Helping can also be fun. Experience the beautiful Tierrabomba island in Cartagena, its beaches, its people, while helping the community to solve their challenges.

About us

"Help Tierrabomba" is an initiative led by Vista Heroica, a exotic huts hotel located in the center of Tierrabomba village, in the island of Tierrabomba, which is located just a mile from Cartagena de Indias (Colombia´s hottest touristic destination). Usually hotels that settle in poor areas create a bubble that separate guests from its surroundings, to avoid making guest feel uncomfortable. Vista Heroica, has used a different approach; its guests while have a beautiful quiet place to rest and disconnect on their vacations, have also an opportunity to interact with locals. On this interaction, many guests have fallen in love with the people of Tierrabomba and have gotten involved in different projects to help this village. Because of this constant desired of our guest to get involved in projects and to help Tierrabomba´s people, this website was created; to provide a space to explain what we do, how we do it and how to get involved. 

What we seek

We seek to improve the life of people of Tierrabomba with your help. We seek to create social projects sustained by voluntary tourism, so you can mix relaxation and beach time with improving these people's lives.

 Contact us

About Tierrabomba

Tierrabomba is an island located 1 mile south of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The island has approximately 10.000 inhabitants, distributed in 4 small villages: Caño del Oro, Punta Arena, Bocachica y Tierrabomba. This island, even though is just 10 minutes by boat from Colombia’s hottest touristic destination and home of world class conventions and summits, is a very poor island. People of Tierrabomba are slave’s descendents that worked on the colonial companies that used to operate there and finally stayed on the island to call it home. The island has beautiful beaches and great ocean life around it, making it a place with great potential for touristic activities and attractions.

Even though the island has great potential, the lack of coverage and good quality education, the lack of opportunities and investment on the island makes and improvement of the quality of life a distant reality. The government has forgotten this island for years and keeps promising things on campaigns to later forget when elected. The ocean that separates the island from Cartagena seems wider when it comes to social and economic assistance. Tierrabomba has critical health issues created by the lack of potable water, dysfunctional or absence of septic tanks, no sewerage and poor medical assistance.

 “Tierrabomberos” (people of Tierrabomba) have two main occupations; they are either fisherman or work in tourism. Both occupations are affected by either climate conditions or seasons, making earning a living an everyday struggle. Tierrabomba’s culture, its heritage is fading away; kids want to learn how to drive a boat or to fish and girls want to learn how to massage or make hairdressing beads, since are pretty much the only options they seem to have in a future, leaving no space for dancing, singing and other cultural expressions.

 This project seeks to create new opportunities in the island through tourism, a tourism that will not only cherish but also support local cultural expressions.


Projects

- Teaching english.

- Building a computing center.

- Eco-building.

- Dancing show.