Had a great day sail from Providencia to San Andres skirting the reef, which is scattered with wrecks into a very busy harbor. San Andres is a holiday destination for Columbians from the mainland and other South American countries. Most people speak Spanish so we are back to speaking Spanglish again.
San Andres definitely caters to the tourist with boat tours to the nearby cayos, diving trips, lots of duty free shops & name brand stores like polo, quicksilver, Hurley etc and a good selection of restaurants to choose from. During the day the harbor is busy with boats and jet skis going in every direction, all of which seem to have two speeds; Fast or ridiculously fast.
We took the kayaks around to the Spray Bight beaches passing lots of big hotels. The nice white sandy beaches weren’t very busy as main tourist season is October to December and Easter so it was perfect.
A stop for Ceviche and Spanish lessons at Danny’s place on the beach was in order.
The island is only 24kms around and so we decided to hire a golf cart with Stu & Steph from S/V Matador, which cost us 90,000 pesos (US$30). We thought it was a bargain given other prices we’d been quoted and I guess you get what you pay for. It was dog slow, would not make it up a hill and not even half way around we ended up with a flat tire. We limped our way to Big Mamas reggae bar for a cold one and some snorkeling off the rocky shore, while the rental guy came to our rescue. There were a few statues placed in the water off Big Mamas so it ended up being a good stop.
Once the tire was changed we continued along the road to an area where we found a small fun park and enjoyed swimming with the fish, diving off the dive board and coming down a water slide. This place was one of the busiest attractions along the road and only cost US$1:25 to enter, bargain.
Reggae bars seemed to be popular as they were scattered around the island on the road sides to temp you and yes we were tempted as it was hot.
We took the local bus up the hill to the Baptist Church, which was built in 1844, to climb the stairs up to the steeple to see the 360 views and amazing water colors out to the reef.
The locals here are all friendly and helpful. Miss Kelly from Nenes Marina was always interested in what we did and offered other suggestions to keep us occupied in the heat! Yes its hot and humid here. She even offered to do my laundry as I couldn’t find a laundromat.
On our last day we managed to get out to the reef to snorkel thru the reef to the outside and saw some good coral and lots of fish life. Hope there’s more of that where we are going.
Has been a great stop with good reasonably priced restaurants and good supermarkets to provision for the next few months. Had enough of people and shops and as the winds are pretty much non existent have decided to stop at Albuquerque Cay 30nm southwest of here for some snorkeling and fishing before continuing south to the San Blas Islands in Panama.