Colombia - perhaps the most diverse country in South America?

I'm sitting at my desk, my head still a little dizzy from jet lag. Nevertheless, I can't wait to report on our travel experiences from the 3-week trip to Colombia. We experienced incredibly much in this short time and got to know a country that is still stored in many people's minds as a dangerous country and is often associated mainly with drugs. These prejudices were certainly true at one time and still are to some extent, but a lot has changed in the last decades. During our trip we never felt unsafe - on the contrary: the diversity of the landscapes, the flora and fauna and the warm-hearted people made us very enthusiastic and we could enjoy very much. From colonial cities with cobblestone streets and flowered balconies to the green hills of the coffee zone to the Caribbean beaches - Colombia has soo much to offer and is a great travel destination! 

Welcome to Bogota, the refrigerator of Colombia

Our flight took us from Zurich via Madrid comfortably to Bogota, Colombia's capital and the third highest capital in the world. There we were not welcomed by the clichéd warm temperatures of South America, but by rather wintry ones. Not for nothing Bogota is also called "the refrigerator of Colombia"! 

A highlight in Bogota is the trip to the Cerro de Monserrate, Bogota's local mountain, located at 3150 m above sea level. With the Teleférico (cable car) you are quickly at the top and have a great view over the city in good weather. We recommend to do the same as the Bogotanos and to start the way down on foot. Again and again there are fantastic views, and there are also numerous snack bars along the way.   

The cultural center is La Candelaria, a historic district with colorful houses, cool restaurants and bars. 

Tips for Bogota

• The quarter La Candelaria. Grafities, colorful houses, good bars and the place where Bogota was founded - we liked it here! 
• The old town center with many palaces, museums, stores and restaurants
• Eating in Parque de las 93, a hip neighborhood with great restaurants. We had a wonderful meal in the restaurant K.O. (Asian) and in the Storia d'Amore (Italian).
• Take the Teleférico (cable car) to the Monserrate hill, there enjoy the view and afterwards walk down.
• Hotel: We stayed at the Hotel Bluedoors Luxury Suites Preferred, which is located in a business district and not far from the Parque de las 93. The hotel was very nice and the breakfast was one of the best we enjoyed! 

On to the legendary Medellin

The next stop was the next big city: the legendary Medellin, the second largest city in Colombia and 30 years ago one of the most dangerous cities in the world, known for Pablo Escobar, bombings and massacres. However, this is no longer true: the city has worked hard to shed its image and become a very cool city!  

To be honest: Medellin was one thing for us: very exciting because of its history. We can't quite share the opinion that it is the best city in Colombia, we liked Bogota just as much if not more. But maybe we would have needed more time to discover it. 

Our highlight was the ride on a Metrocable (cable car). With this one you glide up the mountain, over working-class neighborhoods forged on steep mountain slopes, until you have a brilliant view over the city. Suddenly the landscape changes and you float over green forests until you reach Parque Arvi, a nature reserve. What a ride! 

Guatapé

We treated ourselves to a day trip to the small town of Guatapé, two hours from Medellin. This place was farmland until Colombia flooded the area in the 1970s to build a dam. Guatapé is a beautiful town with colorful plazas and houses with zocalos, painted panels on the front of the houses.

The biggest highlight is the ascent of the Piedra de El Peñol , a 200 m high granite monolith. Climbing the more than 700 steps is exhausting, but absolutely worth it - from there you have a fantastic view of the reservoir and the various small islands. 

We also took a boat trip on the Guatapé Reservoir (Embalse Guatapé), passing the former villa of drug lord Pablo Escobar and the house of a famous Colombian soccer player (whose name I unfortunately forgot, since I'm not interested in soccer at all...).

Tips for Medellin

• Free Walking Tour: With a Free Walking Tour you have a first overview of the city and experience the most important sights, while a guide gives you exciting facts about the city. We took the Free Walking Tour from Real City Tours and learned a lot of exciting things! 
• Taking the Metro: Medellin has a great working metro network that can very well keep up with our European metros. Like that, you can get around cheap and fast! 
• Medellin from the bird's eye view: Take the Metrocable (cable car) and enjoy a view over Medellin from the bird's eye view. It's fascinating! The cable car starts in Acevedo (easily accessible by metro) and ends in Parque Arvi. 
• Dining: We really liked it in the trendy El Poblado neighborhood. There are many great, stylish restaurants here. We recommend the restaurant Zorba (great pizza, live music). 
• Take a day trip to Guatapé - a really nice city. And off course you should climb La Piedra de El Peñol and enjoy the view. 

Away from the big city - off into the green: The Zona Cafetera

After two huge cities we were definitely ready for some nature and so we got on a bus towards Pereira. The announced six hours turned into eight  hours, because we had to pass many construction sites and had to wait a long time. Nevertheless, the trip offered us wonderful insights into the country and the culture. 

Pereira is not a classic tourist destination, but we still liked it very much. The people here all seemed much more relaxed than in the cities, there are many great restaurants. The city is also a perfect starting point for various activities in the region. 

To explore the Zona Cafetera (coffee zone), we had arranged a 3-day guided tour in advance with Chapolera Tours. Together with guide André, we explored the wonderful area and got to places that were far off the beaten path. 

First stop was Salento, a small, picturesque, colorful village in the middle of the coffee zone. After a wonderful coffee at Jesus Martin, we strolled through the small town, which lies in the midst of beautiful green hills and lives from coffee production (and more and more from tourism). From there we jumped in the back of an old Willys Jeep and sped off to the famous Valle de Cocora, the valley where the largest palm tree in the world grows. It grows up to 60 m high! 

In one of our accommodations (called El bosque del Saman) we had the opportunity to get an introduction to coffee production. Ok, that we were put in traditional clothes was very touristy, but nevertheless the tour gave us a good insight about how coffee is extracted and produced. 

Another very beautiful village is Filandia. From the nearby starting point you have a magnificent view over the coffee zone! 

You may wonder what we ate in Colombia? Down here, you see a typical "Bandeja paisa" Veggie-style. This dish is normally served with meat, beans, egg, rice and plantains and you can get it in mostly every restaurant. 

We had no problems with the food - only as a vegetarian, the restaurant search was sometimes a bit difficult, because the cuisine is very meat-heavy. 

For breakfast, the classic dishes are scrambled eggs, fruit, pancakes and coffee, which you drink either "tinto" (black) or "con leche" (with milk). We also enjoyed the fruit juices - they come in all sorts of varieties, with water or milk. Our favorites: Passion fruit and Lulo, a fruit that we discovered for ourselves. 

Tips for the Zona Cafetera

• Where to stay: We stayed at Hotel Don Alfonso, an old city palace that has been lovingly converted into a hotel. Great rooms, very nice staff - we would have loved to stay here! 
• Book a guided Tour: We were on the road for three days with Chapolera Tours. We had customized our tour in advance and saw so much of the region. Our german-speaking guide André was great and everything worked out perfectly. We would recommend Chapolera Tour anytime!
• Visit the beautiful, colorful villages: Salento and Filandia are two beautiful, small villages that are now touristy but still retain a lot of charm. They are great places to have a coffee and go souvenir hunting. 
• Valle del cocora: No visit to the coffee zone without stopping by this valley. The landscape with the wax palms is simply unique! 
• Try your hand at picking coffee and learn about the coffee process. Most coffee haciendas offer such tours. Very exciting! 

Change of scenery: Off to the warmth - the Caribbean coast!

After the pleasantly cool days in the Zona Cafetera, it was on to the Caribbean coast - and the warmth! We flew to Cartagena. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said that Cartagena is the most beautiful city in the world. Perhaps he was right: The colonial center, enclosed by a 13 km long city wall, with its winding alleys, the balconies planted with bougainvilleas, the colorfully painted facades, the spacious squares and the old craftsmen's quarter Getsemani, and on the other side the modern part of the city that reminds a bit of Manhattan, characterize the cityscape. We were fascinated by this beautiful city! 

Look who we found randomly in a park in the middle of the city! 

A great way to see Cartagena is on a sunset cruise on a ship. We booked a two-hour tour and were amazed from the skyline that reminded us of New York.

Tips for Cartagena

• Where to stay: We slept at Casa Mara, a wonderful townhouse in the middle of the colorful Gethsemane neighborhood and very close to the city center, with a refreshing pool and good breakfast. We would love to come back! 
• Strolling through the streets of the old town: Cartagena is a city to stroll, so take it easy and just go with the flow
• Visit the museums: Unfortunately we did not have enough time to visit the many museums, but we heard a lot about them and they must be really good! Next time. 
• Take a Sunset Cruise. From the doc La Bodeguita, there are several operators that offer such cruises. It's worth it, because so you see Cartagena again from another side! 
• Day trip to an island: From Cartagena you can visit several islands. We chose Isla Mucura, but there are many others to choose from. 

Welcome to paradise - hello, Isla Mucura

Now it became really Caribbean - as the next stage of our trip we took the speedboat from Cartagena to Isla Mucura, a small coral island in the Caribbean Sea.

We stayed there at the Hotel Isla Mucura and enjoyed our bungalow with sea view, the warm weather and the sweet doing nothing for a few days - although: we are still not good at the latter, we did an activity at least once a day (snorkeling, plankton swimming, visiting the neighboring village). :-) 

It was a little paradise and soo relaxing, it was quite hard to leave! 

Parque Tayrona - a lost paradise on earth

Unbelievable how fast the time passed on our trip! Unfortunately, the last part of our trip was already upon us: Parque Tayrona.

We took the bus from Cartagena to Santa Marta and from there we took a cab to our last accommodation: the Playa Pikua Ecolodge in Guachaca. This one was also a paradise: A bungalow with an ocean view, built in such a way that inside you could hear all the sounds from outside: the screaming of the howler monkeys, the roar of the sea. It was just perfect! 

The next day we visited one of the biggest tourist destinations in Colombia: Parque Tayrona. A 120m2 nature reserve that looks like the lost paradise on earth: turquoise sea, fine sandy palm beaches, round monoliths, pelicans swooping down and many animals to see. Formerly the habitat of the Tayrona Indians, today the oldest and most popular national park in Colombia. 

After buying our tickets, we started our exploration. It was incredibly hot, but luckily the forest gave us some shade. We hiked along small trails, kept an eye out for animals, and after about two hours ended up on a beautiful beach where we cooled off in the sea. 

On the way there we hardly saw any animals. A small snake, some ant trails. A bit disappointed and not very optimistic we started the way back. And were taught better! When we heard rustling behind a bush, we stepped a little closer - and promptly a caiman shot out of the bushes. With open mouth it stood a few meters in front of us and hissed. With a huge fright we ran away. 

After we got over the first shock, we suddenly saw many more animals, especially different species of monkeys. 

That night we both struggled with bad dreams, obviously the caiman encounter was still in our bones. Nevertheless, we did not let it go and started a next adventure: to float with rubber tires on the San Diego River to the open sea (of course not without asking the guide beforehand whether crocodiles also swam in the river). 

Oh yes: We actually saw a croc. But fortunately from the boat! :-) 

Another nice excursion was the hike to the Valencia waterfall. On the way, you pass a river five times and pass small stalls of locals selling jewelry or coca tea until you finally stand in front of a multi-tiered waterfall. It did not take long and we plunged into the cool water! 

We spent the last few hours on the beach at our lodge, treating ourselves to a few more drinks (our favorite: the Coco Loco straight from the coconut). Then it was time to say goodbye to the warmth. By plane back to Bogota and from there to Switzerland. 

Tips for Parque Tayrona: 

• Where to stay: Highly recommended is the Playa Pikua Ecolodge in Guachaca. The bungalows are simple but very cozy, right on the beach and close to various restaurants and bars. An ideal location to do various activities, including visiting Parque Tayrona
• Visit the Parque Tayrona: This national park is simply a dream! Beautiful forests, animals, beach. Attention: It can get very hot, be sure to bring enough water! 
• Visit the Valencia Waterfalls: A beautiful walk and an even more beautiful waterfall! 
• Floating down the Don Diego with rubber tires: A leisurely activity that ends on a non-touristy beach.

Last but not least: Some general tips if you wanna visit Colombia: 

• Getting around: With only 3 weeks to go and such a huge country, we had to see how we could get around the fastest. We therefore took the plane for some routes. The flights are cheap and everything worked out great. We can also recommend traveling by local buses, you see more of the country and its people, but you have to sacrifice some comfort and expect delays. In the cities we often ordered cabs as well as Uber, which worked well. Uber are not available in all regions and of course not liked by cab drivers, but still very convenient. 
• Paying: Credit Cards are accepted at most spots, we didn't have any problems with it. Fun fact: You will always get asked if you want to pay in Cuotas (in rates), this seems to be a common thing in Colombia. 
• Safety: As already mentioned, we didn't have any problems with safety. Off course you have to be careful in big crowds and should avoid some areas or places in the dark. But with normal caution, you should be very fine.

We enjoyed our three weeks in Colombia very much. Time flew by and we saw so many different things - huge cities, great nature, beautiful beaches. Colombia is an incredible diverse country with fantastic people and you can notice that a lot of positive change is going on. It's really worth visiting and I am very curious how it will be in some years. Maybe it wasn't the last time I have been there. :-)