Playa Blanca

            Playa Blanca is a gorgeous, isolated Caribbean beach located on Baru Island.  Playa Blanca is only a short 35 min trip by speedboat or 2 hours by regular boat from Cartagena de Indias.  With its white sand and warm crystal clear water Playa Blanca is one of the best beaches in Colombia.  The beach is around 2 miles long lacking strong tides or currents.  There is no electricity or running water on the island.  There are day trips to the island or you can choose to sleep overnight which is what we did.  There are obviously no hotels on the island so you sleep in hammocks covered with a mosquito net, which still didn’t seem to save Chris from being raped my mosquitos.  The ride over to Playa Blanca is choppy and fun if you don’t get seasick its like being on a rollercoaster for 35 min straight.  Upon arrival to the island we walked up and down trying to find the best deal to rent a hammock.  This took a good 30 mins as Alicia likes to barter and was determined to find the best deal.  One guy told us $8,000COP and that seemed to be the best deal until we found a guy for $4,000, our original guy tried to run up and stop the deal and tell him not to offer lower because he was trying to rip us off.  There were 3 other Brits and a Dutch girl staying at the place we found.  Making it a total of 7 Brits and as always me the lone American. 

 We had a good time with our newly made friends Guy, Danya, Harriet and Sarah, blasting dubstep, playing card games and just relaxing at the beach.  I learned a new card game called Pirate, which is pretty fun except I kept getting killed off really early.   The sun sets around 7 and then the partying was done by moonlight/candlelight, which was a nice change.  At around 9pm everyone decided it was time for a night swim, which just meant the requisite skinny-dipping experience in the warm Caribbean water.  I guess there was a lot of plankton out that night because with every stroke or kick your body glowed blue/green.  It was pretty awesome like you were creating light in the water.  Sleeping in a hammock was not as bad as I thought it would be.  It was weird being covered by a mosquito net though, but it’s better than being covered in itchy bites for the next three weeks.  The pick up boats came at 4pm the next day and the island experience was over.  Covered from head to toe in sand and needing a proper shower I was happy to get back to running water.  Playa Blanca was definitely worth no electricity or running water, two days on an isolated island for $30 is a steal.