You Haven’t Seen the Colombian Coast Without Time in Providencia – Cond Nast Traveler

She had come as a child to this house on the island. She remembered the reflection of the waves, their patterns shimmering on the walls of her bedroom in the early mornings. She remembered the winds rattling the string of seashells that hung on the balcony where she would lie in the hammock, daydreaming. She remembered the frigate birds, sailing in cloudless skies, and the fishermen coming each morning with their catch, holding them up for her aunt's inspection. I could not bear to lose this house, she said. It was so much a part of my childhood.

The house overhangs the sea. With the water lapping beneath the decks, it feels like being on board a ship, sailing away. Stone steps lead straight down. There is the smell of ginger and mango and coconut and brine. The Caribbean touches the horizon with its rainbow of seven blues, while the breezes fill the house, still stirring the shells that were gathered by children a generation ago. The house is called Monasterio del Viento, the Monastery of the Wind, and I was staying in a room looking out to the ocean.

In the morning, a man named Malcolm came, his boat turning through silver waves. This is the best day of our lives, he called to us. Let's go, man. The sea, she is calling. The house's owner, Cristina Garca de la Concha, appeared at the top of the steps. He will take you snorkeling at Crab Cay, she said. And you can grill your fish on Morgan's Head beach. It is named after the pirate. Malcolm knows all the stories. But only half of them are true.

The island is called Providencia, in the care of God. They say it is the island that disappeared. It's not like any place I have ever been.

Colombia can feel like all South America in a single country. There are Andean peaks and Amazonian jungles, gaucho prairies and colonial towns, indigenous tribespeople and a wild Pacific coast. But it is also on the Caribbean, with an extensive shoreline facing north toward Jamaica and Cuba, running almost 1,000 miles from the Darin Gap and Panama in the west to the border with Venezuela in the east. The mistress of this remarkable coast is Cartagena, the most beautiful Spanish colonial city in the Americas.

Dishes at Titi Gamba Cevichera, in Palomino, northeast of Cartagena

Oliver Pilcher

Oliver Pilcher

To visit Cartagena is to begin a love affair. I know people who came for a week and stayed 10 years. I know a man who only wanted a vacation and ended up with a wife, a troupe of children, a back-street bar, and a half-finished novel in a drawer. Cartagena is all Mrquezian charm, with old mansions, courtyards of divans and potted palms, churches moored like ships, shuttered rooms where, in the still hours of the siesta, an erotic frisson crackles like electricity and women call to one another from balconies and horses' hooves clip-clop on the cobblestones below the window. But it was time for me to break the bonds of the city. The Caribbean coast was beckoning. I wanted to escape Cartagena's narrow streets for the wide ocean, for the islands and beaches. It was time to run away to the cerulean sea.

My first stop on this new voyage would be the Islas del Rosario, right in Cartagena's backyard, a scattered archipelago of about 30 islands beyond Isla de Bar and an hour's boat ride away. It has long been a playground for wealthy Colombians: Yachts come and go between the islands, negotiating a labyrinth of secluded bays and inlets that showcase some of the country's smartest waterfront properties.

To get there, we sailed down the length of the city's sheltered harbor, the Baha de Cartagena, where the galleons of the Spanish Main had dropped anchor. At one of the entrances to the bay lies the 17th-century fortress of San Fernando. Here I stepped ashore onto the quay where English pirates had once arrived in shackles and where Tony, a local fisherman limping like Long John Silver, waited to show me round. He was a one-man theatrical experience, bringing the old fortress to vivid life. In the empty courtyard, he marched and wheeled and saluted. In the barracks he dozed on a stone bunk before waking suddenly and hurrying to the watchtower to scan the horizons for pirates. Unlocking the dungeons, he led several phantom prisoners up to the ramparts and promptly threw them into the moat where 150 sharks, so he claimed, had once waited to devour them. Finally, in the guards' room, he showed me how to use the latrine and fire at the enemy at the same time. It's an acrobatic trick, but you never know when it could come in handy.

Later we dropped anchor to snorkel among trumpet fish and blue-striped grunts on one of the Caribbean's finest reefsColombia declared these waters a national natural park in 1988. Deep in the mangroves, I stopped for lunch at Las Islas hotel, where boardwalks wind through the trees, connecting stylish bungalows of stone, pine, and thatch. Like so much of the archipelago, it felt like a private members' club.

On a long beach on the island of Tierra Bomba, I disembarked at Blue Apple Beach House, an elegant hotel conjured out of driftwood, and a stylist's daydream. With its pools and umbrellas and informal, youthful vibe, it has an Ibiza feel, as if a party is about to kick off. But the evening petered out into a splendid stillness. Late at night I swam alone in the dark ocean. Cartagena might have been half an hour away, but I felt a long way from anywhere. The bonds of the city were loosening.

A four-hour drive east of Cartagena lies Colombia's most dramatic slice of Caribbean coast, where the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains sweep down to the sea in a tumble of greenery and swollen rivers. Here the jungle-covered slopes are home to jaguars and tapirs, and some indigenous tribes still live a Stone Age existence. There's a vine-strangled Lost Cityyou can trek to it in three daysthat was once an important center of the Tayrona people.

At the foot of these mountains I spent a Huckleberry Finn day messing about in boats on the Don Diego River in the dense ecosystem of the coastal Tayrona National Natural Park. I kayaked under the gaze of red howler monkeys and truant boys floating in inner tubes. Colombia is home to 20 percent of all the world's bird species, and on this lazy afternoon most of them seemed to have turned up to dance among the branches. Later I followed sandy paths through the jungle to the most unexpected restaurant. On a balcony overlooking a clearing where hornbills clattered between trees, Samy's three-table establishment served up the home cooking of this coastcoconut rice and prawns the size of drumsticks, washed down with beer cooled in a mountain streamwhile Samy herself regaled me with hilarious stories about wayward husbands.

On my way to Providencia and Cristina's house by the sea, I was watching the shadow of our small plane passing over the turquoise patterns of the water. The island lies about 500 miles off the coast, closer to Nicaragua than to Cartagena, and like all the best places, it's tricky to get to. Flying first from Cartagena to San Andrs, the larger of the two islands in this archipelago, I board an 18-seater propeller plane of uncertain vintage. It is also a time journey. While San Andrs has long been overtaken by modern package holidays from the mainland, Providencia feels more like the Caribbean did 70 years ago.

The first settlers arrived here from England in 1631 on the Seaflower, a sister ship to the Mayflower. Centuries later, many islanders still think of Providencia as an outpost of the British Empire and speak EnglishSpanish is the second languagein spite of the fact that the British government gave the land to Spain in 1783. It was known as the island that disappeared, vanishing from colonial maps. When it became part of the new nation of Colombia, it sent the only native-English-speaking member of parliament to Bogot.

Those settlers came with conflicting motives. On the one hand they dreamed of creating a new utopia of God-fearing people. On the other, they hoped to plunder the galleons setting off for Spain from Cartagena and Portobelo, Panama. In no time, piracy won out over prayer. The placeindulgent, gorgeous, swept by tropical windswasn't helping. The buttoned-up settlers soon gave up on being buttoned up. Utopia it might have been; God-fearing it could never be. By the time the pirate Henry Morgan set foot on the island some decades later, it had already acquired a reputation as a refuge for seafaring riffraff for whom even Jamaica was too dull and uptight.

Las Islas hotel, Islas del Rosario

Oliver Pilcher

Oliver Pilcher

Today, Providencia remains an undiscovered corner whose 5,000 largely Afro-Caribbean inhabitants are the descendants of pirates, slaves, and settlers. Among themselves the islanders lapse into Creole. Keen to preserve their way of life and distinctive character, and to avoid being swamped by people from the continent, as they call Colombia, they blocked plans, for now, for a new airport that would allow direct flights from Cartagena and Barranquilla. With hardly any carsmost people get around by scooter or golf cartthe island remains as sleepy as it has always been.

There is a single road, and it circles the coast. I set off to explore a succession of ravishing beachesAlmond Bay, Fresh Water Bay, South West Bay, Manzanillo Beach, and a dozen more with names I never learned. On some, little shacks have taken root, serving cold beer and grilled fish, places such as Roland's, with gangly palm trees and hammocks slung between the trunks. In the evenings this is the place to be, with a reggae soundtrack and ready supply of coco locospia coladas served in coconuts. But on many beaches there's nothing at all except the hot sun and the curling waves.

Days blurred into one another. I watched the horse races on South West Bay, where the riders galloped bareback through the surf. I went to townSanta Isabelthree streets of double-story buildings with a caf serving pies and cakes that could have come from England. In the cooling evenings, I headed to baseball games, joining the raucous crowds in the bleachers as they cheered the teams playing against their neighbors and kinsfolk. In the old days, they had to turn off all the lights on the island in order to have enough power to illuminate the field. On Sunday I went to church where dour puritanical instincts have long since vanished among uplifting music and glamorous outfits.

A colonial building in Cartagena

Oliver Pilcher

Isla Grande, part of Islas del Rosario

Oliver Pilcher

Manzanillo Beach, Providencia

Oliver Pilcher

Bird-inspired artwork, Providencia

Oliver Pilcher

Roland, of Rolands reggae bar on Manzanillo Beach

Oliver Pilcher

A colonial house in Cartagena

Oliver Pilcher

A bedroom at Blue Apple Beach House

Oliver Pilcher

Las Islas hotel, Islas del Rosario

Oliver Pilcher

I spent a day on the water, snorkeling on what is thought to be the world's third longest and one of the best preserved coral reefs, now part of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve. We went fishing and lunched on our catch at Morgan's Head beach on Santa Catalina, where I climbed to the old pirate's hideaway, the ruins of Fort Warwick. Malcolm had the inside scoop on how the island disappeared from the British Empire. The Queen Victoria, he said, she fell in love with the president of Colombia. And she gave us away as a present to her new boyfriend.

At one point I went to meet musician and island historian Elkin Robinson, who lives at Lazy Hill, a seaside settlement on the southwest shore. He cheerily welcomed me to the laziest place on the laziest island in the laziest part of the world. He played a set on a terrace above the sea while neighborhood children ran about our feet. His band consisted of guitar, washtub bass, and horse's skullthe percussion was played with a stick, running up and down the teeth. Must be the skull of the mare, said the horse-skull player. Sweeter sound. The rhythms were thrilling. You could hear Africa in this music, as well as reggae, flamenco, and calypso, with a dash of melancholic country and western.

Another time I sat with Perla, Robinson's great-aunt, in her kitchen as she talked about the old days when everyone came and went on boats that plied between Jamaica, the Caymans, and the Creole coasts of Nicaragua and Panama. Her grandfather had been a ship's captain from the Caymans. Sure that man had wives and children all over the Caribbean, she chuckled.

Back at Monasterio del Viento, I chatted to Cristina, who remembered the place from her childhood. Though she grew up in Bogot, she used to come to Providencia on holidays and stay in this house, which belonged to her uncle. When he wanted to sell the property in 2015, she suddenly decided that she had to keep it. And so she and her boyfriend, the chef Rodrigo Perry, left for remote Providencia to turn Monasterio del Viento into a small, intimate hotel. I wanted to preserve what I had loved so much as a child, she said. I could not bear to lose the house, or to leave this idyllic island.

I doubt that anyone leaves without a feeling of loss. Untethered from Colombia, adrift in the Caribbean, a place that is neither here nor there, the island that has disappeared could be anyone's half-remembered childhood dream, composed of innocence and seascapes and the sound of the wind rattling strings of shells.

Hotel Las Islas

Opened in mid-2018, this pretty beach hotel is a real game changer. Although it was built among Bar's mangrove forests, no trees were felled in its construction. Guests can cycle around the grounds on winding boardwalks that link the 55 bungalows, and take in 360-degree views from the clubhouse rising above the mangrove canopy. The private terraces have plunge pools or hot tubs; snorkeling and helicopter tours are available, plus a first-class spa. Bungalows from $555.

Blue Apple Beach House

This informal Tierra Bomba Island hotel, made up of thatched cabanas with brightly patterned fabrics, attracts a fresh influx of clued-in day-trippers from Cartagena, settling on the canopied Bali beds. Kayaks and paddleboards keep everyone entertained, massage therapists ease tired limbs, lunch is a pescatarian's delight, and a chill-out playlist draws from soul, jazz, and Latin. In the evenings, when the visitors go home, lanterns illuminate paths to the sea for night swimming. Doubles from $170.

Villa Playa Tayrona

With just six rooms, discreet Villa Playa appears more like an elegant private house than a hotel. In one direction are the cloud-bumping peaks of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the other the roaring surf. But it's the palm-tree groves and still lagoon belowwhere egrets stalk their own reflectionsthat lend the place its dreamy atmosphere. Three local women prepare seafood feasts that are served on the pool patios, and the pristine beach is five minutes away. Although the spectacular waves draw a small band of surfers, most days you'll find yourself alone with the sea spray. Doubles from $210.

Kasamar

This villa is set above the forest, with views of both mountain and sea, and is designed to give a whole new meaning to the term open plan. Kitchens and dining and living areas all flow into one another; most of the house receives the sea breeze; and instead of windows, entire walls fold open like shutters. The terrace with huge sofas is made for a cool drink and a good book. From $2,040 for two (inquire for groups; sleeps 14), full board.

A bedroom at Monasterio del Viento

Oliver Pilcher

Conch fritters at Monasterio del Viento

Oliver Pilcher

Monasterio del Viento

Right on the ocean's edge, with white-washed walls and forget-me-not-blue accents, this place still feels like a memorabilia-filled home. A jetty is laid with cushions for candlelit dinners, and chef Rodrigo Perry, who has worked at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, does some mean coconut prawns. From $400 for a room or about $1,000 for the house (sleeps four).

Deep Blue

A neighbor of Monasterio del Viento, Providencia's only properly sophisticated hotel is up the steep hill from its seaside restaurant, the best place to eat on the island. The villas overlooking Crab Cay are like light-flooded ship's staterooms, and there are plunge pools on the terraces from which to watch the moon rise. Staff are a hoot and will teach you a bit of Creole. Doubles from $195.

Cazenove+Loyd creates trips to Colombia that can include four nights at Monasterio del Viento on Providencia, three nights at Casa San Agustn in Cartagena, two nights at Las Islas on Bar, and three nights at Villa Playa Tayrona from $6,190 per person, B&B, including transfers but excluding international flights.

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You Haven't Seen the Colombian Coast Without Time in Providencia - Cond Nast Traveler