Leaving from the tip of the Lover’s Bridge, located in Providencia, your footsteps will take you over dense vegetation that dominates the small, fascinating neighbor island of Santa Catalina. The modern world doesn’t enter this virgin territory: no cars, no highways, no skyscrapers stain the landscape. Santa Catalina has become an undeniable invitation to encounter nature, peace and silence.
Santa Catalina is a volcanic, coralline island in which approximately 700 persons enjoy the privilege of waking up here every morning. It hasn’t ceded a centimeter of its territory or culture to the rush of the modern world.
This small, magical island is part of the San Andes, Providencia, Santa Catalina archipelago under the administrative jurisdiction of Providencia. The island, 1 square kilometer, enjoys an accidental geographic composition and a maximum height of 132 meters above sea level. Just like its big sister Providencia, Santa Catalina enjoys a mild Caribbean temperature that doesn’t exceed 25 degrees centigrade. It’s worth noting that, due to its size, the small island has absolute economical, cultural and social dependence on Providencia, to which it is connected by Lover’s Bridge that is elevated over the Aury Channel. In this way, the Aury Channel is a narrow sea straight that’s 150 meters wide, constructed by buccaneers in the seventeenth century, determined to defend this important insular enclave.
On the other hand, the living diversity that we find in the flora and fauna of the small island is limited due to its size and insular quality. Nevertheless, you can appreciate interesting examples of the dry tropical forest as you see in the rest of the archipelago, in particular the fruit trees (coconut, bread fruit, mango trees), the chaparro, the cotton tree and cockspur, the olive tree, and other tropical varieties. You can also appreciate endemic and migratory birds, crustaceans, small reptiles, innumerable insects, different varieties of mangrove, corales, and other forms of life that inhabit this precious archipelago.
The paths that snake around the island are must-do activities. Santa Catalina seduces with its natural woods, easy to walk around in a short period of time. It’s a photographer’s dream with spectacular views. A minute of rest to breathe pure air and re-energize your spirit with the breathtaking views painted by the Caribbean. Following the path that weaves through the tropical jungle and small homes of the islanders, crab traps, mangroves, and an exquisite beach hiding behind the island.
Other paths connect the visitor with the glorious past of adventures of the island. Morgan’s Head – a promontory rock sculpted by nature with a human stamp – stands proudly at the edge, between the sea and land. And the cannons, whose old mouths rise above from closeby headlands, that once were used by Henry Morgan to fire on Spanish ships to keep them at bay, remain, unperturbed over time, as proof of a violent chapter in the history of the archipelago.
As a complement to the adventures of the past, diving lovers have the luxury of precious diving points that fulfill all diving dreams. You can enjoy immersions of 40 to 60 feet deep in places like the Cantil of Santa Catalina. Snorkel and free dive near Morgan’s Head, where it’s safe to discover dozens of species of colorful tropical fish and almost 20 different species of corals.
