The short answer
By boat, always. There's no bridge to Tierra Bomba and no road onto it, so the only ways over are a boat or a helicopter. Our boat leaves the Muelle de la Bodeguita in Cartagena at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm, and the crossing to us in Bocachica takes about 25 minutes. We're on the southern shore of the island, facing the open sea.
Where you meet our boat
The Muelle de la Bodeguita, the pier by the walled city. Come to the dock for the departure you've booked and give your name. That's it, there's no ticket office queue to solve.
Book before you turn up. Our boat has a limited number of seats, and if you arrive unreserved and we're full, the next departure is hours away rather than minutes. Reservations go through us on WhatsApp and we answer between 9am and 9pm. Don't bother phoning once you're on the island either, we have no phone signal here.
What the crossing is actually like
Calm, most days. The water between Cartagena and our side of the island is usually smooth and much gentler than the infamous run out to the Rosario Islands. When it's windy the sea gets choppy, but it isn't white-knuckle stuff.
The part people don't expect is the getting on and off. It takes a bit of agility at both ends, and there's a 200 metre sandy track between our dock and the hotel. We'll be honest with you: we weren't built with accessibility in mind and we're not wheelchair accessible.
If the tide is very high or the sea is unusually rough, we use a dock in the village instead, about a mile from us. From there you ride pillion on a motorbike taxi to our gate. Nobody has ever complained about that bit.
Getting back to the city
Boats leave us at 4pm and 5:30pm. If you're on a day pass, that's your window: the beach club is open to day visitors from 11am to 6pm, so the 5:30 boat gives you the whole afternoon.
Doing it the local way
Between 7am and 5pm you can get here on public transport. It's time-consuming, it's genuinely complicated, and it's a little cheaper. It's also a real adventure, so if that's your kind of morning, ask us and we'll walk you through it.
For context on the geography: public lanchas cross from Bocagrande to the near side of Tierra Bomba in roughly 10 to 15 minutes, which is why people assume the whole island is a ten-minute hop. We're not on that side. We're down at Bocachica on the southern shore, which is why our own boat runs from the Bodeguita instead.
Arriving in your own boat
Yes, and it's easy. There's a dock about 200 metres from our gate. If conditions are rough, or your yacht is too big to dock with us (lucky you), we can sometimes send our boat out to collect you. Ask first rather than assuming.
The helicopter, since people ask
It exists. Five minutes in the air instead of 25 on the water. We don't operate it, our friends at Galavanta do, so speak to them.
From the airport
Door to door from Rafael Núñez International to us is about an hour, counting the drive across town and the crossing. Going the other way, leave us three hours before your flight departs. We can arrange transfers both ways, just ask when you book.
Three things worth knowing before you commit
We have no phone signal on the island, so sort out your plans by WhatsApp before you get on the boat. There are no cars here, no paved roads to speak of, and no bridge coming. And the sand on our beach is volcanic, not the white powder of the Rosarios, which surprises people who arrived expecting the postcard. It's natural, it's clean, and it leads straight out to open ocean.
See you on the boat.