19 Jan 2026: I am channelling blue. Or, more precisely, the 7 (+/- 3) shades of blue that surround a little island I didn’t know existed 8 weeks ago.
Rewind to the beginning of December: I needed a break from my computer. My inner mermaid was screaming to return to her home planet. My bones were cold. I needed to tune out work and the real world and the endless blather from every form of media. I needed a return to the blue.
A plan is hatched.
A conversation with an old friend put me in touch with a dive instructor on a little-known island called Providencia; part of Colombia, but geographically closer to Nicaragua. Its history is that of pirate island, and an English, then Spanish, territory before Colombia’s independence in the 1800s. Privateering was Providencia’s chief business for a while, and rumours abound of treasure still hidden on the tiny island to this day. In 2007 UNESCO incorporated the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina into their network of Caribbean biosphere reserves, calling it Seaflower.
Before the dot-com boom and bust and well before online travel blogs were really a thing, I spent a lot of my vacation time diving in Belize and Honduras. This was also before the hordes of tourists and the warming of the waters and the multi-story luxury resorts built on the edge of atolls that really can’t support the growth. The pristine reefs in that part of the Caribbean have grayed and crumbled over the years; apparently capitalism is an exemption in environmental protection.
So when I read about Providencia, it resonated like a glimmer of hopeful azul in a long, cold, gray December. It was small enough to be overlooked by the masses, cherished just so by its denizens, and hard enough to get to that most of the cringey tourists wouldn’t bother. Also, aside from beaching and diving and snorkeling and climbing The Peak, there wasn’t a heck of a lot to do there. I booked flights as soon as I saw photos.
Rusty Spanish and a small glitch.
To get to Providencia, you need to go through San Andrés. Luckily Avianca flies direct to Bogotá from Boston; and while it feels like a world away, Colombia is in the same time zone as the Eastern US. So the flight from Bogotá to San Andrés was also relatively straightforward. The small oopsie: In the chaos of work-holiday-family-new year before the trip, I had completely forgotten to apply for my Check-MIG (tourist visa). So as the BOS-BOG flight taxied to the gate in Bogotá, I furiously entered my info into the web form then held my breath. Exhale: The acceptance email arrived as I was walking to the immigration line. This level of stress is not highly recommended. The other thing that nobody tells you unless you dig for the info (which I didn’t), is that you need a tourist card to enter the reserve area, so with rusty Spanish I navigated to the kiosk to get mine just in time to board the flight to San Andrés.
I stayed in an eco-hostel on San Andrés for a night, a quirky little hotel built into an ancient coral reef, before waking to take the final hop to Providencia (The Rock House: I highly recommend!). Even though I only spent one short night there, I felt welcomed and safe from the moment I arrived. As solo female travellers know, this is such a relief…one less thing to stress over, giving back some emotional energy to focus on that last leg.
Note to travellers: always check and re-check flight times… the flight was changed to leave 20 minutes early! But I made the flight, understood enough of the in-flight announcements (100% en Español), found a taxi, and made it to my little hotel in South West Bay in time to unpack, find the dive shop, and take a small nap in my hammock before sunset.
I hadn’t intended on writing a whole post on just the getting there process, pero aqui estamos (but here we are). Thanks for coming along on the beginning of this journey with me.
In Part II we’ll dive into Providencia. Literally.