Soy Local Baru — Hotel in Cartagena

Baru is an island that is currently developing infrastructure needed to sustain tourists from the 1st world. There are no ATMs on the island. This hotel is more like an "eco bed and breakfast".

Breakfast: 5/5, limited menu but so good. Service: 5/5, friendly and welcoming staff Location: 5/5, this particular location is not as busy as other parts of the beach, which is what we wanted. Room: 3/5, it is doable but water pressure was not the best. Power is limited to evening through morning. Communication: 2/5, hotel should have reached out to us after booking to coordinate transportation. The hotel did not and therefore was a little chaotic and overpriced for what we paid for boat ferry.

Rx: Don't expect a Holiday Inn type of hotel. Was fine for us, a family of 3 with a 6 year old. Bring cash, although the hotel and a few restaurants/business do accept cards. I do recommend snorkeling tour (40k cop per person), spear fishing (250k cop), bioluminescence plankton tour (30k cop / person), and Wild Birds Sanctuary. You could walk but it is a solid 40 minute walk. You could take a tuk tuk for 80k cop. There is a stand nearby that does offer scuba diving tours (price varies) and scuba diving certification class for 250 USD.

Transportation +: Highly recommended by sea (boat ride about 45 minutes) and coordinate with hotel. Doing so is much cheaper and less chaotic lol. Coordinating transportation by boat from the dock bodeguita yourself was chaotic and over priced. You could take a car/bus but that would take about...

This place is horrible!

It is not a Hotel, but a very low Standard Hostel. We have to escape after one not splet night.

The accomodation is very Basic, no proper lock, no safety, the room is very old and low standard. The shower is just a pipe with no water pressure. There is no air conditioning. A lot of wholes in the Walls makes the Flow of the mosquitos during the Night. There were several breakes in electicity availability. The wi-fi was not working for the most of the time. All towels has stains, i was asking several time for a change, but the next one were also dirty. The Beach that suppose to be private was Full of vendors that did scams. The water was contaminated by the scooters and Engine Boat. It was impossible to relax in the water because the Boats were tresspassing all the time. The Hotel Management was unhelpful and we were asked all the time for paying extra Money. During our stay we didn’t feel safe. The stucture of Hotel Management was unclear. It was also a Problem to come back from la Isla barou to cartagena. Hotel Guys were presenting different prices, we received no Tickets and no Information regarding...

We wished we would have had the possibility to spend our holidays there, but they didn’t respect the booking. We called the central office management in Medellin and did a booking for two nights, they asked us to transfer 60% of the total cost.

We did it right away, and when the money transfer was done they texted us that they have received another booking while “talking” to us and they cancelled ours… totally disrespectful and not serious management . We believe is because they inflate the prices in booking and for sure they received a higher offer and one day before landing they cancelled ours.

Also they took around 2 days to return the money and the guy Yezid gave a lot of excuses and stop answering our calls and texts. In the end they returned the money but of course it was a hassle for us.

We also need to say that the hosts in Baru were very kind and didn’t have the fault, they were super surprised as well of this.

For future guests : Be careful on prices via booking and also...