The question we get most from families is not about the beds. It's about walls: can the grandparents, the teenagers and the couple travelling with a baby all be here without living on top of each other? They can, because we're not one building with six doors off a corridor. We're three separate houses.
That structure is the whole reason this works as a family villa near Cartagena, and it's worth understanding before you look at a single photograph.
Three houses, six rooms
The main house holds three rooms: Estrella, Cuerno and Fuego, the Orquidea rooms. Estrella is our family room, with a queen and two single beds, sea views and direct pool access, so it's the obvious room for parents with younger children. Cuerno and Fuego are second-floor suites with sea views, connected by a shared living room.
Casita Veranera is a separate house with two rooms, Rhizo and Avi. Both open onto a large balcony with a panoramic view of the Ciénaga de Cholón, with a swimming pool and a shared rest area.
Casita Laguna is the third house and the most private of the three. It has its own pool, an outdoor bathroom and a gazebo with a panoramic view. If one couple in the group wants distance from the noise, this is the room to give them.
How two families actually split it
This comes up often enough that we'll answer it directly: yes, you can put one family in one house and another in a second. The main house is its own villa, holding all the Orquidea rooms. Casita Veranera is a separate villa. So if you want your family sleeping exclusively together, they take the main house, and you take one of the Casita Veranera rooms or Casita Laguna.
The three common splits we see:
- Two households, evenly matched: one takes the main house, one takes Casita Veranera, and Casita Laguna goes to whoever booked first.
- Three generations: grandparents in Casita Laguna for the quiet and the outdoor bathroom, parents and children in the main house, the remaining couple in Casita Veranera.
- One large family: take the Full House and stop thinking about it.
Taking the whole property
Booked as the Full House, all six bedrooms are yours and there are no other guests on the property. It sleeps up to fourteen. Every bedroom has its own ensuite, which matters more with a group than any other single fact on this page. You also get the private pool, the rooftop terrace with sea views, the shared living room, the dining room that seats everyone at once, and direct sea access with kayaks.
Villa Pinto is the middle option: three bedrooms for up to eight, all three opening onto the private pool, with three private attached bathrooms.
What to know before you commit
We're on Bahía de Cholón on Barú Island, 30 minutes to an hour from Cartagena on our boat. Door to door from Rafael Núñez International Airport is about an hour. Leaving, allow three hours before your flight. Reserve the boat when you reserve the rooms, because it has limited capacity and an unreserved family of eight is a long wait on a dock.
The houses are open to the air. Simón Vélez and Gustavo Pinto designed them in guadua bamboo and timber, which is the point of the place and also means nature is audible at night. Rooms are air conditioned.
Sea access is direct and unguarded. There's no lifeguard and no marked swimming area, so with children in the group, someone is watching the water. We'd rather say that plainly than leave it for you to discover.
The house rules are short: no smoking, no pets, no events. A family taking the whole property for a week is a stay, not an event, but if you're planning anything with outside guests or suppliers, talk to us first.
Food, with children in the group
Our kitchen was built by Chef Silvestre Saiz Cortazar, born and trained in Ibiza and raised in the kitchens of Bogotá, and Pedro Mosqueda has since taken over as Executive Chef. On dietary requirements, a lot of us have been vegetarian or vegan at some point, so there is a decent offering for non-meat eaters, and lactose and gluten intolerance are both handled. Tell us the ages and the allergies when you book and the kitchen will plan around them.
Costs that aren't the room rate
Foreign residents pay no tax on hotel accommodation in Colombia. For Colombian residents, IVA is already included in the rate. We charge a resort fee of 20 USD per night. City hotels sit on public utilities; out here we make our own arrangements, which is what that fee covers.
Six rooms across three houses is the whole property. It doesn't take long to understand, and once you've seen how it splits, most families know within a minute which house is theirs.