Paraiso Secreto! Secret Paradise!
Everything we would want to relax and get away. Look at this pool:
Here is what it looked like:
Big pool
Half-empty pool
Alas, our dreams weren’t quite met.
We set out from Cartagena, following the instructions to the letter. The boat stopped at Playa Blanca and let some people off. Then it stopped at another resort, then on to Isla de la Rosario. We had not been let off.
Boat dock in Cartagena
On the boat
Some people got off at Playa Blanca
Playa Blanca
Isla Rosario, where we had to wait an hour because they didn’t drop us at our place
Eventually, they took us to an island and said this was the place, even though it had a different name. Actually, it wasn’t the place, but a local guy had his kids walk us to the right place, for a tip.
Perhaps we should have been a bit more careful reading the reviews by the more “mature” guests. The place seemed a heaven for hipsters and Marleyans. There were plenty of twenty-somethings. We just expected a bit more for paying double our Cartagena rate.
The place is an old resort. Clearly it had been quite lovely in its day. It was abandoned 6 years ago when the islands were nationalized into a park. The current management has contracted with individuals to run each building, under the umbrella of the management company. There is clearly tension between these groups, and the place is a work in progress poster child of unrealized potential.
Termites ate our door
Turns out that meals need to be ordered ahead of time, not a real restaurant. There is a restaurant, really a house that serves food, on the other side of the island via footpath.
The bar is lightly stocked, missing at least half of what is on the menu card.
Electricity is from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am, so the fan doesn’t work during the day. Which isn’t so bad, except for the flies that make one want to hide inside the mosquito net, which gets very hot without the fan.
The beach was barely usable, with two chairs and two hammocks. Fortunately, the young people don’t mind laying in the sand, nor walking over the sharp coral to get out to swimming depths.
One evening they had a “business” meeting. They held it in the dining area, and the shouting at each other continued well into dinner time. There wasn’t enough room at the tables to handle the people who had smartly signed up for dinner. Yet the shouting continued. We ate and left.
Despite all of this, we found some solace in the beauty of the place. Our last night, we were commiserating with a Swedish woman, when an Irishman and Welshman started playing their fiddle and guitar respectively.
At daybreak, the birds went wild, and we were treated to a concerto of birdsong, including from the sanctuary near the restaurant.
We did get to eat fresh fish, all the time. We had to warn the restaurant if we wanted chicken so they could go kill the bird.
We met some great people, including Juan, the guy running our building.
And we were surrounded by natural beauty. We really didn’t mind leaving, even so. We headed back to Anya’s AirBnB in Cartagena.
We like to hear the bitter with the better! Every traveler knows some things don’t work out.