Playa Blanca and the meaning of everything

Cartagena is one of the few places in South America I think I could probably spend a year or two living in. The city has a nice friendly vibe despite the fact it is a bit touristy. In the evenings several of the squares fill up with people drinking store bought beers and vendors selling all sorts of food (everything from kebabs and burrito wraps to sweet coconut cake dessert) and drinks to save you walking back to the beer shops.

There are also a number of guys in the streets who have cousins or an uncle in the Uk, Australia, America or wherever you are from, who will get you "everything" you could want. This ranges from helping you organise trips, finding restaurants, arranging massages, selling you drugs and organising a prostitute (I only know this because one guy felt the need to explain what "everything" was despite me telling him I understood what he was implying). Obviously you will pay a heavy premium for such services which we found out when our friend Mike used one of these guys book his trip to Playa Blanca beach he paid 10000 pesos more than we did for the same trip!

Playa Blanca is on one of the Rosario islands and the boat out there should be 30000, with an extra 12000 pesos required or entry to the national park. You can also pay another 10000 to have lunch included although this is not strictly necessary as everywhere there offers you lunch for that price once you arrive (it is not a reservation required kinda place)



The beach itself is beautiful, bright white sand and sky blue water for around 2 miles, backed by palm trees. Along the length of the beach there are lean to shelters mades out of advertising tarpaulins with a variety of different chairs in, obviously available for a costs (a shelter and chairs for 3 was 20000) . We picked one and found that it wasn't just the street guys who act as fixers, the guy who rented us the shelter also offered to act as a waiter bringing us anything we desired!

So we settled in and looked out across the sea enjoying the view when the first of a procession of beach vendors appeared in front of us. Every 2 minutes a new one appeared selling everything you need for a good day (and a lot of stuff you don't) cerviche, necklaces, beers, stone carved pipes, coconuts containing cocktails crammed full of booze, snorkels for rent (more on that later), ice creams, massages (these came with a free sample), paintings and much more. Initially trying to read was impossible due to interruptions until we worked out a system where we took 10 minute stints of being the one to say no to all the people offering us things.

We lunched at one of the beach hut restaurants, there are many to choose from and pretty much all of them are simple, open sided and roofed with palm leaves, seating is for the most part a bench and tressal tables. These all seem to do a price fixed Almuerzos (unsurprisingly the main is fried fish) which costs 10000 pesos.

It was after lunch the fun really started, in the morning all three of us had been given sample massages from several different women and had told them that perhaps later we'd be interested, after lunch they all pounced with 3 of them having a "I saw them first" argument in front of us. As a selling technique this worked wonders, we caved in almost instantaneously and had a massage each which left pretty much everyone happy, the 3 of them got one of us each to massage and we all got to relax for 10 minutes with no-one else trying to sell us things!

I also hired a snorkel for a few hours as the ocean looked pretty clear and inviting and there were quite a few fish to see, but after the Galapagos and scuba diving in Taganga beach snorkelling was a little tame to what we had been used to.

Playa Blanca is definitely worth the visit, despite the constant barrage of sellers and the pretty hairy speed boat ride to get there, maybe take some earplugs or just go with enough friends to take turns in saying "no graçias" like we did.