Playa Blanca

Playa Blanca is on Isla Barú, south-west of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Barú is technically a peninsula severed by a canal cut in 1582, and the beach runs along its western shore — two kilometres of genuinely white coral sand with clear shallow water.

It is included in this register as much for its management problem as for its sand. Barú is within reach of a large cruise and domestic tourism market, and Playa Blanca receives day-trip volumes that the beach cannot absorb: vendors work the sand continuously, unlicensed construction has spread, sanitation is inadequate and the beach has been the subject of repeated clearance operations and court orders. Visitors regularly report the selling as relentless, and that report is accurate.

The beach itself is good. Fine white coral sand, calm shallow reef-protected water, a gentle entry, and the Islas del Rosario national park offshore with genuine reef. Early morning, before the boats from Cartagena arrive, is a different place from the same beach at noon. The Rosario Islands, an hour further out by boat, are a national park and the water there is clearer, largely because no road delivers people to it.

Access is by road across the bridge — around an hour and a half — or by boat from Cartagena, which is faster and how most day trips run. Staying overnight in one of the small guesthouses gives you the beach at dawn and at dusk without the traffic, and is the practical answer to everything above.

A first-rate Caribbean beach carrying more than it can hold between eleven and four. Stay the night and the day boats leave and it becomes a different place; or walk twenty minutes from the access point in either direction and the density falls away. The selling is constant and a pleasant firm no is understood.