We had always wanted to go to a Caribbean island as part of this trip, but were horrified by the price of the flights to most of the islands from Colombia. However, on reading about the little island archipelago of San Andrés, we realised we might be able to manage our Caribbean island after all.
The San Andrés group is made up of three islands - San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina. While located in the Caribbean some 700km from Colombia and closest to Nicaragua, the archipelago is actually officially part of Colombia. Flights here from inside Colombia are thus domestic flights, and far cheaper than to anywhere else we'd looked at in the Caribbean. After learning that the islands are also renowned for their diving and snorkelling, we decided to fly out from Cartagena and spend a few days there.
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| San Andrés island |
We booked these flights a couple of weeks in advance and although we'd heard the best things about Providencia, we chose to visit only San Andrés, the largest of the three islands. This might sound counter-intuitive, but we had done some research into dive centres and discovered a couple of highly rated ones in San Andrés, while those in Providencia sounded less promising / safe. San Andrés island itself we had heard was far from paradisical, but as we were going mainly for the diving we thought this would be fine. We also didn't much fancy the 4 hour choppy catamaran ride over to Providencia!
Our flight was full of holidaymakers, mostly Colombian but a lot from the rest of South America too. Especially Brazil, for some reason. San Andrés is a tiny island, only about 10km long, and as our taxi drove us through the main town after landing we noticed that it was indeed pretty ugly. A rapid boom in tourism had indelibly marked the place. Concrete 1960s style buildings everywhere; big hotels, casinos, and souvenir and duty free shops lined the streets. We stayed at
a nice place just out of town, about a half hour walk from the centre and away from all the noise.
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| Holidaymakers on one of the least busy San Andrés beaches |
San Andrés and its two sister islands are part of a huge marine protected area of 180,000 km² called the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve. It is recognised by UNESCO as one of its World Network of Bioreserves and is home to one of the largest coral reefs in the world. So a great place to get some more diving experience! We booked through a dive centre called
Karibik, run by a friendly German instructor called Christian. For our first three days on San Andrés, we dived twice each day, visiting several different dive sites. It was a new thing for me to just do some fun dives rather than a course, and I have to say, I panicked a little when I first got into the water again - all the equipment felt completely different and unnatural - but once I got underwater it was fine. Christian was a great instructor to dive with - he always let the group dive for as long as possible and shared his air with whoever got low first to allow the rest of the group to continue longer. Most of the dives were 55 - 60 mins, a lot longer than the dives I did in Taganga.
The diving was pretty nice: highlights included the 'Blue Wall' site, where we saw several reef sharks, and a site on the first day where we saw the biggest eel I have ever seen! Sadly we didn't have an underwater camera to capture this, but the monster's head was at least a foot across. It was like some huge underwater serpent in a Disney movie! I had no idea Moray eels could get so enormous. We also enjoyed the coral, which was varied, quite colourful and seemed in good condition. One of the dive sites had what was like a forest of coral, with structures that looked similar to ferns and huge leaves. Really pretty. Plenty of fish too, though fewer and less varied than we had anticipated to be honest. Unfortunately, this is probably a result of overfishing around here.
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Palm trees lining the coast road. Note the gorgeous colour of the Caribbean Sea
in all of these photos! |
On our third day of diving, rather than returning to the dive shop in town between dives as we had been doing for the other two days, we spent our break at El Acuario, a small cay that is one of the most popular spots for mainstream tourists here. This gave us our first glimpse of how most tourists spend their time here. The tiny island was absolutely crowded with people, both in the sea, lying on the beaches and spilling out of the one café. It's called 'El Acuario' (the aquarium) because some marine life can be seen while snorkelling there, particularly stingrays. However, the way the stingrays were treated was horrendous! A stingray would be attracted there by feeding it, and then would be captured and held still while tourist after tourist took turns to have their photo taken holding it. So completely opposed to anything we've ever been taught about how to treat marine life (NEVER touch anything). It was quite shocking. Sadly, all the tourist agencies here advertise the stingray tours as an 'amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience'. There are similar manta tours. We couldn't quite believe these activities were permitted at all, let alone promoted.
On our last day, we didn't do any diving and moved to stay for one night in the south of the island. This was a whole different world from the unpleasant main town - older, more traditional island architecture, cleaner, quieter beaches and a higher proportion of native (i.e. not Colombian) people living there. We had a nice walk around the south coast, happy to be away from most of the tourists. That evening we had dinner in town, and then got a taxi for the 8km or so back to our accommodation in the south. This turned out to be one of the best things we did. The taxi driver was a native islander, speaking Creole English, and it was fascinating, if sobering, hearing his story and the history of the island and its original inhabitants.
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| One of the quieter, beautiful southern beaches of the island |
The San Andrés archipelago was first settled in the 17th century by English Puritans, and later pirates (again English). The English also brought in African slaves. While it later became a possession of the Spanish Crown and then in 1822 officially part of Colombia, no Spanish settlers ever came there and it retained its English-Caribbean flavour. The Colombian government also initially made no attempt to make anything of their island territory, and the islanders were left alone for years. Things only changed when in 1912 Colombia adopted a new policy of 'Colombianisation', enforcing Spanish language, religion and culture on the native San Andrés people.
An even bigger change came when in 1953 the Colombian government declared San Andrés a free port. This led to a huge influx of Colombians looking for a new life in paradise, and a massive construction boom in the 1960s. To give some idea of the magnitude of the change, in 1952 San Andrés had around 6000 inhabitants. In 1973 it was 23,000. Today, it's 80 or 90,000, and the population is still growing rapidly. Land that used to be agricultural has been replaced by housing, lagoons have been filled in and replaced by the port and airport, self-sufficiency has gone in favour of imports from the mainland, and there is a huge problem with rubbish and pollution of the water supply.
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Don't think this boat will be going anywhere fast! Horses and an old boat, near
one of the native islanders' houses in the south |
The two taxi drivers we spoke to over the next two days both told us that they did not feel in the slightest bit Colombian. Most natives are descendants of the original English settlers and African slaves. They have names like Williams, Robinson, McDonald or Smith, speak Creole English and are devout Protestants. They resent the way that Colombians are coming in, treating the land how they feel, enforcing their own culture and traditions and not respecting those of the local people. One man we spoke to, a Mr Williams, even asked us to please go and speak to our English government and ask them to come and take back their rightful territory! The other taxi driver told us, with real sincerity, that 'God sent the Colombians to San Andrés to punish us for our sins.' Native people feel the Colombian government simply does not care about San Andrés, other than the revenue it brings in from tourism.
To summarise, we had a great time diving round San Andrés, but as part of our visit, we became more aware of the controversial and sad history of the island and the challenges its people are facing.
Unless things change, it doesn't look like the remaining beauty of San Andrés, its outstanding marine environment and unique island culture will be preserved much longer.
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