South AmericaColombiaColombia
Colombia is range over short distances, a Caribbean coast, Andean cities at altitude and a coffee landscape cut apart by three mountain ranges, so a four-hundred-kilometre hop is a flight rather than a drive. Three weeks for the standard corridor, December to March for the coast, pesos with a dollar sign, and no dar papaya as the rule.
ColombiaColombia in a nutshell
Where to go in Colombia
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Plan your adventure in Colombia
Our travel routes through Colombia
Colombia is loved by culture seekers and backpackers alike. We recommend several routes through this country, here they are in full!
4 nights4 days: Caño Cristales, July to October only
Bogota · Cano Cristales
Liquid rainbow only accessible July–October; July and August driest with full colour, September still good.
5 nights5 days, Amazon add-on from Bogotá
Bogota · Leticia · Amazon Colombia
Amazon lodges driest and most accessible July–August; July–August fewer insects and better wildlife visibility.
7 nights1 week, the Caribbean coast in seven days
Cartagena · Santa Marta · Tayrona
Clear Caribbean days and open Tayrona National Park; avoid February 1–15 closure and October–18 November.
10 nights10 days, Antioquia and the coffee region
Medellin · Guatape · Jardin
Medellín and coffee belt have two dry windows; Feria de las Flores peaks August, lowlands best December–March.
10 nights10 days: Bogotá, Boyacá and Santander
Bogota · Villa de Leyva · San Gil
Highland towns Villa de Leyva, San Gil, and Barichara driest and most stable December–March.
10 nights12 days: the south: desert, statues and salsa
Bogota · Tatacoa Desert · San Agustin
Tatacoa Desert and San Agustín driest December–March; Cali's salsa festival peaks September but October wettest.
13 nights2 weeks: the north, the way most people do it
Bogota · Medellin · Salento
Combines Medellín and Caribbean coast during dry season; Tayrona accessible except Feb 1–15 and Oct 19–Nov 2.
15 nights2 weeks, the trekker's coast
Santa Marta · Ciudad Perdida · Minca
Ciudad Perdida trek requires dry Andes; Tayrona accessible except Feb 1–15 and Oct 19–Nov 2.
20 nights3 weeks: the classic Bogotá to Cartagena, one-way
Bogota · Tatacoa Desert · Salento
Crosses Andes and Caribbean during driest window; Tayrona and Minca best accessed December–March.
35 nights4–5 weeks, the long way round
Bogota · Villa de Leyva · San Gil
Full loop from highlands to coast requires sustained Andes dry season; Ciudad Perdida and Tayrona both need December–March.
Updated August 2026 · 14 min read · Written by the Stippl editorsWe looked at how travellers actually plan Colombia on Stippl, across 101,000+ planned stops in Colombia.
Colombia is planned as a corridor from the capital to the coast, and most stops get 2 nights. Bogotá takes 15.6% of every Colombian stop planned on Stippl, the lowest gateway share in the region, because the trip is a chain rather than a base, and the named things are the four-day trek to Ciudad Perdida, the wax palms of Cocora, the Medellín cable car and Comuna 13, a coffee finca tour, the rock at Guatapé and Cartagena's walled city at dusk. Medellín, Cartagena, Santa Marta and Salento are the stops behind the capital.
Colombia is a country done on its own, and one people move through slowly. 33.2% of trips carrying Colombia on Stippl carry nothing else, the highest single-country share on the continent, with Peru the usual neighbour for the rest, 29% of stops are a single night, low for a chain, because the mountains make every hop a day. Most travellers plan it about 77 days ahead.
So give the standard corridor three weeks, bus anything under seven hours and fly the Andes-to-Caribbean jump, learn enough Spanish to order and ask directions, and ask the hostel which streets to avoid. Skip hailing a taxi in the street, since the app is the known company, and skip accepting drinks or flyers from strangers, because that is the documented drugging route rather than a folk tale.
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Download the appWho Colombia is for
South America first-timers
The Bogotá, coffee region, Medellín and Caribbean corridor is a dense hostel trail where the logistics are already solved by everyone ahead of you.
Coffee people
An entire UNESCO-listed landscape of working farms, with the bean-to-cup tour the standard regional experience rather than a novelty.
Multi-day trekkers
Cocora's wax-palm loop, the four-to-five-day Ciudad Perdida trek, Minca's ridges and the páramos above Bogotá.
Salsa and nightlife travellers
Cali is the salsa capital where people take classes for weeks, and Medellín and Cartagena carry the going-out.
Budget travellers
Food, lodging and activities are cheap by South American standards, and transport is the cost outlier because of distance and flights.
Single-country travellers
33.2% of Stippl trips carrying Colombia carry nothing else, the highest on the continent, because three weeks here is a trip in itself.
Slow chain travellers
29% of Colombian stops on Stippl are a single night, low for a chain, because the mountains make every hop a day.
Maybe not for you: travellers who want short hops and no flying, since the three cordilleras turn a four-hundred-kilometre pair into a nine-hour road; and anyone unwilling to stay alert in the cities, because the route is fine and the neighbourhoods are not all.
The best time to visit Colombia
The main dry season
December to March
The window every guide names, with clear Caribbean days, the best odds on the Cocora hike and the season for beaches, diving and carnival, and the most expensive and crowded stretch.
The second dry season
July to August
Real inland but not on the coast, which is in its rainy half, so good for the Andes, the coffee region and Bogotá, and the window for Caño Cristales.
The first rains
April to May
The Andean first wet season, greener and cheaper, with rain that in Bogotá arrives as an afternoon event rather than an all-day one.
The second rains
September to November
The heavier of the two, peaking in October and hitting the Andes and the Caribbean hardest, and the weeks when the park closures cluster.
- Most stops in Colombia get 2 nights on Stippl, and 29% are a single night. Three weeks is the standard trip, two covers the north only, and eight sees the country properly.
- Most travellers plan Colombia about 77 days ahead on Stippl, and 22.7% more than six months out. The Ciudad Perdida trek and the coast at Christmas are what the lead time buys.
- The long weekends are domestic. Around fifteen public holidays fall on a Monday or a Friday, and Salento, Guatapé, Cocora and the islands fill with Colombian families every one of them.
- The interior and the coast run different calendars. The Andes have two wet and two dry seasons, the Caribbean one of each, so July suits Bogotá and the coffee region and not Cartagena.
- Ciudad Perdida closes for the whole of October. Every year, for the Indigenous communities' ceremonies, with the operators restarting departures at the end of the month.
- Tayrona closes three times a year. Two weeks in February, two in June and two around the end of October, and its opening is not guaranteed even outside them.
Add your Colombia dates and we'll flag the weather per stop
Stippl shows the season, crowds and prices for every place on your route.
Festivals, and when to avoid them
Carnaval de Barranquilla
UNESCO-listed and by one account the second-largest carnival in South America, four days before Lent with the parades on the Saturday. Book accommodation and even restaurants far ahead, or watch it from Cartagena.
Semana Santa
Holy Week, with Popayán's processions the famous ones, full buses, closed offices and domestic travel at scale. Book everything, or sit it out in one place.
Feria de las Flores
Medellín's flagship festival, with the flower-carrier parade and a week of concerts, and the city's rooms gone for it. Come for it with a booking; the coffee region is dry the same week.
Festival Mundial de Salsa
Cali's world salsa festival, the reason to time a Cali stop precisely, with the competitions and the open-air stages. A reason to be in Cali that week and nowhere else.
Día de las Velitas
Candles and paper lanterns across the country on the eve of the Immaculate Conception, with Bogotá's Plaza Bolívar the showpiece. Nothing to avoid; an evening to be outside.
The holiday season
The domestic high season, when hotel and flight prices rise, Tayrona and the coffee towns fill and city families return to their fincas. Book months ahead, or arrive in late January.
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Things to do in Colombia
The trek to Ciudad Perdida
Four or five days through Sierra Nevada jungle, river crossings and Indigenous villages to twelve hundred stone steps and the terraces of a city older than Machu Picchu.
The Valle de Cocora
The wax-palm cloud forest above Salento, home of the world's tallest palms at up to sixty metres, reached by jeep from the plaza and walked as a loop.
The Medellín cable car and Comuna 13
A gondola built as public transport for the hillside barrios, and a resident-run street-art tour of a neighbourhood that was among the city's most violent.
A coffee finca tour
Pick, process and drink your own cup on a working farm, in the standard two-hour version that exists in every coffee town.
La Piedra del Peñol and Guatapé
Six hundred and seventy-five steps up a granite monolith over a reservoir, then the most colourfully painted village in the country.
Cartagena's walled city at dusk
The colonial core late in the afternoon when the heat breaks and the musicians come out, then Plaza de la Trinidad in Getsemaní from about eight.
What to eat in Colombia
cornmeal cake, the national staple, stuffed with cheese, egg, avocado, chicken or chorizo; naturally gluten-free
a platter of red beans, rice, pork belly, ground meat, chorizo, fried egg, plantain, arepa, avocado and a token salad, big enough that a group of eight can share four
the capital's chicken, potato and corn soup, served with capers and cream
hot chocolate with a chunk of cheese dunked in it, plus bread for dipping
Andean trout, usually in a creamy garlic sauce with a plantain crisp; also the lake fish of Guatapé
coastal raw-fish preparation; a street-stall portion costs a fraction of the restaurant version
fried whole fish, coconut rice, patacones and salad, hard to find away from the coast
beef in a sauce built on Worcestershire and Coca-Cola; essentially a Cartagena-only dish
roasted large-bottomed ants, a Santander delicacy
savoury fried cheese-dough balls, the standard snack
juice of a small sour orange fruit, like passion fruit crossed with lime, often blended with milk
the small, cheap filter coffee most Colombians actually drink, all day, at every income level
Afro-Caribbean coconut seafood stew of the archipelago
the national anise firewater, shared by the carton
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Colombian customs and what not to do
No dar papaya
Do not hand anyone an easy opening, the organising principle of Colombian public life and the frame for every safety decision.
Friendliness is social
Expect to be pulled into dancing whether or not you can, and to be offered a share of a carton of aguardiente by people you met an hour ago.
Usted is the default
Much more widely used than elsewhere in Latin America, including between friends and family, especially in Bogotá and the interior, and never wrong.
Music is everyday
Salsa in Cali, vallenato and reggaetón in Medellín and street music in Guatapé are daily life rather than performance, and football sits beside them.
Escobar tours are contested
The accounts conflict, there is no authoritative record and some tours sell a myth, so the street-art and history tours are the version the city itself runs.
Ciudad Perdida is sacred ground
The Kogi, Wiwa, Arhuaco and Kankuamo communities still live around it, and the authorised local guides are the only way in.
Do
- Say usted until invited otherwise, and answer gracias with con mucho gusto
- Learn enough Spanish to order and ask directions; it changes the trip and the safety margin
- Ask hostel and hotel staff which specific streets to avoid
- Tip guides on walking tours and the trek; they run on tips, separate from the restaurant ten percent
- Pay for photographs of Cartagena's palenqueras before taking them
Don't
- Buy drugs; the legal risk is severe and it is a live source of danger
- Accept drinks, cigarettes, food or flyers from strangers; that is the drugging route
- Hail a taxi in the street; book through the app
- Photograph military or government sites; it is illegal
- Book an unregulated ayahuasca retreat; the documented harm is serious
What a Colombia trip costs
Budget
€26–39
A hostel dorm, the set lunch twice a day, local buses and colectivos, free walking tours and one paid entry.
Mid-range
€50–95
A private room or a boutique hostel, restaurant meals, an internal flight every week or so and guided day trips.
High-end
€155+
Design hotels and eco-lodges, private transfers, guided multi-day trips and the Ciudad Perdida trek without flinching.
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Visas, pesos and getting around
Entry & visa
Ninety days, free
Nationals of around a hundred countries including the UK, the EU, the US, Canada and Australia enter visa-free for tourism, with the online pre-registration filled in before the flight.
Money
Pesos, with a dollar sign
The peso is written with the dollar sign, the single most common price misreading, and cards work in the cities with cash for the buses and the towns.
Connectivity
An eSIM, as a safety tool
Mobile data is treated as safety as much as convenience for maps, ride-hailing and emergency contact, and the offline maps are downloaded before arrival.
Getting around
Bus short, fly the Andes
The mountains make the Andes-to-Caribbean jump fourteen hours by road against an hour in the air, and the budget airlines fly hand-luggage-only for less than the bus.
Health
Yellow fever, and the outbreak
The certificate is required only from a few countries, but there is an active outbreak reaching the coffee region and the vaccination is recommended.
Water
Bogotá only
Tap water is safe to drink only in the capital, and everywhere else the water is bottled and the ice avoided.
Tipping
Ten percent, and voluntary
The ten percent on the restaurant bill has a legal basis and is genuinely voluntary, declined with sin propina, and the guides are tipped separately.
Power & plugs
Types A and B, 110 volts
North American plugs on North American voltage, the inverse of the usual European trap, so Europeans pack an adapter and Americans nothing.
Language
Spanish, and little English
Very few Colombians speak English, and enough Spanish to order and ask directions changes both the trip and the safety margin.
Colombian Spanish worth knowing
Nobody expects you to speak the language, which is exactly why a handful of words goes so far.
BWEH-nas
The catch-all hello that works at any hour · Buenas
keh MAHS
How's it going, a greeting rather than a question · Qué más
kon MOO-cho GOO-sto
You're welcome, the Colombian answer to gracias · Con mucho gusto
ah lah OR-den
At your service, called out by shopkeepers and waiters · A la orden
meh reh-GAH-lah oon kah-FEH
May I have a coffee, the polite formula · Me regala un café
keh PEH-nah
Sorry, how embarrassing, the Colombian apology · Qué pena
seen pro-PEE-nah por fah-VOR
Without the tip, please, legal and normal · Sin propina, por favor
lah KWEN-tah por fah-VOR
The bill, please · La cuenta, por favor
KWAN-toh VAH-leh
How much is it? · Cuánto vale
oon mo-men-TEE-koh
Just a moment, and the diminutive is the Colombian tell · Un momentico
TEEN-toh
The small filter coffee everyone drinks all day · Tinto
noh dar pah-PAH-yah
Don't hand anyone an easy opening, the national maxim · No dar papaya
Colombia questions, answered
Route-level yes on the standard trail, with real neighbourhood-level caveats: the advisories restrict specific departments and border zones and leave the coffee region untouched, and the four documented crime patterns are drugging by strangers' drinks and flyers, express kidnapping from street taxis, phone theft and robbery after dark. The hostel names the streets.
Three is the standard trip and covers Bogotá, the coffee region, Medellín and the Caribbean, two covers the north only, and eight sees the country properly. Most stops in Colombia get 2 nights on Stippl and 29% are a single night. Put the corridor into Stippl with the flight at the mountain crossing, then ask people in subreddits like r/ColombiaTravel where they would add a fourth week.
Bus anything under about seven hours and fly the Andes-to-Caribbean jump, which is fourteen to sixteen hours overland against an hour and a quarter in the air. The flights are cheap hand-luggage-only and often beat the bus on price, and the airlines that folded a few years ago still appear in older guides.
No. It sits on Kogi, Wiwa, Arhuaco and Kankuamo ancestral land inside an archaeological park, independent trekking is not permitted, and the four-or-five-day trek runs with authorised operators at a fixed price. The park closes for the whole of October every year for the communities' ceremonies.
December to March is the driest window nationwide, with July and August a second dry window inland but not on the coast. Most travellers plan Colombia about 77 days ahead on Stippl, and the Christmas fortnight is the stretch to avoid for crowds and prices.
Mostly alone: 33.2% of trips carrying Colombia on Stippl carry nothing else, the highest single-country share on the continent, because three weeks here is a trip in itself, and Peru is the usual neighbour for the rest.
Every guide is written by the Stippl editors and checked against the trips our travellers actually plan. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
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