Cartagena on one coast, coffee country in the middle. Start anywhere.
Which Rosario Islands boat stops long enough to actually snorkel. What a morning in Comuna 13 costs. Whether the salt mine at Zipaquirá is worth losing a day in Bogotá for. Reviews of every tour you can book in Colombia.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · Full-Day Rosario Islands Including Barú, Bocachica & Playa Blanca
Comuna 13, the walled city, the Rosario boats, the salt mine.
Four mornings that decide how the rest of the trip feels. What each one costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The Medellín morningComuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street FoodOutdoor escalators up the hillside, a wall of graffiti that explains the last thirty years, and arepas at the top.
02Day one, CartagenaHistoric Center and Getsemaní Shared Walking TourTwo hours inside the walls and through Getsemaní, the barrio where Cartagena stopped being a museum and went back to being a neighbourhood.
03Out to the RosariosRosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and SnorkelA catamaran out to the Rosario reefs with lunch and a snorkel stop. The one everybody books a week too late.
04The day out of BogotáSalt Cathedral Group Tour with PickupA cathedral cut two hundred metres down inside a working salt mine. Nothing else in the country looks remotely like it.
Medellín tells its own story now, and it starts in Comuna 13.
Everything in Medellín →
Six outdoor escalators climb a hillside the city could not police twenty years ago. Guides who grew up on those stairs walk you past the murals, and the same day can end on a paragliding ridge or a coffee farm an hour east.
Comuna 13, walked by somebody from it
The escalators, the murals and the hip-hop that came out of the same blocks. The guides are local and the story is theirs, which is the whole difference between this and a bus window.
Off the ridge above the valley
Twenty minutes over the Aburrá valley strapped to a pilot with a camera on a stick. Flights run on thermals, so the reliable window is before the cloud builds over the ridge.
A working finca, an hour east
Picking, pulping, drying, roasting, then drinking the result on a porch above the valley. The farms around Santa Elena and Jardín run these all year, rain or not.
Cartagena, Medellín, Bogotá, and five more worth the internal flight.
Walls on the Caribbean, a valley city that uses cable cars as public transport, a capital at nine thousand feet, and coffee farms in the middle of all of it. Eight starting points, and the best day out in each.
Catamaran, speedboat or a sailboat up the coast. Pick your hull.
Cartagena sends boats out to the reefs every morning, and the catamaran above is the one most people end up on. Three other kinds of day on the water, what it costs to board each one, and where it leaves from.
Colombia sells the world its coffee and keeps the good lots at home.
A finca day is picking, pulping, drying and roasting, then a cup of something that never leaves the country. The farms east of Medellín if you are short of time, Salento if you want the valley as well.
Inside the walls first, then straight back out to the water.
The old city takes an afternoon on foot and the fortress an hour. After that Cartagena is a departure point: boats to the Rosario reefs, the sand at Barú, a mud volcano up the coast, and a village an hour inland that has spoken its own language for four hundred years.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in Colombia.
Every tour we have reviewed in Colombia →The country’s most popular bookings, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
Join a small group of up to 10 with guides such as Natalia, Santiago, Martin, Melina, or Lina. Ride Medellín’s metro, cable car, and bus to Comuna 13, then explore murals, coffee, dance, street food, and hillside views. The four-hour tour includes transport, an arepa with cheese, and one drink.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
The Real Pablo Escobar Tour
from $42
3
Historic Center and Getsemaní Shared Walking Tour
from $12
4
Rosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and Snorkel
from $107
5
Bicycle City Tour
from $19
6
Comuna 13 True Story and Street Food Tour
from $14
7
Full-Day Rosario Islands Including Barú, Bocachica & Playa Blanca
from $88
8
Salt Cathedral Group Tour with Pickup
from $46
Bogotá is cold, high and far better than its reputation.
La Candelaria is painted, steep and walkable, the Gold Museum holds the finest pre-Columbian collection anywhere, and an hour north a cathedral sits deep inside a salt mine. Take the first day slowly. Nine thousand feet is not a rumour.
Every Bogotá day out →
Santa Marta is the door to Tayrona, and the boat beats the bus.
The park is an hour up the coast and the queue at the land gate can eat a morning; a sailboat drops you on the same beaches straight off the water. Inland, Minca sits in cloud forest with coffee, cacao and a waterfall on one track.
- 1Sailboat day tour to Tayrona Parkfrom $64
- 2Tayrona National Park Guided Tourfrom $77
- 3Tayrona Bay Sailboat tripfrom $60
A day out here, priced in dollars, end to end.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Half the best days here come in under what a taxi from the airport costs at home.
City walks, graffiti mornings, museum entries and the shared boats off the Cartagena pier.
Full days: the Rosario catamaran, a coffee finca with transport, Tayrona by sailboat, Zipaquirá and Guatavita.
Private guides, chartered boats, canyoning days and the flights that need a morning to themselves.
Three things that happen here and nowhere else on earth.
Beaches and colonial old towns run the length of the Caribbean. A cathedral hollowed out of a salt mine, a hillside that answered its own history in spray paint, and a town that has been free since 1600 do not.
The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá
Miners at Zipaquirá carved shrines into the halite tunnels to pray in before each shift, and the shrines grew into a cathedral. The chamber you walk through now opened in 1995, below the one the miners built, with fourteen stations of the cross cut into old galleries and a cross lit from behind in a nave hollowed out of rock salt. The whole thing is still inside a working mine.
- 1Salt Cathedral Group Tour with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,606 reviews
- 2Guatavita and Salt Cathedral Daily Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 615 reviews
- 3Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral and Lake Guatavita Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 551 reviews
The escalators of Comuna 13
Six flights of outdoor escalator run up a hillside that was the most dangerous address in the city within living memory. The city built them in 2011 so people could get home; the murals came afterwards, painted by people from the same blocks, and they are read as a record rather than decoration. Guides from the barrio walk it, which is why the tour is worth taking here and nowhere else.
- 1Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 9,046 reviews
- 2Comuna 13 True Story and Street Food Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,779 reviews
- 3Comuna 13 District Tour with Cable Car Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,467 reviews
San Basilio de Palenque
People who escaped the slave ships at Cartagena fortified a village in the hills behind it and held it, and in 1691 the Spanish crown gave up and recognised it as free. Palenque is still there, still dancing to drums that came off the same ships, and still speaking Palenquero, the only Spanish-African creole left in the Americas.
- 1Palenque´s tour, dance show, lunch, pick-Up inclu★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 182 reviews
- 2Tour a san Basilio de Palenque desde cartagena★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 123 reviews
- 3Palenque Tour and Road to Emancipation★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 83 reviews
Four of these run on a calendar nobody here controls.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast the same morning. These four answer to park closures, the moon and the weather, none of which take any interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Sailboat day tour to Tayrona ParkThe park shuts to visitors for several weeks each year while the four indigenous peoples who own the land hold their own ceremonies. Check the closure dates before you fix the coast leg.
- 02Full Day Barú island: Mangrove +Snorkel + Sunset + PlanktonThe plankton only glow on a properly dark night, so these runs follow the moon. Anywhere near a full moon there is nothing to see and the boats stay tied up.
- 03Rosario Islands Catamaran with Lunch and SnorkelThe island boats leave the Bodeguita pier in one morning wave and come back in one afternoon wave. Miss the departure and there is no second run.
- 04Paragliding Tour with GoPro Photos & VideosFlights go up on morning thermals and stand down when the afternoon cloud builds over the ridge. An early slot is the difference between flying and rebooking.
In the Andes the rain arrives around four, and it means it.
Bogotá, Medellín and the coffee towns run the same day: a bright morning, cloud from two, and a downpour that clears the streets by late afternoon. Do the outdoor half early and keep the rest under a roof. A gold collection, a roasting shed, a cacao kitchen, a cathedral deep inside a mountain of salt.
By place: two coasts, three big cities, one coffee belt
By kind of day — hull, hillside, kitchen or road
Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena: the run almost everybody does first.
ZipaquiráWhat went up on the site most recently.
Deeper into the new pile →
Private tour to the Salt Cathedral, Colombia’s first wonder
Read our review →
Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral & Andrés Carne de Res (Chía)
Read our review →
Wonders of Salt: Colombia’s Underground Cathedral
Read our review →
White Night Boat Party: Dinner Buffet, Dancing and Open Bar
Read our review →
Tayrona Park Hike Tour to Cabo San Juan: Private or Shared
Read our review →