Cartagena, Medellín, Bogotá — and everything between them.
Which Guatapé day gives you both the rock and the lake. Whether Comuna 13 is worth the early start. What a coffee finca actually charges. Every tour in Colombia, reviewed.
Bogotá to the Caribbean, in the order Colombia opens up.
Altitude first, then the hillsides, then the coffee, then the coast. Two weeks covers it without a single overnight bus you regret.
GuatapéComuna 13, Guatapé, the Rosario Islands: the ones everyone books.
Every review →More travellers take these than anything else in the country. Here is what each is like on the day, and what it costs to be on it.
1
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food
A 4-hour Medellín Comuna 13 tour with metro, metrocable views, graffiti stories, coffee, street food, and a drink with skyline views.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Food
from $16
3
Museo Pablo Escobar
from $52
4
Guatapé Tour: Piedra del Peñol with Boat Tour, Breakfast, Lunch
from $39
5
Cartagena Island Hopping: 5-Stop Rosario Islands Tour with Lunch
from $67
6
Bogotá Bike Tour
from $25
7
Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa Marta
from $580
8
The Real Pablo Escobar Tour
from $42
Medellín turned its hardest hillside into its best morning.
All Medellín tours →
Outdoor escalators up Comuna 13, cable cars strung across the valley, a coffee farm an hour out of town. The city that was written off now runs the best day out in Colombia, and three very different versions of it.
- 1Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Foodfrom $18
- 2Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Foodfrom $16
- 3Museo Pablo Escobarfrom $52
Comuna 13, escalators and all
Up the outdoor escalators with a guide who grew up on them, past murals that get repainted every few months, finishing with a mango biche and the whole valley underneath you.
Guatapé and the Peñol rock
Two hours east to a reservoir full of green islands. Climb the granite monolith for the view everyone comes for, then a slow boat and an afternoon in a town painted floor to eaves.
Paragliding off the valley rim
Vans leave El Poblado early, before the thermals turn rough. Four running steps off a green ridge and Medellín unfolds a thousand metres below your boots.
Comuna 13, Guatapé, Cocora: the days a Colombian trip is built around.
The graffiti hillside, the rock above the lake, the wax palms, a cathedral cut into a working salt mine, a finca morning, and the four-day walk to a city the jungle kept. Six decisions, and the best way to book each one.
Inside the walls Cartagena is a two-hour walk. Outside them it is a week.
Bougainvillea over the balconies, palenqueras carrying fruit on their heads, a fort the English never took. Then the boats leave for the Rosario Islands and the whole coast changes colour.
What one day in Colombia costs.
Every tour on the site, sorted by price. A morning in Comuna 13 costs less than the taxi in from the airport.
Walking mornings, graffiti hillsides, salsa lessons, street-food crawls and the town-square days.
The full days: Guatapé and the rock, the Rosario boats, a finca and a roastery, the salt cathedral run.
Private guides, the four-day walk to the Lost City, chartered boats and the flight over the valley.
- 1Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa Martafrom $580
- 2Cartagena ATV Tourfrom $135
- 3Lost City – Ciudad Perdida Colombiafrom $600
Bogotá sits at 2,640 metres and takes a day to forgive you.
Start low and slow: La Candelaria’s painted doorways, the gold the Muisca left behind, ajiaco at a market counter. Save Monserrate for the second afternoon, once your lungs have caught up.
Three things that only happen in Colombia.
Beaches and colonial streets run the length of the Caribbean. A hillside rebuilt in public, the world’s emerald counter and a city the jungle swallowed belong to this country alone.
The Comuna 13 Escalators
Six flights of outdoor escalator climb a hillside the army once entered by helicopter. The murals beside them are repainted constantly, so no two visits look alike, and the guides are usually people who grew up on those stairs and lived through what they describe. Go early: by two in the afternoon the walkways are shoulder to shoulder and the mango sellers have sold out.
- 1Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street Food★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 9,046 reviews
- 2Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour with Street Food★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,503 reviews
- 3Comuna 13 Graffitour knows the urban art district of Medellín★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,856 reviews
The Emerald Counter
Colombia digs up most of the world’s emeralds, and Bogotá trades them on the pavement — dealers in doorways off Avenida Jiménez, loupes, folded paper packets, cash counted in the open. A guided visit gets you inside the trading houses and teaches you what to look for in the stone before anyone hands you one.
- 1Private City Tour, Monserrate, Emerald and Botero★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 798 reviews
- 2Comuna 13: Esmeralda más cata de café y cerveza tour Inolvidable★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 754 reviews
- 3Create Your Own Colombian Emerald Ring★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 369 reviews
The Walk to Teyuna
Ciudad Perdida was laid out around 800 AD and there is still no road to it. Four days of river crossings and a final climb of some twelve hundred stone steps get you up, sleeping in hammocks under mosquito net, sharing the trail with Wiwa and Kogi families who never left. The route shuts for a month each year while those communities cleanse it.
- 1Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa Marta★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,308 reviews
- 2Lost City – Ciudad Perdida Colombia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,203 reviews
- 34-Day Lost City Small-Group Tour in Santa Marta★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 254 reviews
In Quindío the palms are sixty metres tall and the coffee is still picked by hand.
Salento is a grid of coloured shopfronts under a green ridge, and the Cocora Valley starts where its road runs out. Walk the loop beneath the wax palms in the morning cloud, then let a farmer show you why the beans he keeps for himself never leave the country.
- 1Half Day Bike Tour in Medellin – Local snack, Coffee or Beerfrom $26
- 2Half-Day Coffee Tour: From the Seed to the Cup, Farm & roasteryfrom $76
- 3Coffee Tour with Transport, Snacks and Tastingsfrom $80
Colombia does not really start until the sound system comes out.
All nightlife →
Salsa Tour in Cartagena with admission Ticket to Café Havana
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Book these before you land in Colombia.
Almost everything here can be arranged from the hostel desk the night before. These cannot. They run on operator caps, a seasonal closure and a boarding card you buy at a counter, not on your schedule.
- 01Hike for 4 days to the Lost City, Santa MartaOnly a handful of licensed operators run the four-day trek, group sizes are capped, and the trail closes for a month every year.
- 02Full Day Marine Tour in San AndresThe island charges a tourist card you buy before boarding, and high-season seats go weeks ahead of the date.
- 03Paragliding Tour with GoPro Photos & VideosFlights only run in the morning window before the thermals turn rough — a weather cancellation rarely gets rebooked inside the same trip.
- 04Comuna 13 Graffiti Tour, Cable Car & Street FoodGuides cap the group size on the hillside, and the early slots are the only ones with room to hear them.
Bogotá drizzles, Medellín pours at four. Neither cancels anything.
Colombia has no dry season worth planning a trip around — it has an afternoon. The good answers are already indoors: a cathedral cut into a working salt mine, a kitchen and a bag of green plantain, a dance school with a sprung wooden floor, a trading house full of stones.
By region — pick where you are sleeping
Cartagena729 tours
Medellín438 tours
Bogotá457 tours
Santa Marta58 tours
Cali86 tours
Salento & the coffee axis20 tours
San Andrés25 tours- All 12 regions →
By experience — beach day, hillside day or coffee day?
The newest Colombia reviews.
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Commune 13 Guided Tour with Local Guides | Art & Local History
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Half-day coffee tour at a coffee farm in Medellin.
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Go Paragliding in Medellín with private transporter service
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