Yes, you can have the whole place
We rent Blue Apple out as a villa, and without a doubt it's the best staffed and serviced villa in the islands of Cartagena. On a full privatisation the place is yours and yours alone: 11 rooms, the beach club, the kitchen, the staff, no day visitors wandering through your afternoon.
We're on Isla Tierra Bomba, at Bocachica, 25 minutes by boat from Cartagena. There's no bridge and no road, which is exactly why a buyout works here. Nobody drifts in. Once your group is on the island, the island is your group.
The numbers, before anything else
Overnight, we have 11 rooms and up to 30 people can sleep on the property. For daytime events we receive groups of up to 250. If your party is bigger than the beds, there's accommodation in neighbouring hotels and private villas on the island, so a 40-person weekend is a solvable problem, just not a one-building one.
The thresholds that decide how you book:
| Group size | How it works |
|---|---|
| Up to 12 | Book online like anyone else |
| 13+ | Contact us directly. Advance payment, and we agree a set menu with you before you arrive |
| 70+ | Full privatisation required |
| Up to 250 (daytime) | Our maximum for a daytime event |
| Up to 30 sleeping | Our maximum overnight, across 11 rooms |
Why we insist on the set menu
Because we're on an island. Every ingredient arrives by boat, and a 30-person table deciding at 2pm what it fancies is how people wait 90 minutes for lunch. Agreeing the menu in advance is the difference between a group that eats together and a group that eats in shifts. We'll build it around what your people actually eat, including vegetarians, vegans and anyone gluten or lactose intolerant, so send us the list when you send us the numbers.
Drink, and the one time you can bring your own
On a full privatisation you can bring your own alcohol and we'll charge corkage. That's the only version where it's allowed: smaller groups can't bring their own unless the circumstances are genuinely special, and "we found cheap rum" is not a special circumstance.
Otherwise you're drinking ours, which we're not shy about. We were the first beach club in Cartagena to have a wine list, cocktails are made with fresh juices, and we don't run an all-inclusive bar for anyone, groups included.
Bachelors, bachelorettes and weddings
Well-behaved bachelor and bachelorette groups are welcome, a bit like children and pets. We just want to know in advance what kind of group you are, honestly, so we can put the right team and the right set-up around you. A surprise is worse for you than for us.
Weddings, no. We don't host them, unless you happen to be good friends with the owners. What we're genuinely good at is the day before and the day after: the whole group out on the island, one long lunch, everyone in the sea, nobody driving. Ask any wedding planner which of those three days people remember.
Logistics your organiser needs
Boats leave Cartagena from the Muelle de la Bodeguita at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm, and leave us at 4pm and 5:30pm. Door-to-door from Rafael Núñez airport is about an hour, and you should leave us three hours before a flight. We can arrange airport transfers both ways.
Two things that catch organisers out. First, there's no phone signal on the island, so agree a plan with your group before they get on the boat and use WhatsApp with us rather than calling. Second, if the tide is very high or the sea is unusually rough we use a dock in the village, about a mile away, and you ride pillion on a motorbike taxi from there to us. It's a good story afterwards and a surprise in the moment, so warn your group.
Also worth flagging kindly: we're not wheelchair accessible. Boat, then a 200 metre sandy track. If someone in your party needs step-free access, talk to us before you commit rather than after.
What it isn't
We don't do all-you-can-eat, we don't discount, and we won't pretend to be a big resort with a hundred rooms. We're 11 rooms and a beach club that a group can have entirely to itself for a couple of days. If that's the shape of your trip, message us on WhatsApp with your dates, your headcount and what the occasion is.