Cartagena, Medellín, Bogotá. Reviewed tour by tour.
Which Rosario Islands boat is a real day out and which is four hours of selling. What a coffee finca morning costs before lunch is added. Which Comuna 13 walk is guided by someone from Comuna 13. Read the reviews, then book.
Colombia comes down to three cities, a coast and a coffee valley.
Cartagena, Medellín and Bogotá carry four fifths of everything bookable in the country, with Santa Marta and the coffee towns behind them. Plan around that rather than the map.
Cartagena runs on boats, walls and the hour before dinner.
The old city fits inside a morning. The islands take the whole day, and the catamarans leave early because the wind gets up after two. Keep the last hour of light for the ramparts and eat late in Getsemaní, the way the city does.
What a day out in Colombia actually costs.
Every reviewed tour sorted by its starting price, with the most-reviewed pick in each band. A good Colombian day out starts below the fare in from the airport.
Walking the walled city, graffiti walks in Comuna 13, museum entries, street-food crawls and the tejo alleys.
The standard day: island boats, coffee fincas, Guatapé and the rock, Zipaquirá and back. Lunch is usually in.
Private guides, chartered boats, the four-day walk to the Lost City and the flights out to San Andrés.
- 1Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa Martafrom $580
- 2Cartagena ATV Tourfrom $135
- 3Lost City – Ciudad Perdida Colombiafrom $600
A Colombian coffee day is a farm morning, not a café.
Pick the cherries, pulp them, watch them dry, roast a batch, drink the result on a finca porch. The real ones sit in the hills around Salento, Pereira and Medellín. The Bogotá and Cartagena versions are city tastings — good, and a different thing entirely.
By base — where you sleep decides what you see
Cartagena496 tours
Medellín479 tours
Bogotá298 tours
Santa Marta91 tours
Cali65 tours
Salento35 tours
San Andrés37 tours- All 12 bases →
By day — what kind of day is it?
The tours most travellers in Colombia actually take.
Every review →Ordered by how many people have been and rated them, not by what we think of them. It moves as the reviews land.
1
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
Medellin metro and cable car to Comuna 13, graffiti stories, coffee tasting, arepa snack, street dance, and a city-view drink.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Food
from $16
3
Guatapé Tour: Piedra del Peñol with Boat Tour, Breakfast, Lunch
from $39
4
Cartagena Island Hopping: 5-Stop Rosario Islands Tour with Lunch
from $67
5
Bogotá Bike Tour
from $25
6
Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa Marta
from $580
7
Day Trip To Guatapé with ,Breakfast, Lunch and Boat Ride
from $36
8
Comuna 13 Graffitour knows the urban art district of Medellín
from $28
Medellín is a valley you ride, not a city you walk.
The metro and the cable cars do the climbing. Ride up to Comuna 13 for the outdoor escalators, the murals and the hip-hop — 140,000 people live there, so it is a neighbourhood you walk through, not a viewpoint. Ride out to Arví for the pines. Come back down for a coffee farm morning. Eight degrees warmer than Bogotá, all year.
- 1Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Foodfrom $18
- 2Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Foodfrom $16
- 3Guatapé Tour: Piedra del Peñol with Boat Tour, Breakfast, Lunchfrom $39
Guatapé, dark-moon plankton, and a game played with gunpowder.
Old towns and coffee you can find all over Latin America. A painted town under a granite rock, a bay that lights up when the moon is out of the sky, and Colombia’s national sport are not on anyone else’s list.
Guatapé and the Rock
Every house in Guatapé wears a zócalo — a painted panel along the bottom of the wall showing what the family inside does for a living. Bakers get bread, fishermen get fish. Twenty minutes away, El Peñol is a granite monolith with more than seven hundred steps zig-zagged up one face, and a view over the reservoir that drowned the old town in the 1970s. Most day trips do both; the boat ones add the water.
- 1Guatapé Tour: Piedra del Peñol with Boat Tour, Breakfast, Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,035 reviews
- 2Day Trip To Guatapé with ,Breakfast, Lunch and Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,996 reviews
- 3Tour to Guatape, Piedra del Peñol, lunch, snacks boat trip★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,658 reviews
The Bay That Lights Up
In the mangrove lagoons south of Cartagena, dinoflagellates flash blue whenever the water is disturbed. It only works on genuinely dark nights — near the new moon, with little cloud — so the boats run to the lunar calendar rather than to yours. Swim and your arms trail light. Almost no camera catches it, which is part of the appeal.
- 1Full Day Barú island: Mangrove +Snorkel + Sunset + Plankton★★★★★★★★★★ 3.7 · 139 reviews
- 2Adventure full day Isla Barú + Mangroves + Snorkel + bioluminescent plankton★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 95 reviews
- 3Adventure 5 Rosario Islands with Snorkel and plankton in Cartagena de indias★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 56 reviews
The Gunpowder Game
Tejo is Colombia’s national sport by act of congress, and it is played by lobbing a metal puck across a shed at a clay pit seeded with folded paper triangles of gunpowder. A direct hit goes off with a bang. The alley is free if you keep buying the beer, which is also roughly how long it takes to learn.
- 1Bogota Food Tour with over 12 Tastings & Tejo★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 454 reviews
- 2Tejo and Beer Tour in Bogotá★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 35 reviews
- 3Tejo Tour in Bogota★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 27 reviews
Bogotá keeps its best hours indoors and underground.
The Gold Museum holds the largest collection of pre-Hispanic goldwork anywhere. Botero gave his own collection to the city and left it free to walk into. An hour north at Zipaquirá, a working salt mine has a cathedral carved 180 metres inside the rock. La Candelaria joins the lot up on foot, badly signposted, worth the wandering.
Book these before you land in Colombia.
Most of Colombia can be sorted from your hotel the night before. These four cannot. They run on trek permits, park closures and the phase of the moon, and none of that moves for your flight.
- 01Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa MartaFour to five days on foot, and only a handful of licensed operators are allowed to run it. Group sizes and departures are fixed; dry-season slots go months ahead.
- 02Sailing to Tayrona with Luis and his team: Unique!The park closes for several weeks each year while the Indigenous peoples who own the land hold their ceremonies, and daily entry is capped when it is open.
- 03Adventure full day Isla Barú + Mangroves + Snorkel + bioluminescent planktonIt only shows on moonless nights. Check the lunar calendar before you fix the dates — no boat can produce it under a full moon.
- 04Paragliding Tour with GoPro Photos & VideosMorning air only, and the whole thing is called off in rain. Put it early in the stay so there is a second morning to fall back on.
Bogotá sits at 2,640 m. Give it a day before you climb anything.
Thin air catches people out on the first morning, and the top of Monserrate is 3,152 m — there is a funicular for a reason. Start low and indoors: the museums, La Candelaria on the flat, a food tour, the bus out to Zipaquirá. Medellín and Cartagena are both a long way down, so if the routing allows it, do the coast first and let the altitude come last.
The Caribbean run: Cartagena to Palomino.
Tayrona
Minca
PalominoCali dances. Cartagena drives around in a painted bus.
All the night tours →
Shared Tour Cali’s Salsa, Graffiti & Resistance Experience
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The newest Colombia tour reviews.
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Full Tour of Tayrona Park with Swimming in Cabo San Juan
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Bahia Tour, visit to the aquarium, bathing stops in San Andres.
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Bogotá Old Town with Gold Museum and Botero Museum
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Private Peñol-Guatape Tour: with lunch and boat
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Boquilla and Mangroves Canue Ride (Also for Cruisers)
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