What a pasadía actually is
A pasadía is a day you buy. In Cartagena it usually means a beach club or island place that sells you entry for the day, nearly always with a boat ride included, and you go home at dinnertime. Almost nobody here says "day pass". They say pasadía, and the word stretches from a plastic chair on a crowded strip of sand to a full day with lunch and a cocktail.
The thing to check before you pay is what the number actually buys. Some pasadías are one price covering boat, chair, lunch and drinks. Others, ours included, separate the boat and entry from the food. Neither is better. They suit different days.
What ours costs
Our Club Day Pass is $40 USD and includes the boat both ways plus access to the beach club and the pool. Food and drink are à la carte, so you order what you want and pay for that. The lounger goes on top:
| What you're paying for | Price |
|---|---|
| Club Day Pass with boat transfers | $40 USD |
| Sun lounger, poolside or beach | $5 to $30 USD |
| Beach cabaña, quieter and nearer the water | $30 USD |
| VIP daybed, right in front of the pool | $50 USD |
The VIP beds and the cabañas fit three people lying down, or work as a base for a group who keep wandering off to the bar. An 8% food tax applies to everything you eat and drink, and it isn't refundable.
We don't do all you can eat and all you can drink. We don't do discounts either, and we'd rather say so here than have that conversation twice.
The boat, which is the part people get wrong
Boats leave Cartagena from Muelle de la Bodeguita at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm. Coming back, they leave us at 4pm and 5:30pm. The crossing takes 25 minutes and is calmer than the Rosario Islands run, though in windy weather the sea can be choppy.
Reserve. That's the advice we'd repeat twice. Our boat has limited capacity, and if you turn up unbooked and there's no space, the wait for the next one is long. You can't drive to us: we're on an island with no bridge, so it's the boat or a five minute helicopter, and most people pick the boat.
If the tide is very high or the sea unusually rough, we use a dock in Bocachica village instead, about a mile away, and you ride pillion on a motorbike taxi from there. Guests remember that part more fondly than the boat.
What the day is actually like
Day visitors have the beach club from 11am to 6pm, and the restaurant runs 10am to 11pm, so a late lunch is never a problem.
Our beach is volcanic sand, so it isn't the white powder you've seen in Rosario Islands photos. It's natural, clean, and faces open ocean rather than a sheltered bay. That open water is also why we tell people not to bother snorkelling: the house reef sits at six metres and the surface can be choppy. We're a PADI Dive Resort, the reef is an eight minute swim out, and an hour's discovery dive needs no certificate. That's the better version of the same idea.
Weekdays are quiet. Fridays, weekends and holidays are livelier, with music and plenty of locals in for the day. Both versions are real, and the people who end up disappointed are usually the ones who booked the wrong one.
The food is why a lot of people come back. Our Executive Chef is Pedro Mosqueda, who trained at the Gato Dumas Institute in Bogotá and cooked in leading Colombian kitchens before New York. We were also the first beach club in Cartagena to put together a wine list, and yes, there's rosé by the magnum. If you want to do something with your hands between swims, our ceviche class is built for two and comes with wine.
Bring a towel, and don't try to phone us
Bring your own towel for a day visit. Our website and confirmation emails have contradicted each other on this, so here it is plainly: bring one.
There's no phone signal on the island, which catches people out. WhatsApp is how we talk to guests, and we answer reservations messages between 9am and 9pm. The Wi-Fi is the opposite story: high speed, fine for a video call, with shaded tables near power sockets if you want to work for an hour before lunch.
Kids
Children pay age band rates rather than the adult price, and the same bands apply whichever day you come. We get asked for the exact under 12 figure often, and we'd rather you message us on WhatsApp for today's number than read a stale one here.
Is a pasadía worth it instead of a free beach?
If you want a chair, a bathroom, a proper kitchen and a boat that definitely comes back for you, yes. If you want cheap and unstructured, Cartagena's public beaches do that better and you should put the money into lunch. What a pasadía buys you is the logistics, not the sand.
See you on the boat.