Midweek if you want quiet, weekend if you want company
That's the whole decision. We're quiet during the week and livelier at weekends. On Fridays, weekends and public holidays we get busy with locals coming out of Cartagena to start the weekend properly, and there's always music playing. Midweek you'll hear more sea than speakers.
Neither is the correct answer. People book the wrong one because nobody told them the difference, then spend the boat ride home mildly disappointed. So here's the difference.
Saturday: the loudest day, on purpose
Saturday is our busiest and best-attended day, and the pool session runs 1 to 5. If you're coming for the atmosphere, that's the window, and you want the 10am or 11:30am boat so you're settled with a drink before it starts rather than arriving into the middle of it.
Book a poolside lounger for this one. Loungers here come in two flavours: poolside, near the music and the movement, or beach, quiet and removed from everything. On a Saturday a beach lounger will feel like you've booked a seat at the wrong wedding.
Sunday: busy, then suddenly not
Sunday runs busy through lunch and then empties as the city crowd starts thinking about the 4pm boat. If you like a full room at 1pm and a nearly empty one at 4, this is your day. The last boat back leaves us at 5:30pm, so the final ninety minutes are usually the calmest part of a weekend.
Sunday lunch is also when the kitchen is at full stretch, which is a good reason to come. Our food is the point of the place as much as the sand is, and we take it seriously enough to have been the first beach club in Cartagena with a wine list.
Tuesday to Thursday: the underrated ones
Midweek is when this place is at its most itself. Quiet, unhurried, and you can have a whole stretch of beach without negotiating for it. If you're travelling as a couple, or you've just done three nights of Getsemaní and your ears need a day off, come Tuesday.
The practical advantage: it's much easier to get a seat on the boat you want, and easier to get the specific lounger you want. Your lounger is reserved for you, so there's no towel-at-dawn nonsense either way, but midweek there's simply more choice.
The hours that actually govern your day
The beach club is open to day visitors from 11am to 6pm. The restaurant runs 10am to 11pm and everyone is welcome, though if you're not staying with us you'll need a day pass to come in, including guests from other properties on the island.
Boats out of Cartagena leave the Muelle de la Bodeguita at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm. Boats leave us at 4pm and 5:30pm. That 5pm outbound boat is for people staying the night or eating dinner, not for a day at the beach, so don't build a beach day around it.
A club day pass with boat transfers both ways is $40 per person. Loungers are $5 to $30 depending on which, and the bigger VIP beds and beach cabañas take three people lying down, or a whole group using one as a base. You pay for what you eat and drink on top.
Reserve, whichever day you pick
Our boat has limited capacity. If you turn up unreserved and it's full, the wait for the next one is long and the dock is not an interesting place to spend it. Weekends this matters more, but midweek boats fill too when a group has booked.
Cancellation, for anyone planning around weather: for groups of fewer than eight, we refund 97% of a day pass, lunch or transfer deposit up until 4pm the day before. After that it's non-refundable. Written notice, by email, or it doesn't count.
What the sea is doing, which matters more than the day
Our beach is volcanic sand. It isn't the white powder of the Rosario Islands, it's darker, natural, clean, and it faces open ocean rather than a sheltered lagoon. The sea changes with her mood. Some days flat, some days with a proper swell.
One consequence worth knowing before you book: you can't really snorkel here. The water off our beach leads straight out to open ocean, and although we have a house reef it sits at six metres with choppy surface water above it. A one hour scuba dive with us gets you down to it properly, and you don't need to be certified to try it. If snorkelling from the sand is the thing you came to Colombia for, the Rosarios are a better use of your day and we'll say so.
In September and October you should also factor in rain, which arrives hard and usually leaves quickly. It rarely ruins a day. It does occasionally rearrange one.
So, which day?
Saturday for music and a full pool. Sunday for a long lunch and a quiet late afternoon. Tuesday through Thursday for the version of this island we'd choose ourselves. Book the boat, bring a towel, and see you on the boat.