The casa
A merchant's house that was never a hotel until 2008
Built in 1890 for a family in the coffee trade, sold in 1954, divided into flats, and put back together as eleven rooms half a century later.
Rooms
Eleven, around two patios
Built
1890, restored 2008
Walls
74 cm, so no air conditioning downstairs
Sea
Three blocks, on foot
32 m² · king · first patio
Habitación Patio
The room that opens straight onto the first patio, with the four-poster and the netting that everybody photographs and nobody needs in February.
Doors on the patio side and a high window on the street side: that was the ventilation plan of a house built in 1890, and it still works.
All four rooms
30 m² · king · second patio
Habitación Sierra
Second patio, shuttered on two sides, with the mountain light coming in from the south in the late afternoon.
It is the quietest of the four, since the second patio is cut off from the street.
All four roomsHow the house stays cool
Thick walls, high windows and two holes in the roof
The ground floor has no air conditioning, and after the restoration it still doesn't need any. The outside walls are seventy-four centimetres of lime and brick; the windows sit high; the two patios act as chimneys and pull the hot air straight up and out.
Upstairs is a different matter, and the four upper rooms do have units, because a flat roof over your head in April is not a theory.
Eating here
A long table in the second patio, a bar in the first
Breakfast and dinner under the arcade, a bar that opens at five, and eight tables on the roof from six.
The comedor runs along the north arcade of the second patio, which is in shade from eleven in the morning. Dinner is cooked by two sisters from Taganga and the fish is whatever came in at the beach that morning.
Upstairs, the azotea has the view: the Sierra on one side, the bay on the other, and in January you can see snow from a table where you are drinking something cold.
The gaming room
The casino is the east room off the second patio
Six tables, open Thursday to Sunday evenings. It is part of this house, and you reach it from inside, through the second patio.
Through the first patio, through the second, and the door in the east corner is the one. Perhaps sixty paces from reception, and a member of staff is on the door every hour the room is open.
Colombian law puts the age at 18. A cédula or a passport is checked at the door on every visit, and the staff set a limit with you before you sit down if you want one.
Where this is
Three blocks from the water, inside the old grid
Calle 17 is in the Centro Histórico, three blocks back from the seafront and two from the cathedral. The whole old town is walkable and most of it is closed to cars in the evening.
Simón Bolívar airport is about twenty-five minutes south. Tayrona park gates are an hour east on the Riohacha road.