San Andres Island Escape
San Andres, Colombia
I didn’t know San Andres was so Caribbean.
I’ve actually never visited any British or American Caribbean islands. The only Caribbean countries I have visited are Spanish-Speaking, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc. With that being said during my trip to Cartagena, Colombia my friends and I decided to take a quick 2-day detour to Colombia’s San Andres island. I expected the island to be just like the mainland of Colombia. Shockingly it was not.
We stayed at Sea Avenue Hotel. It was a 2-minute walk from the beach with a beautiful view from the rooftop where we had free breakfast each morning. It did feel like we were in the center of everything considering we were able to walk to many restaurants. Conveniently enough there was a great grocery store 2 minutes away also. This came in handy for our private boat tour. We’ll talk about that later.
This was the interesting part. A lot of the locals had Caribbean accents and respectfully corrected us when we spoke to them in Spanish. One friendly beach waiter took the time to explain to us that a lot of the older natives of the island speak very little Spanish. They may have learned it in school as children but they are native English speakers. They also speak creole. I asked, “Haitian Creole?” He responded, “We speak our own creole. We don’t even understand Haitian Creole.” A lot of them don’t even identify as Colombian as the island was sort of “acquired” by Colombia. There was already a rich Caribbean culture there. The entire island even played reggae music. Intriguing, right?
Now, about that private boat tour, we rented a small boat for the day and hopped from island to island. Our captain was great and he was assisted by his 16-year-old grandson who was our designated bartender and snack provider. They were a great team. We stopped at a few islands including Johnny Cay and an island they referred to as “the aquarium.” Honestly the whole island should have been referred to as “the aquarium” because the warm crystal clear blue water allowed us to see some of the most beautiful fish I’ve ever seen.
On one of the island stops we enjoyed fried fish, rice and habichuelas along with fried plantains. The rice had a coconut flavor that went perfectly with my piña colada. The sun was shining down on us accompanied by a refreshing breeze, and Bob Marley songs were blasting from the outdoor reataurant’s speakers.
All I have to say is, if you plan to visit Colombia, try to visit San Andres. Conveniently a 90-minute flight from Cartagena, it was like we visited 2 different countries for the price of 1. One love!
