Yes, you can actually work from here
You can work a full day from our island and still be back in Cartagena for dinner. Most days the wifi is excellent and you can hold video calls on it. There are days when the signal drops, and we'd rather tell you that now than have you find out mid-standup: about 95% of the time it's perfect, the rest of the time it isn't. We can set you up at a table in the shade with power sockets nearby.
We're on Tierra Bomba, 25 minutes by boat from the city. That's the whole trick of it. Close enough that a working day out here isn't a production, far enough that nobody is going to ring your doorbell.
What it costs to work a day here
A club day pass with boat transfers is $40. That gets you here, back, and into the beach club. A sun lounger is extra, from $5 to $30 depending on which one, and everything you eat and drink in the restaurant you pay for as you go.
If you want the quiet version, take a beach lounger rather than a poolside one. Poolside is near the music and the action, which is lovely and is not where you want to be on a client call. The beach loungers are removed from all of it.
The boat is your calendar
This is the part people get wrong. Our boat goes from the Muelle de la Bodeguita in Cartagena at 10am, 11.30am and 5pm. Coming back, boats leave us at 4pm and 5.30pm. There's no bridge and no road, so the timetable is the timetable.
What that means in practice: take the 10am and you're at a table by about 10.30, with a solid six hours before the 4pm boat. If your calls run late in the day, take the 5.30pm back instead. Reserve your boat seat when you book, because capacity is limited and the wait for the next one is long.
There's no mobile signal, and that's mostly fine
We have no phone signal on the island. Calls and messages go over wifi, which is why we ask everyone to use WhatsApp for anything to do with reservations. Set up wifi calling before you get on the boat and you won't notice. Turn up expecting four bars of 5G and you'll have a bad morning.
Pick your day carefully
We're quiet during the week and livelier at the weekend. There's always music, and on Fridays, weekends and holidays we get busy with locals coming out for the day. So: Tuesday and Wednesday for the work you actually have to concentrate on. Saturday if the work is answering emails between swims and you don't mind a soundtrack.
The beach club is open to day visitors from 11am to 6pm. The restaurant runs from 10am to 11pm, so an early boat gets you a table before the club properly opens.
Bring a towel
Small thing, easy to get wrong. Our official policy is that you bring your own towel to the beach club. You'll also want a dry bag or a hard case for the laptop, because getting on and off the boat involves a step and a bit of spray.
When you shut the laptop
The useful thing about working somewhere like this is that the afternoon is already sorted. Our house reef sits about eight minutes' swim off the beach and we're a PADI Dive Resort, so a discovery dive is a realistic thing to do at 4pm on a Wednesday. There's also massage, personal training and yoga in our wellness space if you've spent six hours hunched over a laptop, which you will have.
If you'd rather see the island than the sea, our Island Moto-Tour takes you pillion across Tierra Bomba to Bocachica village and the viewpoints. Early is better, before the sun is at full strength.
If a day turns into a week
We have 11 rooms. Room rates include a day's beach club access per guest, and there's a $20 per night resort fee, which is what it costs to run water, power and waste on an island with no mains connection. Full board, with all your food and soft drinks, is $90 per person per night. That's the version most people working remotely end up on, because deciding what to eat three times a day is its own job.
We're solar-powered and B Corp certified. The honest version of that is that we generate a lot of our own electricity and measure what we don't. Your laptop is not what's straining the system.
If a week on an island starts to feel small, guests staying more than a week are welcome to take the odd night at our sister property, Townhouse, in the Walled City. Two different working days, twenty-five minutes apart.
Would we recommend it for a whole month?
Honestly, not for everyone. If your work is back to back calls that start at 7am Eastern, the boat timetable will fight you. If it's a few hours of focused work a day and a swim in between, this is close to the best version of that we know. Come out for a day first and see how the wifi treats you before you commit to a fortnight.
See you on the boat.