Wi-Fi and tasty cream cheese bagels and other options on the island were pretty limited.

On Providencia we liked Sea Star Gourmet which was next to our guesthouse on Santa Catalina. The one time we found it open we had amazing fresh fish cooked in ginger.

We discovered a great restaurant called Donde Martin on our scooter ride around the island. This fish may have been even tastier than at Sea Star and the ceviche starter was awesome – up there with what we had in Lima.

There are some simpler local options – we tried a menú del día in where the main was a fried fish head. Not my favourite.

As we were about to cross the footbridge from the main Providencia Island one night we saw a few people drinking at a bar (if it had a name we sadly didn’t get it) on a boat moored to the jetty. We stopped for a quick beer which ended up being a few strong g+t’s, listened to great tunes and really enjoyed chatting to the friendly owners and locals who were there. We didn’t make it back the next night but highly recommend.

Getting to San Andres Island

Although part of Colombia, San Andres is actually closer to Costa Rica and Nicaragua and would be best described as being in the middle of nowhere. There are very regular and fairly cheap flights from the mainland – flights from Cartagena were about $75USD for the 90 minute flight. Tickets do not include a mandatory island tourist card – about $30 paid in COP at the airport.

Getting to Providencia Island

Part of the charm of this sleepy island is that it’s hard to get to – hence less tourists. Accessible only from San Andres you can either take the once daily four hour ferry (approx $55 USD) or jump on the small, 15 seater, 25 minute plane ride by Satena airlines (approx $85 USD) that runs a few times a day. We had no issue booking either at short notice but they often don’t accept foreign credit cards but this is not a problem as they hold the booking and you pay when checking-in.

For us, both ways were an adventure! From San Andres to Providencia we took the ferry. We knew it would be rough seas so dosed up on travel sickness pills before leaving but it was still a pretty hairy ride. You know it’s going to be bad when there is a guy employed with only one task – collect vommit bags and hand out new ones. He was kept very busy throughout the ride with one of the two of us joining in the chorus with most other passengers.

It turns out they decided the sea was too rough and the ferry didn’t sail again for the 4 days we were on the island leaving the only way to depart by the micro plane which fortunately we had already booked a few days earlier.

The Satena flight back from Providencia to San Andres made the ferry seem easy! We arrived early to the tiny airport before it even opened (the usual 90 minutes before a flight doesn’t apply here!) and boarded the baby plane. Due to a bad storm over San Andres they decided to delay the flight so we de-boarded and waited an hour or so then had another go. As soon as we were in the air it got rough! Very rough! I was sitting right behind the pilot (Jen was a few rows back) so enjoyed front row seats to the show. Normally when the plane goes bumpy and everyone screams people laugh afterwards. No one laughed on this one – Jen tells me an elder local lady sitting behind her was crying and praying the whole time! Our little plane fought it’s way through the storm and tried to land in San Andres but an alarm (anti stall?) went off as we tried to land so we pulled up – went back into the storm and flew to the middle of nowhere for a while. Of course, we did eventually land and all was fine but I think everyone on the plane was pleased to get their feet on the ground. I’m sure this is unusual as the storm in San Andres caused massive flooding and I do not think this is a daily event!

Overall, we liked the islands but having been spoiled by beaches in Mexico we probably would have been better using our time (and money) in other parts of Colombia.

Next up: we fly to Medellin to start to explore the real Colombia.