The sea of seven colours
A 26 km² coral island 750 km off the Colombian coast and only 190 km from Nicaragua, where the first language is Creole English, the food is Caribbean, and the water genuinely does separate into distinct bands of turquoise, jade and navy. It sits inside the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, above the third-largest barrier reef on earth.
Read this first
The useful version, including the parts that do not sell trips. If something here puts you off a plan, that is the page working.
Climate. Hot and humid, 26–31 °C year-round. Driest January–April; wettest October–November.
Every visitor buys a Tarjeta de Turismo at the departure airport before boarding — Colombians included. Keep it; you need it to leave. Budget roughly US$30 and confirm the current price when you book.
The islands have their own Afro-Caribbean Raizal people, language and Baptist church tradition, distinct from mainland Colombia. Residency is legally restricted to protect it. Learn the difference — it is the most interesting thing about the place.
The island has basic hospital services. Anything serious means an air ambulance to the mainland roughly two hours away. Make sure your insurance covers medical evacuation, and tell us about any significant condition before you book.
Leave at least 18 hours between your last dive and your flight — 24 is safer for repeat or multi-day diving. We schedule dive days so this never becomes a problem, but it constrains your last day.
Reef-safe sunscreen only, no touching or standing on coral, no shell collecting. Some sites charge a marine-park fee. The reef is why you came.
22 experiences
Every one runs with a local guide. Filter, or tell us what you like and we will build the days around it.
Water
A coral islet of coconut palms and blinding white sand fifteen minutes offshore, ringed by water in three separate shades of turquoise. It is the postcard, it is busy, and it is still worth it.
From
$20–$50
per person
Water
A natural aquarium in a shallow lagoon where you can literally walk from one cay to the other through waist-deep water, with fish and rays around your legs the whole way.
From
$14–$45
per person
Water
A full day working round the island by boat — the cays, the mangroves, a stingray stop and two snorkel sites — with lunch aboard and a skipper who picks the stops by the day’s conditions rather than a fixed list.
From
$30–$80
per person
Water
Two natural swimming spots cut into the island’s western volcanic shelf, where the reef comes right to the rocks and the fish are used to being fed bread by everybody who turns up.
Entry fee
$2–$15
paid on the door
Nature
Paddle a transparent kayak through tunnels of red mangrove root where the island’s reef fish spawn. Silent, shaded, and the single most underrated thing on San Andrés.
From
$30–$78
per person
Adventure
San Andrés is thirty kilometres around, and the classic way to see it is a rented golf cart and a full day of stopping wherever looks good. We give you a route, the stops that matter, and a phone number.
From
$45–$190
per person
Diving
Your first ever breath underwater, on the third-largest barrier reef in the world. Pool skills first, then one supervised open-water dive to around twelve metres with an instructor beside you throughout.
From
$45–$95
per person
Diving
The Pared Azul drops from around fifteen metres into open blue with no bottom in sight. Two tanks on the wall, with eagle rays, turtles and barracuda in the current and a coral face going down forever.
From
$55–$110
per person
Diving
A sunken vessel now completely colonised by coral and sponge, sitting on white sand at recreational depth, with a shallow coral garden alongside for the second tank.
From
$55–$110
per person
Diving
The reef changes completely after dark — octopus out hunting, lobsters walking in the open, coral polyps fully extended, and bioluminescence in your hand if you cover your torch.
From
$65–$120
per person
Diving
Qualify as a diver, for life, on one of the best reefs in the Caribbean. Theory, confined-water skills and four open-water dives across three days, ending with a certification recognised worldwide.
From
$400–$560
per person
Adventure
Steady Caribbean trade winds over a flat shallow lagoon — close to ideal learning conditions. Lessons from complete beginner, or just a board and kite if you already know what you are doing.
From
$70–$160
per person
Water
Out through the reef pass under sail as the light goes, with the island turning gold behind you and the water running through every colour it has. Two hours, drinks aboard, and no engine noise.
From
$30–$85
per person
Food & Drink
Rondón is fish, conch, breadfruit, cassava, plantain and dumplings slow-cooked in coconut milk for hours, and it is the heart of Raizal cooking. You cook it with an island family and hear how the archipelago sees itself.
From
$35–$95
per person
Culture
The hill village at the island’s centre, where the Raizal community has its roots and where the First Baptist Church — built in 1847 from Alabama pine — still holds services in Creole with singing you can hear from the road.
Entry fee
$3–$25
paid on the door
Nightlife
The archipelago is culturally Caribbean rather than Colombian, and its music is reggae, calypso, soca and mento rather than salsa or vallenato. A night out in the places islanders actually go.
From
$25–$80
per person
Water
Providencia is what San Andrés was fifty years ago — 5,000 people, no high-rises, and the best water in the archipelago. A boat day around the island and its sister Santa Catalina.
From
$40–$110
per person
Adventure
A hike up through dry tropical forest to the highest point of Providencia at 360 metres, where the whole barrier reef becomes visible at once as a bright ring of colour around the island.
From
$25–$80
per person
Adventure
Out past the reef into blue water for wahoo, mahi-mahi, tuna and barracuda, with a skipper who has fished these banks his whole life. Catch and release, or the boat cooks it for you.
From
$90–$200
per group, quoted on enquiry
Water
See the barrier reef without getting wet, from a hull with windows below the waterline. The right answer for anyone who cannot snorkel, travels with small children, or simply does not want to swim.
From
$30–$45
per person
Nature
The island’s two classic roadside stops — a natural blowhole at the southern tip that fires seawater twenty metres up when the swell is right, and a sea cave where Henry Morgan is supposed to have stashed his loot.
Entry fee
$3–$20
paid on the door
Water
The long eastern beach where islanders actually swim, with a shipwreck offshore and a sandbar you can wade out to in chest-deep water. Quieter, better and far less built up than the town beaches.
Entry fee
Free entry
paid on the door
Private & VIP
4 days · max 8 people
Four days on the reef with your own boat and skipper rather than a scheduled cay-hopping ferry. Two dive days, a mangrove morning, and the parts of the island that the day-trip circuit never reaches.
