San Andres and Providencia

After several years, here I am again in the Caribbean, and this time the choice falls on two splendid Colombian islands I'd been eyeing for a while: San Andres and Old Providence (Providencia). The first larger and livelier, the second smaller and wilder, both surrounded by a sea in a thousand shades of colour and by splendid seabeds.

Trip, as always, organised entirely by me. Duration 2 weeks. Total trip cost about € 1,650.00 all inclusive (about € 1000.00 spent in Italy at the CTS for the flight and 2009 membership + € 645.00 withdrawn or exchanged on the spot for all the other expenses such as hotel, internal flight, dinners, bus, taxi and assorted odds and ends).

Intercontinental flight made with Airfrance (Bologna-Paris-Bogotá-San Andres), in code share for the last leg with AeroRepublica. Cost about € 970.00 booked at the CTS. Internal flight San Andres-Providencia made with the airline Satena and booked on the spot through our hotel, or rather its owner, the fantastic Arthur, and his assistant. Cost about € 107.00

Hotel in San Andres: Noblehouse Hotel (booked from Italy for the first 3 nights by writing an e-mail directly to Arthur - you'll find the address on his website - who proved immediately very helpful and friendly and didn't even want a deposit. More than excellent price: 150,000 pesos for the triple and 120,000 for the double per night with breakfast, confirmed also for the rest of the nights spent in San Andres given the exceptional value for money, the nice atmosphere, the very spacious rooms, the kindness of the staff and the convenient location near the beach and the best restaurants in the area. The hotel is in fact located in the town called El Centro and more precisely on the street parallel to the pedestrian seafront, Avenida Colon, along which the buses connecting the town with the rest of the island pass.

Around it there are shops of every kind, supermarkets, restaurants, ice-cream parlours, bakeries, banks and everything one might need. Hotel in Providencia: Old Providence Hotel for the first night, booked through the Noblehouse just to have a base, located in the town of Santa Isabel near the bridge of lovers that connects the island of Providencia with the little island of Santa Catalina. The hotel is a bit gloomy but clean. Breakfast was served to us in the little local restaurant opposite, across the street, definitely folkloric and at first sight not very recommendable, but where I nonetheless ate the best breakfast of the whole holiday!!! For the other 4 nights: Hotel Relax (affiliated with the Decameron chain) located at Bahia Aguadulce, a small, very colourful hotel, very nice and spotlessly clean, with a little pool too.

Here we took 2 double rooms and one single and managed to negotiate a truly excellent price from the owner: 50,000 pesos per person per night with breakfast. As for the exchange rate, it's very volatile. As soon as we arrived at Bogotá airport I changed €200 and the rate was €1 = 2550 pesos (no commission), then in San Andres I changed at an exchange office at 2800, and I also withdrew with my debit card twice for a total of 600,000 pesos, discovering when I got back to Italy that they'd given me a rate of over 3200 pesos per euro. So I strongly advise everyone to withdraw with a debit card and not to change cash or use a credit card (high commissions).

I do recommend however carrying at least 2 different debit cards (if you have them), because out of 5 of us 2 weren't able to withdraw due to problems with their cards, which turned out to be blocked; I, on the other hand, with my Banco Posta card had no problems.