One Santuario Hotel y Reserva Natural

Located in a beautiful jungle setting, the accommodation provides modern facilities, friendly staff, and amazing food. However, some may find the location too remote.

If The Modern Parents from Viz had won both the lottery and MasterChef this would be what they did next. Stunning location. Fantastic rooms. Outstanding food. The road to the hotel is worthy of a Top Gear special - impassible by most taxis, you’ll need to arrange to get picked up in Palomino but you’ll have to have done that BEFORE you set off because there is zero signal on the road through the jungle from Santa Marta (they should tell you that). There are a load of dogs on site, along with the usual accompaniments (they should tell you that). There are a range of ‘ritual’ treatments available but nothing effective to get rid of the bugs - they make their own repellent, which does the opposite, so you might want to bring your own (they should tell you that). Beautiful outdoor bathrooms are private but lack doors or hot water (they should tell you that). The staff are absolutely lovely, but ultimately useless at getting anything urgent done. We asked them (having been travelling for a week in less glamourous spots) to wash some clothes for us one day. We checked the next day if they were dry, and (obviously having forgotten about it) they said ‘they’d be dry in a couple of hours’ and delivered them back to us in bags just before we left. When we got the the next place we took the bags out of our luggage to discover everything beautifully folded, socks balled up in pairs, but still dripping wet! Nice. I’d probably go back but would be much better prepared.