What the residency actually is
We give you a place to live and eat on an island off Cartagena, from one week up to one month, and you give us something back. That's the whole deal. There's no fee to us and no stipend from us, which makes it a swap rather than a programme.
We run it because we're an 11 room hotel and beach club on Tierra Bomba, we can't hire for every skill we need, and there are people who'd trade a month of their work for a month of living here. That turns out to suit both of us more often than you'd think.
What you get
Board and lodging in Pitahaya Cottage, plus three meals a day with us. The cottage has its own kitchen, so if you'd rather cook at midnight and skip breakfast, nobody will mind.
Art materials are available here, so you don't need to fly with a suitcase of them. We do not pay for your flights. That comes up often enough that we'd rather say it here than in an email.
You can bring someone. Either they also offer us something, or they pay a stipend of $50 USD per day to join you. We're not precious about which.
It isn't only for artists
We've never limited this to painters. Yogis, chefs, photographers and environmental engineers have all come through. What we're after is a skill that benefits us or benefits the community on the island, and that covers a much wider range of people than the word residency usually suggests.
If you can teach something, build something, document something, measure something or cook something, there's probably a version of this that works.
How to apply, and how most applications fail
Send us a proposal. That's the only step, but it's the step people get wrong.
We get a lot of enquiries that say "I'm great at marketing" and stop there. That's not enough for us to say yes to. Tell us what your skill is, and then tell us specifically what you think you can do for us and for the island while you're here. Two weeks of photography, a menu you'd develop with our kitchen, a workshop you'd run in the village: something with edges on it.
We reply to enquiries between 9am and 9pm, and WhatsApp is far easier for all of us than phoning, because there's no signal on the island.
What living here is really like
No phone signal is the first thing people notice, and for a lot of residents it turns out to be the point. The second is that the island doesn't run on a city's clock. We're on the southern shore of Tierra Bomba facing the open sea, about 25 minutes by boat from Cartagena, and the boat leaves the Muelle de la Bodeguita at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm. Coming back to us, boats leave the city on that schedule and leave us at 4pm and 5:30pm. If you miss the last one, you're staying wherever you are.
The hotel is quiet through the week and busier at weekends, when there's music and locals come over for the day. If you want to work in silence, plan your deep hours for Tuesday, not Saturday.
If a month on a small island sounds like a lot, it can be. Residents staying more than a week are welcome to take the odd night at our sister property, Townhouse, in the middle of Cartagena's Walled City, which is enough of a change of scene to reset most people. You can also just go to and from the city on the boat.
When to come
September and October are the wettest months on this coast, and they're also the quietest and the cheapest time to be here, which some residents actively want. Rain here tends to arrive hard and leave quickly rather than settling in for a week. December through March is drier, busier and hotter in the good way.
If your project needs the beach club calm and empty, aim for the low season. If it needs people to photograph, talk to or feed, come when we're full.
Before you write to us
Read our FAQs first. They'll tell you how we think about pay, waste, water and the village, and if that doesn't sound like somewhere you want to spend a month, better to know now. If it does, send the proposal.
See you on the boat.