View from the top of Cayo Cangrejo (Crab Cay), Providencia, Colombia

On the first day of my three-day trip to the Colombian island of Providencia in June 2010, I took a boat ride that circled the island. We started on the west side of Providencia in the town of Aguadulce (Fresh Water), made our way to the narrow channel that separates Providencia from the smaller sister island Santa Catalina, then proceeded east toward Cayo Cangrejo or Crab Cay. There are two main activities on this small island: climb to the top to get the panoramic views, and snorkel around the island. I was fortunate to have picked the climb first, because shortly after doing so it started to rain and the view became more obscure. Snorkeling while the rain was coming down was not an issue at all.

When I sat on the top of the cay, I turned myself around 360 degrees to get all the possible views. I felt like the old man on the mountain contemplating the meaning of life. The picture shows one of the views featuring the plentiful coral reefs that extend from here 500 more miles to the north - one of the longest reefs in the Caribbean. As one of our fellow passengers said, "It's not particularly easy to get to the top [it requires some crawling up on the rock], but once you get up there you'll never want to come down." My thoughts exactly!

Back in Providencia, Colombia (2010)

Ten years after making an overnight trip to Providencia, a remote island in the Caribbean belonging to Colombia, in 2000, I had the opportunity to return and stay for three days. Providencia, according to what I heard during my stay, only attracts 11,000 tourists a year (compare the Dominican Republic at about 4 million), but those who go there never forget the place because of its isolation, the beauty of its landscape and the warmth of its people. My impression is that it is sought out by a small group of travelers representing a cross-section of the whole world, based on the tourists I met during my brief stay who were from Colombia, the United States, the Netherlands, England, Argentina, Malaysia, and Switzerland. On my first trip I had also met a tourist from France.

The photo of Providencia, with the well-known Split Hill or Loma Partida in the background, was taken from the smaller island of Santa Catalina, which is connected to Providencia by a small floating bridge for pedestrians. Speaking of Santa Catalina, biologist Germán Márquez Calle notes in the booklet A Guide to the Environment of Old Providence and Santa Catalina (a gift from Javier Archbold Hawkins, one of my gracious hosts on this trip) that there is a striking resemblance between Providencia and the map of the fictional island from Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novel "Treasure Island," in that the map of the island in Stevenson's novel includes a small island with roughly the same proportions to the larger island as Santa Catalina has to Providencia. Though the association between the real island and the fictional one has not been proven conclusively, to my knowledge, it's still fun to speculate. What we do know about Providencia is that pirates did inhabit the island at certain times in its history, most notably Henry Morgan, who used Providencia as a base to invade Panama and other Spanish possessions. Looking at certain parts of the island, you definitely can imagine a pirate movie being filmed there. 

Good food on San Andres and Providencia, Colombia (2000)

One of my favorite Caribbean trips was a five-day, four-night stay on the island of San Andrés, which is on the western side of the Caribbean and belongs to Colombia. We went there with the whole family in 2000.

The all-inclusive travel package included a stay at the Sol Meliá hotel "Sol Caribe Campo" in the center of the island. Part of the charm of this place was a great view of the Caribbean (it was perched on a hillside) along with the delicious food. The breakfast buffet was the best I've seen anywhere. It fell short when it came to the local cuisine, but what it did offer was well-prepared and abundant, even with small slices of pizza available for a midnight snack. Even though the hotel was not on the beach, it did have a strip of land by the beach where you could have your lunch and enjoy the water there. I also enjoyed having a slice of fresh coconut.

The family was content on San Andrés, but I was eager to check out the quieter sister island of Providencia. I wound up staying overnight at another Sol Meliá hotel: the Sol Caribe Providencia. There the food was a sit-down affair but in terms of quality it was even better than on San Andrés: for $60 a night, I had two meals included and enjoyed the most succulent crab meat I have tasted anywhere, along with a delicious dessert made from island-grown blueberries. When we returned to Bogotá and I told my wife's relatives about that hotel on Providencia, they said to me: "You paid that much?"

See my webpage on Colombia at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/colombia.html

Other websites:

Caribbean Folk Arts Network (Caribfolk) - Caribbean cultural network: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/caribfolk/

Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas (Latin American Cultural Roots) - a nonprofit organization I founded in 1991 that presents Latin American cultural shows, exhibits, and workshops: http://www.raicesculturales.org/

Raicesnews - Latin cultural events in the Philadelphia area: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/raicesnews