Maroons, galleons and coral: Hotel Las Islas in Barú and diving the Rosario Islands

The boat leaves the bay behind and the water changes colour: grey at first, then green, and finally a turquoise so clear you can see the bottom. It smells of salt and fuel, the sun hits you full in the face and, in the distance, the mangroves appear, their roots standing in the water as if the island were walking. Cartagena has two faces: the walled city and the sea around it. The best way to know both is to split the trip: a few days on the islands and a few nights in the Old City.

A man-made island and a sea full of treasure

Barú wasn't always an island. It was a peninsula until the Spanish dug the Canal del Dique in the 17th century, linking the Magdalena River to Cartagena Bay so that the riches of the New Kingdom of Granada could travel by water straight to the port. The canal cut Barú off from the mainland, and so it stayed, isolated, until a bridge near Pasacaballos reconnected it by road in 2014.

Those mangroves gave refuge to the cimarrones, Africans fleeing slavery. Barú villages such as Ararca and Santa Ana began more than three hundred years ago as maroon settlements, and after abolition their people bought land in common, one of the first cases of collective land ownership by an Afro-descendant community in Colombia. It's the same story of freedom told inland at San Basilio de Palenque, the town founded by Benkos Biohó after his escape in 1599.

And off these shores lies the most famous treasure in the Caribbean. On 8 June 1708, during the Battle of Barú, an English cannon shot sank the Spanish galleon San José near the Rosario Islands, with a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds that never reached Spain. Its discovery was announced in 2015, and in 2025 the Colombian state recovered the first objects from the wreck.

Barú wasn't always an island: it was people who cut it off from the mainland.

I · The island

Among the mangroves

Hotel Las Islas

In Barú, at the end of the Ciénaga de Cholón and about 45 minutes by speedboat from Cartagena, Hotel Las Islas is one of the best-known luxury hotels in the area. It sits among mangroves next to the Corales del Rosario y San Bernardo National Natural Park, so the sea is the main event: kayaking, canoeing, mangrove tours and trips to nearby islets.

Don't miss a kayak trip through the mangroves.

II · Under the water

Diving the Rosario Islands

The national park protects coral reefs that are among the most visited in the Colombian Caribbean. Underwater you'll find hard coral, sponges and colourful fish such as surgeonfish, parrotfish and angelfish, plus turtles, octopus and lobster. Well-known dive sites include the Isla Pavitos wall, Isla Gloria and the San Martín de Pajarales wreck.

The park was created in 1977 as Los Corales del Rosario, and in 1996 its boundaries and its name grew to take in the San Bernardo archipelago. Diving here has a literary edge: in Love in the Time of Cholera, Florentino Ariza, who couldn't swim, hires a boy called Euclides to dive for the sunken galleon and bring up its treasure, which he dreams of laying at Fermina Daza's feet.

• Beginners: discovery dives and snorkelling in shallow water, no certification needed.
• Certified divers: dives range from a few metres to several tens of metres depending on the site; visibility changes with the weather and season.
• Who to go with: always book with a certified dive centre, which will match dives to your level. If you're staying at Las Islas, ask the hotel about trips.
• Look after the reef: don't touch the coral, use biodegradable sunscreen and follow park rules.

III · The return

How to plan the trip

An order that works: land in Cartagena and spend a night or two in the walled city; head to Barú for sea and diving days; then return to the Old City for your last night. That way the trip ends with a long dinner and, at the weekend, the club until 3 am. Always leave a day without diving before you fly.

Epilogue

The city from the sea

The ride back has its own magic. When the boat returns to Cartagena late in the afternoon, the city appears as sailors have seen it for centuries: first the open sea and then, among the modern towers, the domes and walls of the old city, lighting up for the night.