La Boquilla

The Sustainable Beach of Cartagena de Indias

In the north of Cartagena, a new experience awaits: beach days facing a clean sea, a mangrove forest, fair prices, and a welcoming community working together to host its visitors.

La Boquilla is a fishing settlement with Afro-Caribbean roots located at the northernmost point of Cartagena, a city admired worldwide for its colonial architecture and engineering for decades. It is also a beach refuge for those looking to escape for a few hours from the hustle and bustle of the historic center and the crowded beaches of Bocagrande.

On a good day at La Boquilla, the sky is graced with a bright sun softened by abundant sea breeze. Thin layers of dark gray sand rise and cover the feet of visitors. Under that sky and sun, the beach generously unfolds with its yellow tents and palm-thatched kiosks lined up facing a blue-green, rippled, and crystal-clear sea.

To reach this 200-meter-long beach, which recently received one of the four initial Blue Flag certifications in Colombia, you need to drive for twenty minutes from the city center. The certification received at the end of 2019 has been awarded by the FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education) to over four thousand beaches worldwide since 1985. With this seal, La Boquilla guarantees visitors that, in addition to being a natural and cultural treasure of the city, it has pure bathing waters, high safety standards, and sustainability protocols across the ecosystem, the community, and the quality of the experience.

From seven in the morning, a team of locals welcomes visitors. They offer, among other services, tent, kiosk, and umbrella rentals. Forty-four restaurants organized under a standardized pricing system offer diverse menus of drinks and food. For the convenience of those arriving in the mid-morning, it’s best to inform the restaurant owners from the start about lunch choices. The recommendation will always be the catch of the day: snapper, mackerel, tilapia, or jackfish. Everything comes with coconut rice and green plantain tostones.

In the fruit sellers' basins strolling along the beach during the day, you can find a dazzling rainbow to refresh the morning with pieces of watermelon, papaya, pineapple, mango, and bananas. In the afternoons, traditional sweet vendors wander the same route carrying desserts on their heads: cocadas, caballitos (papaya sweets), alegrías (corn and coconut sweets), and enyucados (cassava and coconut sweets).

With palm trees and a few hotels and condos in the background, those lounging in their sun chairs looking towards the horizon find a long and solitary cyan strip, which, if not for the buoys marking the swimming area, seems to stretch to infinity. In the distance, a parade of colorful kitesurfing kites glides across the palette of blues. The breeze season runs from December to May, although there is wind year-round in La Boquilla, which is why seven kitesurfing and paddle schools offer their services to those interested, from one, three, and five-hour beginner classes ranging from fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars, to multi-day plans for the more advanced.

If you're looking for some relaxation, La Boquilla has a cooperative of masseurs made up of people who, before the Blue Flag certification, worked individually along the beach.

Did you know that San Andrés has the third-largest coral reef in the world?

Now, it is a team of over sixty female heads of household who have been trained to offer therapeutic massages and have a friendly and professional infrastructure adapted to the beach.

At the spa hut with blue and green beams, with white sheets and massage tables, massages are offered ranging from five to twenty dollars and include a space with fresh fruits, natural juices, and other beverages.

For those who remember the old days of La Boquilla, the recreational area is now more spacious, and security is more evident with police patrols and trained lifeguards. The offerings of vendors and masseurs are also more organized than in the past and even compared to other city beaches. “You can feel the community’s work,” says a tourist from Bogotá who is enjoying the beach with his family on a December morning.

If you’ve made it this far in the tour, it has all been contemplation, sand, and sea. It’s time to dive into one of Cartagena's most exciting plans, which is hidden just behind La Boquilla. Passing the sand strip of the beach, you find the Ciénaga de La Virgen, a coastal lagoon of 502 square kilometers connected to the city's bay through channels and inland lakes. The Ciénaga is a forest inhabited by three different species of mangroves, the endemic blue crab, and dozens of bird species like the striking cattle egret, the scarlet ibis, and the spoonbill, also known as the roseate spoonbill.

To explore this Eden of wetlands, you can go to any of the three community tourism and ecotourism organizations offering various experiences to adventurers. For example, you can go out after dawn with community fishermen to prepare the nets for catching crabs and fish and end the morning with a good sancocho in the heart of La Boquilla.

Another activity in La Ciénaga is birdwatching, both native and migratory, at sunrise or sunset. In either case, the plan begins with cold coconut water to quench your thirst, and the excursion departs from the beach on artisanal canoes that venture into the forest through the sea.

Once inside, the sounds of the beach and street fade away, leaving only silence and the breeze caressing the bushes' leaves. The canoe floats over the smooth green and thick waters, guided by a native from the settlement who, as they navigate through the spontaneous alleyways created by the mangroves, narrates stories about the life of the flora and fauna inhabiting the area: crustaceans, mollusks, small mammals, and fish accompany the journey through tunnels that evoke in those who traverse them: love, happiness, bliss, and pleasure.

The tour proceeds to the Laguna de Juan Angola, where birdwatching takes place and some tours offer the option to plant mangrove seedlings to grow the forest. The afternoon falls over the sea as the canoe returns to the beach after two to four hours of exploration (depending on the chosen plan).

The day ends at Playa Azul with the sunset occurring before six in the evening. It concludes with the feeling of having left another place, another Cartagena, one hidden behind fantastic colonial narratives, reigns, and shopping. Beyond the walls, an oceanic world unfolds, a city made up of lagoons, islands, and channels. Before the renewed face of La Boquilla, Cartagena becomes a new city to discover.