San Andrés

San Andrés sits closer to Nicaragua than to the rest of Colombia by a wide margin, about 190 kilometers off the Nicaraguan coast versus roughly 775 kilometers from mainland Colombia. That geography made the island's sovereignty a genuine point of dispute for decades, one the International Court of Justice addressed in a 2012 ruling that kept San Andrés and its surrounding islands under Colombian control while shifting some of the surrounding maritime waters toward Nicaragua, with a further ruling on fishing rights following in 2022.

The island's culture reflects a history separate from mainland Colombia in more than just geography. British settlers arrived in the 1600s, followed by enslaved Africans brought to work plantations under both British and later Spanish control, and the resulting Raizal community developed its own English-based Creole language, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, still spoken alongside Spanish and standard English today. Many Raizal families are Protestant, another contrast with the Catholic majority on the Colombian mainland.

The water surrounding San Andrés has earned the nickname Mar de los Siete Colores, the Sea of Seven Colors, for the visible gradient running from pale turquoise near the shore to deep blue further out, a result of the shallow reef shelf surrounding the island. Johnny Cay, a small sandy islet a short boat ride from San Andrés town, and the Aquario reef nearby are the two most common stops for a half-day out on the water.

San Andrés has operated as a free port since 1953, when Colombia designated it duty-free to boost the local economy, and the town center still carries that legacy through a dense strip of electronics and goods shops that draws mainland Colombian shoppers alongside beach tourists.

The surrounding waters form part of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-designated marine protected area covering one of the largest coral reef systems in the Caribbean, and divers who venture beyond the shallow Aquario reef find a considerably larger barrier reef system with visibility that regularly exceeds 30 meters.