San Andres, Colombia (2016)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

012-34.500 N
081-41.876 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

We've just completed a wonderful week-long stay in San Andres, which is a Colombian island about 100 miles off the coast of Nicaragua & 215 miles NNW from Colon, Panama. The island itself is about 7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide and is ringed by reefs on it's windward side. From what we've been told, it's *the* vacation destination for people in Colombia and flights arrive on a constant basis. One of the interesting things is that because there are so many Colombian tourists, and very few from other countries, that very little English is spoken here.

Almost all of the activity is concentrated on the N end of the island, where you find a densely packed urban area with more stores, restaurants and hotels than you can imagine. They claim that the entire island is a duty-free zone, but I'm not exactly sure how that's defined. I do know that they don't charge tax on anything. One of the really nice aspects of the island is that eating out is incredibly cheap. For example, I could get a filet mignon for less than $10 at the yacht club where we had privileges. What's kind of funny is that everything is priced in Colombian pesos and the current exchange rate is 3280 pesos/USD, so you're constantly pulling out 50,000 peso ($16 USD) notes.

We sailed from the Albuquerque cays and were stunned at how beautiful the water was as we entered the harbor. The number of shades of blue is amazing. The east side of the island is fringed by a reef and has beautiful white sand beaches. As a result the incredibly clear blue Caribbean water just sparkles over the white bottom. It's truly a sight to behold.

Navigating the streets can be a bit of a challenge as most of them don't have street signs and the traffic can be a bit daunting. Almost everyone uses motor-scooters/cycles to commute and the streets are filled with them zooming around. Pedestrians have no rights, even in cross walks, so crossing the street often feels like running with the bulls!

Given San Andres's distance from the mainland, the water here is incredibly clear. As a result the visibility when one goes diving is amazing. I went on 4 dives and on some of the deeper ones, there was easily 100-200' visibility, which is practically unheard of. The biggest issue is that I saw very few large fish. Lots of small ones, but almost no larger fish. The coral and the sponges were beautiful, but where were the big fish?

My first set of dives were with a company who did shore dives. The take you via truck to a dive site on the west side of the island where you have to carry your gear across the old coral ledge which forms the island and then do a giant stride with all of your gear on to get into the water. Getting out can be even more problematic & needless to say, I didn't bring my cameras. It seemed that the majority of the people on this dive had very little experience and that the primary concern of the dive shop was shooting photos/video of the people who had paid for the service. Not recommended. My next dives were boat dives with Blue Life and the average experience level was much higher and the dives were much deeper.

One day we rented a large 4 wheel ATV and drove around the island. The urbanization falls away quickly as one heads towards the S end of the island and by the time that you get to the S end, it's very desolate. From what I understand, San Andres used to a Jamaican holding, but then the Colombians took it over. While the N end is highly Colombian, the island becomes more and more Jamaican as you head S. The beaches on the E side of the island are beautiful with white sand, however on the W side, it's coral ledge, but the water is deeper and beautiful.

After a week+ of a very relaxing stay, we departed for Providencia, but that's a story for another day.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

The main channel is extremely well marked and lit and it would be very easy to enter at night. We anchored in 10' just to the S of the fishing trawler fleet (not that we saw any of them fishing). This is just off of Nene's marina, which is the building with the green roof. We found that this location had much less small boat traffic compared to being further forward.

Be sure to anchor in a bright sand spot otherwise your may pull up a lot of sea grass and/or drag. We anchored right near some sunken refrigerators and luckily didn't get fouled, so be careful about where you drop the anchor.

On the night before we left for Providencia we tried to anchor off of Hayne's Cay, which is near the channel entrance, but too much swell worked its way in to make it tenable.

Nene's marina charges $2/day or $12/week to use their dinghy dock. They also provide Internet access for $2/day per device. You can get diesel and gas at their small fuel dock.

We chose to obtain a temporary membership with Club Nautico for 25,000 pesos/day ($8 USD which we split with Best Day Ever), which allowed us to use the dock, Internet, restaurant and pool. Every day we'd escape the heat of the afternoon at around 3 PM, head to the pool, use the Internet and have a drink at 5 PM. Very worthwhile as Club Nautico is also much more centrally located to the shopping and restaurants. The restaurant at Club Nautico had OK food and is very reasonably priced.

We used Julian Watson as an agent to clear in/out & we can't say enough positive things about him. He was incredibly responsive, helping us with all kinds of things, including driving me around on his scooter trying to find a part for my dive compressor. He only charged $50, but I gave him an additional 50M pesos to thank him for all of the help that he provided. He can be reached on VHF 16 as "Julian" or via e-mail at julian.jwm@gmail.com .

The best grocery store that we found was the Super Todo, which had a very good selection. To get there, turn right out of Nene's, turn left at the 1st light and then turn right at the first street. Walk about 3 blocks and the Super Todo will be on your right. If you continue walking past Super Todo you'll reach Mini-Rays supermarket which has a large selection of US/gourmet products. Just before you reach Mini-Rays you'll see Ferriteria Orniv (???) which has an incredible amount of items hidden among their rooms and shelving.

The only real game in town for wireless phone/Internet is Movistar. For some reason Sue's Samsung phone which worked fine with Movistar in Panama couldn't be registered in Colombia, so we used my iPhone. You can purchase a SIM for $5000 pesos and get 700 MB for 1 week for $13900 pesos (less than $4 USD). To get a SIM, go to either Movistar store off of Captain Morgan's (canon) square.

Our favorite restaurant was La Regatta, which is just to the N of Club Nautico. Much more expensive than most local dining, but excellent food and service.

If you rent an ATV, only rent it for 1/2 a day as you can easily get around the island in 4 hours and have lunch.

Note that it doesn't pay to visit the botanical gardens in the dry season unless you like looking at green leaves and no flowers. It's worth paying the extra pesos to go up into the steeple of the First Baptist church as it's the highest point around and the view is great.

Log ID: 2271