The Rosario Islands: What They Are, and What a Day There Costs

The Rosario Islands are not a resort strip an hour from Cartagena. They are the core of a national park that holds most of Colombia’s continental-shelf coral, and since March 2026 you cannot legally enter without an insurance policy that almost no tour listing mentions. This page is about what the islands actually are, the three separate charges a day there involves in 2026, and the difference between a boat that is allowed to take you and one that is not.

Written September 2026 by the Safe Transfers Colombia team, who run this crossing. Park figures, rules, fees and the insurance requirement are Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia’s own; the list of authorised departure docks is the maritime authority Dimar’s. Fees are reviewed annually, so confirm before you travel.

What the Rosario Islands actually are

An archipelago of small coral islands and cays about an hour south-west of Cartagena, 23 kilometres from the city, sitting on a reef platform. Since 1977 they have been the heart of a protected marine area, the Parque Nacional Natural Los Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo, which today covers 123,393.67 hectares of coral reef, seagrass meadow and mangrove across the departments of Bolívar and Sucre.

Two numbers explain why the rules are what they are. The park holds roughly 84% of the coral reefs on Colombia’s continental shelf, and in 2025 it collected $4.692 millones COP in entry fees, which is what funds its monitoring, its control and surveillance, its environmental education and its coral restoration. When a boat leaves from an unauthorised dock and its passengers never pay, that is the budget it comes out of. Parques Nacionales has said so in plain terms.

The islands themselves are privately held in part and community-held in part, with the Consejo Comunitario de Islas del Rosario an active partner in the park’s work. What you visit as a day-tripper is a handful of the larger islands with beach clubs and hotels, plus the reef in between. If you are still deciding how the week fits together, things to do in Cartagena sets out the whole city by how far you have to travel for each part of it.

What a day there actually costs in 2026

Almost every tour listing quotes one price and mentions “park taxes payable on the day”. Here is what those actually are. All three are separate from whatever you paid for the boat.

None of this is a scam and none of it is negotiable. What it means in practice is that a boat trip advertised at one price will cost more than that price by the time you are standing on an island, and an operator who has not told you about the third line is either out of date or hoping you will not notice.

The insurance requirement almost nobody mentions

Since 1 March 2026, an accident and assistance policy has been compulsory to enter the Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo park. It was introduced by Parques Nacionales Naturales under Resolution 273 of 2024, and it applies alongside Tayrona, Los Nevados, El Cocuy and other marine-coastal areas.

• What it covers. Accident and assistance: immediate specialist attention inside the protected area, rescue and medical transport, on-site care, and the associated costs if something goes seriously wrong.
• Who sells it. Two insurers won the public tender: Positiva Compañía de Seguros, working with Magenta Seguros, and Aseguradora Zurich. It is bought through them or through your operator, not at the dock as an afterthought.
• What happens without it. The park director’s words are that whoever lacks the compulsory insurance cannot enter, as a measure to protect their own safety. Checks are run at Playa Blanca, on Barú and at other entry points.
• Why it exists. The park has built out an emergency response it now expects to use: eleven first-aid posts, ground ambulances and a medical response boat covering five islands.

This is the single most useful thing to know before booking an island day in 2026, because it is recent enough that a large share of the listings you will read were written before it existed.

The seven docks that may legally carry you

The maritime authority Dimar authorises exactly seven docks in Cartagena for commercial passenger transport:

• Muelle de La Bodeguita — the main tourist dock, next to the walled city, and where the tourist information and tourism police points are.
• Muelle de Madera – Pegasos
• Club Náutico
• Club de Pesca
• Marina Rosales
• Marina Santa Cruz
• Marina Náutica Integral

Dimar keeps inspectors permanently at the authorised docks to check documentation and safety compliance. A departure from anywhere else — a beach, a jetty, a man with a laminated sheet — is not covered by any of that. There is no passenger list, no insurance, and nobody to complain to, and it is the practice Parques Nacionales has publicly blamed for the revenue gap that funds the reef work.

Which island you actually end up on

People say “the Rosario Islands” as if it were one place. A day trip lands you on one or two of a handful, and they are not interchangeable.

On a shared boat you get whichever islands the operator has an arrangement with, in the order and for the time the timetable says. On a private boat you choose, which is the only real argument for the extra cost. Our own version is the Rosario Islands private boat day trip, which puts the reef first and the beach last.

The Oceanario, and the thing to decide before you book it

The Oceanario Islas del Rosario sits on San Martín de Pajarales, inside the park. It holds more than 1,400 animals of some 140 Caribbean species — turtles, seahorses, sharks, rays, reef fish, invertebrates — and as of April 2026 adult entry was around $40.000 COP, with children aged 2 to 10 around $30.000 COP, transport not included.

It is also a dolphin show. The performances with trainers are the headline attraction, alongside shark feeding. Captive cetacean display is contested, in Colombia and everywhere else, and that is a decision to make before you buy rather than at the gate. If it is not for you, say so when you book: plenty of island days go nowhere near it, and a snorkelling morning over living reef is a different and, for our money, better use of the same hours.

Cholón, and the order that followed the deaths there

Cholón is a shallow bay on the Barú side where boats raft up around floating bars. It is loud, it is busy, and it is the part of an island day that people either love or want removed from the itinerary. It is also where Cartagena’s boat-versus-swimmer problem has been at its worst.

In October 2025 the Tribunal Administrativo de Bolívar gave the Distrito de Cartagena and the maritime authority Dimar sixty days to physically separate swimming areas from boat traffic — buoys, signage and vertical markers to universal standards — at Bocagrande, Castillogrande, El Laguito, Marbella, Manzanillo del Mar, Playa Blanca, Tierra Bomba and Cholón. The ruling came out of a popular action brought by Fundación Leypoar, and it cited deaths: a 28-year-old man killed by boat propellers at Cholón in June 2024, and a 21-year-old woman struck by a yacht in the same waters in 2019. The tribunal’s finding was that the absence of proper marking exposes swimmers to constant risk of collision.

The San Bernardo islands, which are not the same trip

The same national park covers a second archipelago further south, the Islas de San Bernardo — Múcura, Tintipán, Santa Cruz del Islote and their neighbours. They are quieter, less developed and, for many people, better. They are also not a Cartagena day trip: the practical approach is from Santiago de Tolú, about 35 kilometres to the north-east of them, or as an overnight from Cartagena rather than a there-and-back.

The park entry fee for the San Bernardo sector is lower, at $11.000 COP against $13.500 COP for the rest of the protected area. If you have two days and you want the version of these islands without the day-boat traffic, this is where to spend them.

The reef, honestly

What you are snorkelling over is the reason the park exists, and it is under pressure. The Caribbean’s Acropora corals — the branching, fast-growing species that used to build the shallow framework of these reefs — have collapsed across the region, and Colombia’s are no exception. Warming water, bleaching, disease and sediment carried out of the Canal del Dique have all played a part.

The response is one of the larger coral restoration efforts in the Americas. Under the national programme Un Millón de Corales por Colombia, working across twelve reef areas on both coasts, more than 735,000 fragments of over 30 coral species have been produced in nurseries and more than 91,000 transplanted back onto reefs. In the Rosario park itself the work runs off Isla Grande’s barrier, with brain coral larvae raised in the lab and settled onto the reef — a partnership between Ecomares, Parques Nacionales, the Oceanario, Diving Planet, SECORE International, Universidad del Magdalena and the Consejo Comunitario de Islas del Rosario.

Two honest conclusions follow. The water here is still clear enough and the reef still alive enough to be worth the crossing — this is the best accessible reef snorkelling in Colombia. And the rules about not touching, not standing on and not taking anything are not decoration; they are the difference between a reef that recovers and one that does not.

The rules that apply to you

These are the park’s own conditions of entry, not our suggestions.

• No single-use plastic inside the protected area.
• Do not touch or stand on coral, and take nothing with you: no shells, no starfish, no coral fragments.
• Do not eat endangered species. Goliath grouper, sea turtle and queen conch are all protected and all still appear on informal menus.
• Life jacket on while the boat is moving, and sit down.
• An induction briefing before you enter the area.
• Valid identification and your insurance policy. Both are checked.
• Yellow fever vaccination is recommended by the park, though not required for entry.

How the day actually works

The shape is the same whichever boat you take, and knowing it removes most of the surprises.

• Departure is between 8 and 10 in the morning. That is the park’s own window, and the return time is decided by the port authority and the sea rather than by your operator.
• The crossing is about 45 minutes to an hour to the Rosario group, depending on the boat and the water.
• You pay the dock fee before boarding and the park fee on arrival. Carry cash in pesos for both; card infrastructure on the islands is thin.
• Snorkelling happens at the reef stops, not off the beach clubs. Bring your own mask if you are particular about fit, because rental gear is a lottery.
• Lunch is usually on an island and usually included or fixed; if it is not, agree the price before anything arrives, as you would anywhere on this coast.
• The sea decides. From December to March the trade winds make the crossing choppy and days do get cancelled. A cancelled crossing is a captain doing his job.

Two scheduling rules are worth more than any packing list. Do not put a full-day boat trip the day before an early flight, because a delayed return plus a departure transfer is the combination that ruins a week — our Cartagena airport guide covers that run. And do not try to do the reef and a long lazy beach day properly in the same eight hours; if the beach is what you want, Cartagena’s beaches explains why Barú by road beats a boat for that.

Questions travellers ask

How much does it cost to go to the Rosario Islands?

Beyond the boat, three charges in 2026: park entry at $13.500 COP for the Rosario sector, a dock fee of $18.000 COP taken by Corpoturismo, and a compulsory accident policy set by the insurer. Ask any operator whether their price includes all three, because most listings quote only the boat.

Do you need insurance for the Rosario Islands?

Yes. Since 1 March 2026 an accident and assistance policy has been compulsory to enter the Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo park, under Resolution 273 of 2024. It is sold by Positiva with Magenta Seguros and by Zurich, it is separate from the entry fee, and the park’s position is that without it you do not go in.

Are the Rosario Islands worth it?

For the reef, yes — it is the best accessible snorkelling in Colombia and the park holds about 84% of the coral on the country’s continental shelf. For a long white beach, no: the islands are small and their sand comes in strips. That beach is Playa Blanca on Barú, and you can drive to it in an hour.

Is Playa Blanca part of the Rosario Islands?

No. Playa Blanca is on the Barú peninsula, reachable by road, and it gets bundled into island day trips because it is on the way back. If a cheap island tour spends most of the day there, you paid for a boat trip and received a beach transfer.

Where do boats to the Rosario Islands leave from?

Seven docks in Cartagena are authorised by the maritime authority Dimar for commercial passenger transport: La Bodeguita, Muelle de Madera–Pegasos, Club Náutico, Club de Pesca, Marina Rosales, Marina Santa Cruz and Marina Náutica Integral. La Bodeguita is the main tourist one. A boat leaving from anywhere else has no passenger list and no insurance.

How long does it take to get to the Rosario Islands?

About 45 minutes to an hour by boat from Cartagena, with departures between 8 and 10 in the morning. The return time is set by the port authority and the sea conditions, which is why a full-day trip the day before an early flight is a bad idea.

Sources: park area of 123.393,67 hectares, the share of Colombia’s continental-shelf reefs, entry fees for the Rosario and San Bernardo sectors, the compulsory accident insurance under Resolution 273 of 2024 in force from 1 March 2026, the approved insurers, the emergency response network and the conditions of entry — Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia, from its park page and its own press office. The seven authorised commercial passenger docks, and the enforcement presence at them — Dirección General Marítima (Dimar), reported by El Universal, together with the $18.000 COP Corpoturismo dock fee and the $4.692 millones COP collected in park fees in 2025. The Tribunal Administrativo de Bolívar order of October 2025 requiring swimmer and boat separation at eight locations including Cholón, the popular action brought by Fundación Leypoar and the fatalities cited — reported by El Tiempo and Infobae, newspapers rather than primary legal sources. Coral restoration figures for Un Millón de Corales por Colombia and the Isla Grande work — Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia and the Ministerio de Ambiente; the regional decline of Acropora is reported by Mongabay. Oceanario collection, ticket prices and content, April 2026 — El Universal. Everything about how the day runs, what the crossing is like and where the friction is comes from the Safe Transfers Colombia team. Fees, rules and insurance requirements change: confirm before you travel.