Cabo San Juan

The best-known beach in Tayrona National Park, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast — and the crowded counterpart to Playa Brava, where Harry slept the night before.

He walks in from Playa Brava on his way to the exit and stays a few hours. His verdict is split down the middle and he gives both halves: genuinely beautiful, and he is glad he didn’t stay here.

The beauty is the rock formations and the palms — he says it reminds him of Thailand — with the sand running up to a rocky headland you can sleep on. The problem is the numbers.

The numbers

• Hundreds of people on the sand, mostly Colombian rather than foreign — the beach is doable as a day trip, which is what makes it busy.
• Capacity around 400, with four toilets, and up to a thousand visitors in a day at peak (from video – unverified).
• A tent field Harry compares to a festival, plus private accommodation and a first-aid point.
• A swamp behind the beach with a fair amount of rubbish in it, which he says plainly is not his thing.

Practical facts

• Park entry: 70,000 pesos, the same as the other entrance (from video – unverified).
• You can swim here, which is the whole reason it is busier than Playa Brava. The current is noticeable but you can stand.
• Food: a 20–25 minute queue, and around $10 a meal (from video – unverified) — which he calls a little pricey for Colombia but not expensive. Chicken with rice and crisps, prawns with rice and pasta. His assessment is that it was food rather than good food, and welcome after the walk.
• Reachable by boat as well as on foot.
• A woven bracelet: 10,000 pesos, about $2 (from video – unverified).
• Coca leaves are sold in the park by indigenous vendors — 5,000 pesos, about a dollar, for a large bunch (from video – unverified). Harry and his companions chew them for the walk out and are honest that they can’t tell whether the effect is real or expectation.

The hike from Playa Brava

• About two and a half hours, roughly an hour of it climbing.
• Harder than the way in — hotter, and with less left in the tank.
• Rated 4 out of 10 for difficulty by an experienced hiker in the group, and 7 out of 10 by Harry, which is the most useful calibration on the page.
• Bananas can be knocked off the trees with a stick on the way, which the group does.

A nudist beach

The beach immediately before Cabo San Juan is a nudist one. Harry turns the camera away and films in the other direction for the whole stretch, saying he doesn’t want to intrude on anyone’s privacy. See don’t point the camera at private moments.

Harry’s tips

• Don’t sleep here — come for the day. It is the easiest beach in the park to reach and that is exactly its problem; sleep at Playa Brava and walk over.
• Come here if you want to be in the sea. It is the trade the two beaches are offering.
• Eat before you queue, or expect to wait 25 minutes.

Source videos

• Hiking to a Nudist Beach in Colombia 🇨🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IZFKlxjFs