Colombia has no single capital of travel. It has three.
What a walled-city walk costs in Cartagena, how long the Guatapé day really runs, which coffee farm morning is worth the drive out of Medellín. Reviews of every tour you can book in Colombia.
Comuna 13, the Rosario boat, a coffee morning, the salt mine.
Four bookings a first Colombian trip usually hangs off. What each one costs, and how long it really takes.
01The Medellín morningMedellin: Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street FoodStreet art, the cable car over the valley and food stops in Comuna 13, walked with guides who grew up in it.
02The Cartagena boat dayCartagena: Rosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and SnorkelOut to the Rosario Islands under sail, with lunch and a snorkel stop. Book it for a day you want to spend on the water.
03The Bogotá day tripZipaquirá: Salt Cathedral Group Tour with PickupA cathedral cut into a working salt mine at Zipaquirá, an hour north of the capital.
04The coffee morningMedellin: Coffee Tour with Transport, Snacks and TastingsA working farm above Medellín: picking, roasting, and a cup at the end that ruins the supermarket for you.
Cartagena for the coast, Medellín for the valley, Bogotá for the altitude.
Six bases worth a few nights each: the walled city on the Caribbean, the valley city with the cable cars, the capital at 2,600 metres, the Sierra Nevada coast, the coffee slopes and the city that dances. The best day out from each.
Reef, sand or sunset: the Caribbean day comes in three shapes.
Almost every Cartagena itinerary gives up one day to the sea, and the choice is really between snorkelling, lying on sand, and a deck at golden hour. What each one costs to board, and where it sails from.
Cartagena is a walled city that empties onto the water by ten.
Mornings belong to the old town, before the stone starts throwing the heat back at you. Afternoons belong to a boat: the Rosario reefs, the sand at Barú, or a deck pointed at the sunset with the walls going pink behind you.
Every Cartagena day out →
The days out more travellers take than anything else in Colombia.
Every Colombian tour we have reviewed →One country, three cities and a coffee belt. These are the bookings that come out on top, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Medellin: Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
Ride Medellín’s metro and cable car, trace Comuna 13’s graffiti stories, taste coffee and arepas, and enjoy a rooftop drink.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Medellín: The Real Pablo Escobar Tour
from $42
3
Cartagena: Historic Center and Getsemaní Shared Walking Tour
from $12
4
Cartagena: Rosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and Snorkel
from $107
5
Bogota: Bicycle City Tour
from $19
6
Medellín: Comuna 13 True Story and Street Food Tour
from $14
7
Full-Day Rosario Islands Including Barú, Bocachica & Playa Blanca
from $88
8
Zipaquirá: Salt Cathedral Group Tour with Pickup
from $46
The coffee everyone else drinks is grown on these slopes.
A farm morning is picking, pulping, drying and roasting, then a cup poured by the person who grew it. Near Medellín it is a half day with transport. In the Eje Cafetero around Salento it fills the whole day, wax palms included.
- 1Medellin: Coffee Tour with Transport, Snacks and Tastingsfrom $80
- 2Medellín Coffee Farm Tour with Trolley and Cable Car Ridefrom $56
- 3Coffee Tour at the Finca del Caféfrom $40
What a day out in Colombia actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Colombia is the rare country where the cheapest band holds some of the best days in it.
Old-town walks, Comuna 13 mornings, street food, bike tours and the cable car.
The full days: island boats, coffee farms with transport, the Salt Cathedral, Guatapé.
Private guides, paragliding over the valley, chartered decks and the diving out at San Andrés.
Three things Colombia has that nowhere else does.
Beaches and colonial streets belong to the whole Caribbean. A cathedral hollowed out of a salt mine, a valley of sixty-metre palms and a granite monolith with 700 steps up it do not.
The Salt Cathedral
Two hundred metres down inside a working salt mine at Zipaquirá, miners carved a cathedral out of the halite: fourteen stations of the cross cut into side chambers, then a nave with a cross lit from behind so the rock glows blue. It is a functioning church, busiest on Sundays when Colombian families come out from Bogotá, and it sits an hour north of the capital.
- 1Zipaquirá: Salt Cathedral Group Tour with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,606 reviews
- 2Bogota: Guatavita and Salt Cathedral Daily Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 615 reviews
- 3Bogota: Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral and Lake Guatavita Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 551 reviews
The Cocora Wax Palms
The quindío wax palm is the tallest palm on earth and Colombia made it the national tree. They stand sixty metres up out of open cloud-forest pasture in the Cocora Valley, which looks wrong in the best way, like the hills were built at the wrong scale. Jeeps leave Salento plaza in the morning; the loop takes most of a day and the cloud usually wins by early afternoon.
- 1From Salento: Cocora Valley Shared Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 246 reviews
- 2Salento: Private Cocora Valley, Salento & Coffee Farm Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 202 reviews
- 3Salento, Cocora and Filandia Private Tour from Pereira or Armenia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 90 reviews
El Peñol and Guatapé
A single granite monolith left standing when everything softer around it eroded away, with 700-odd steps zigzagging up a crack in its face. From the top the reservoir below breaks into a hundred green fingers. The town of Guatapé at its foot paints the lower half of every wall with zócalos, panelled reliefs showing what the family inside does for a living.
- 1Tour Guatapé★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 865 reviews
- 2Medellin: Guatapé Day Trip & Boat to Pablo Escobar’s Estate★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 365 reviews
- 3Medellín: Private Guatapé with Peñol Tickets and Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 256 reviews
Four Colombian days that run on somebody else’s timetable.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before over a plate of arepas. These four cannot: they run on boat departures, jeep schedules, mountain weather and a church calendar.
- 01Cartagena: Rosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and SnorkelThe shared boats leave Cartagena’s Bodeguita pier in one morning window and come back mid-afternoon. Miss the departure and there is no second run.
- 02From Salento: Cocora Valley Shared TourThe willys jeeps leave Salento’s plaza to a fixed morning schedule, and the cloud closes over the palms most afternoons.
- 03Zipaquirá: Salt Cathedral Group Tour with PickupIt is a working church before it is a sight. Sundays fill with Bogotá families and mass takes precedence over the tour.
- 04From Medellín: Paragliding Tour with GoPro Photos & VideosFlights over the valley go when the morning thermals allow and stand down when they do not. The early slots are the reliable ones.
Bogotá sits at 2,600 metres. Spend day one low.
Flying in from the coast puts you two and a half kilometres up in under two hours, and the first day usually comes with a headache and no appetite. Save Monserrate, at 3,150 metres, and anything with a climb in it for day two. Day one is for the old town, the museums and eating slowly.
Three old towns, three completely different walks.
Getsemaní is murals and doorway conversations, La Candelaria is colonial balconies climbing towards the mountain, and Comuna 13 is a hillside that rebuilt itself in paint. Same format, nothing else in common.
By place — coast, valley and capital
By kind of day — boat, farm, mural or mountain
Cartagena, Santa Marta, Medellín, the coffee slopes, Bogotá: the run most people do first.
GuatapéThe newest Colombian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Salento, Cocora+Filand PREMIUM PLAN. exit: Pereira/Armenia.
Read our review →
7-hour City Tour of Historic Bogotá with Monserrate
Read our review →
Village and Lake Guatavita Private Tour with Optional Lunch
Read our review →
Full Day Private Pablo Escobar Tour including Guatape
Read our review →
Barrio transformation and urban escalator of Comuna 13
Read our review →
From Medellín: Dream Hammocks, Zipline, & Waterfall Day Trip
Read our review →
