The Colombian Caribbean

There's two (and a bit) islands that belong to Colombia but are actually located just off the coast of Nicuragua. The largest is called San Andrés and although it's politically part of Colombia it originally has ties to England. The official languages are Spanish, English and some kind of Creole. Very confusing!

The first day we arrived and walked past what I thought was an abandoned school...well until I saw the children running around the basketball court in the blistering heat.

We walked into the centre to discover a fairly sizeable commercial area. San Andrés is actually suffering from an overpopulation problem. The natives to the island are descendants of the original Europeans and Africans that turned up there. In recent years there has been a huge influx of mainland Colombians. In the early seventies there were only 20,000 people reported as living there. Currently there's around 75,000. 

There's not too many cars on the island. The main forms of transport are motorcycle (sin helmet) or these little petrol powered golf buggy things.

We spent one day just wandering around and sat on a bus for about an hour taking in all the scenery and run down houses. 

We decided to visit a beach further up the island called Rocky Cay in the San Luis area. We walked past some of the many 'bread fruit' on the island. These aren't so much like a fruit since they deep fry them like a potato and the texture is said to be like bread when cooked. I kinda agree and I thought it was delicious actually. Wikipedia also told me it's one of the highest yielding fruit trees and was introduced into a lot of Caribbean islands as a source of food.

Next we stumbled across what is a normal sight on the island. A local lady selling cakes and food from a table. This one was in her front yard but there were also several women down at the main beach too. 

We decided on a piece of banana cake and a piece of pumpkin pie. Delicious! And such change from Colombian food.

Next we headed down to the beach from where you could actually see three shipwrecks. Someone here missed the memo on lighthouses because I also saw some others on our bus ride around the island. Quite ridiculous if you ask me!

Oh and the other thing about these islands is the crabs. Twice a year the islands are inundated with thousands of crabs much like Christmas Island. The crabs are actually land dwelling. They all mate at the same time and then the females head down to the beach to release their fertilised eggs into the sea. This causes complete chaos and on Providencia they actually call in the military to block the roads and monitor the crabs. A few weeks later once the eggs hatch then the same thing happens again kinda in reverse with all the baby crabs heading onto land to find their new home on land. Here's one now...