To get to Rincon del Mar one needs to take a bus from Cartagena to San Onofre and from there you can either take a Motorbike Taxi for 10’000 P or a taxi for 30’000 P depending on the road conditions and your haggling skills. After a 30 minute drive we arrived in the small fisher village and quickly found our hostel Mamallena. This hostel is managed by the wonderful Arturo and his four legged family, Bella and Tomate!
Rincon is far from a tourist destination, and so the accommodation and infrastructure here are quite basic, and therein lies its charm. A place to visit if you want to disconnect from the world and relax on the beach! There are not many restaurants here and so we mainly bought food from the small store and cooked ourselves or ordered a fresh fish through the hostel which was served with coconut rice and a salad for only 12’000 Pesos! Every evening we could see the fishermen returning with their catch, upon arrival they would unload their catch to sell or trade, while the village children would come out to the beach and play football or watch us play Volleyball!
From Rincon del Mar one can also organize a boat tour to the neighboring Islands of the San Bernardo Archipelago… Santa Cruz del Islote is the most densely populated island on Earth, with more than 1,240 people living on the island 0.12 km2. Very interesting to see! We didn’t get a chance to get on the island but i doubt there would be any space for tourists. 😉 The second Island we visited was Isla Tintipan. Tintipan itself is beautiful: a little palm-tree covered island, surrounded by azure water, coral and not much else, it is about as close to the Caribbean island cliché as you can get. There is even a backpacker hostel here called Casa en el Agua! Its located in the ocean and offers hammocks for the budget traveler or comfortable private rooms!
We met some great people here and we all stayed waaaay longer in Rincon del Mar then we intended! Martin and I stayed over 10 days as the days here pass way too fast and we thought that this was the last time we would see the ocean before heading back home to Switzerland. Thank you Carly, Jorge, Arturo, Eva, Izzy for a great time at this hidden gem.
Let Go Get Lost 