How to split five days in Cartagena
Two days in the city, three on the island. That's the split we give almost everyone who writes to us with five days and no plan.
The reason is simple. Cartagena's old town is a walking city, and walking cities are tiring in this heat, so you want it while your legs are fresh and your tolerance for cobbles is high. By day three most people have had enough of pavement and want water. We're twenty minutes out by boat, so the switch costs you almost nothing: no half day lost to a road transfer the way there would be going down the coast.
If your flight lands late, count that as a half day and shift everything by one. None of this is a schedule. It's an order.
Day 1: the Walled City, early and late
Spend day one inside the walls, and do it in two shifts rather than one long march. The old town is the historic centre ringed by the stone sea wall, small enough to cross on foot in well under half an hour. The catch is the middle of the day, when the sun sits flat on the plazas and everyone sensible goes indoors. Walk from about seven until eleven, disappear for lunch and a cold shower, then come back around five when the light turns and the wall fills up with people watching it go down.
If you'd rather not wander blind, we run a walking tour of the old city for guests, and you can take it as a Food and Culture route or an Art and Shopping one depending on what you're actually here for. Our activities page has the duration, the price and whether it needs booking ahead.
Day 2: Getsemani, then the fort
Give day two to Getsemani and Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, in that order, because one is best after dark and the other is punishing at noon.
Getsemani is the neighbourhood immediately outside the old town wall, and it's where we send people who found the centre too polished. It's lower, louder, painted on most surfaces, and it wakes up in the evening rather than at breakfast. We've written out the whole walk we hand guests before they get on the boat, so we won't repeat it here.
Castillo San Felipe de Barajas is the Spanish fort on the hill east of the centre, the largest thing the Spanish built on this coast and the reason the city held out as long as it did. Go early in the morning. It's an uphill approach over stone with very little between you and the sun.
Day 3: the boat over, and then nothing
Day three is the beach day, and it should have no plan beyond getting on the boat.
The crossing takes about twenty minutes from the city. You land at Playa Mamon, the beach directly outside our main gate, and from there the decisions get small: shade or sun, pool or sea. Our beach club is open daily from 10:30 to 18:00 and reservations are recommended, so message us before you come rather than after. A beach cabana is $30 and sits closer to the water and a little quieter. A VIP daybed is $50 and sits right in front of the pool, which is where you want to be on a Saturday, when there's a DJ from one until five. Sundays go the other way: quiet, and loud only with cicadas.
Bring your own towel. Our website and confirmation email have said contradictory things about this and we're fixing it, but the policy is that you bring one.
Lunch is the actual reason a lot of people come. The kitchen is Michelin Guide listed under Pedro Mosqueda, who cooked under Jean-Georges, April Bloomfield and Galen Zamara before coming back to do farm-to-table sourcing on islands that nobody associates with it. Ceviche, cold rose, a lunch that drifts. For groups of ten or more we run a set menu at $45 per person, which is worth arranging in advance.
Day 4: pick one thing and do it properly
Day four is for one real activity, not three half ones. The three we'd choose between:
Diving. We're a PADI Dive Resort and the house reef is an eight minute swim off the beach, so a morning in the water doesn't eat the day. Good if you've thought about certifying for years and never had the water for it. Beginners start with a discovery dive.
The ceviche class. Learn to make it properly, with a little more flair than the version you'll get on a plastic chair at the beach. It runs for two, wine included. This is the one people message us about months later.
Bocachica. The village at the southern end of our island, at the narrow channel mouth the Spanish spent two centuries fortifying. Our village tour starts with a five minute motorbike-taxi ride and takes in the San Fernando fortress and a beer with whoever's around. The cooking and culture version walks up to the Angel San Rafael fort, which is the best view on the island, then makes traditional Bocachica sweets. It is the least postcard thing on this list and the one guests talk about most.
If none of those appeal: horse riding on the beaches, mountain biking the island trails with a motorbike escort, a salsa or champeta class, or the back of house sustainability tour, which is us opening the cupboards rather than telling you we're green. We're B Corp certified, solar-powered and running zero waste, and that tour is where you get to check. Prices and durations are all on the activities page. Better you read them there than take a number off a blog post.
Day 5: slow morning, then the boat back
Keep day five empty until your flight. Swim before breakfast when the water is flattest, eat slowly, take a mid-morning boat back, and get to Rafael Nunez with time you don't have to think about.
If you're not flying out yet and want one more day on the water, the Rosario Islands are the other direction, further out, whiter sand, clearer water. We run it as a private speedboat trip with a coconut handed over from a canoe and lobster at the end of it. That's a full day, not a morning, so only put it on day five if you fly the following morning.
What we'd change about this plan
Two things, honestly.
Come in September or October and you should flip it. Take the island days early, because a wet afternoon in the old town is still a good afternoon and a wet afternoon on a lounger is not.
Travelling with small children, make it three island days and two city ones, or even four and one. Cobbles, heat and forts are a hard sell at seven. Sand is not.
See you on the boat.