First Venture to South America: Colombia
I can’t believe it took me 25 years to go to South America. But alas, as 2019 was coming to an end, I managed to convince my childhood best friend, Jenn, to go with me to SA. Similar to Costa Rica (which you can read about here), Colombia wasn’t entirely on my radar. My friend and I were initially trying to go to Bolivia (she’s Bolivian), but flights were crazy expensive. I had heard about some of my friends going to Colombia, so I decided to do some quick research and realized it was definitely going to be an adventure. Below is a quick snapshot of where we decided to go:
Day 1: Bogotá
Day 2: Travel to Tatacoa Desert
Day 3: Exploring Tatacoa Desert
Day 4: Travel to Salento
Day 5: Salento
Day 6: Medellín
Day 7: Medellín
This post is a little different than my other ones since I’m going to include a lot of advice here. Colombia was one of the most challenging places I’ve visited. Not in a bad way, but my friend and I experienced a lot of bad luck when it came to transportation (so, very situational). However, I think my tips are still well-suited for anyone traveling through Colombia, so read along!
General Tips
Cash: You’d be smart to carry cash with you as some hotels even require payment in cash. Only the bigger cities accept Visa, so just withdraw cash to play it safe.
Taxis/Ubers: I’m sure there is a lot of talk about the safety in Colombia. I’m here to squash all of those judgments and tell you I felt as safe as I do in New York. I’m sure there are scary stories, but I generally did not feel scared at all.
Taxis/ubers are very cheap! One note about Ubers - they are illegal in Colombia, so even though it still operates, they’ll ask you to sit in the front seat so it looks like they are driving with friends/family.
Taking a taxi outside of city limits: There were a few instances where the taxi driver had to fill out a police report if they were leaving city limits. Imagine having to fill out a report everytime a taxi takes you from Manhattan to Brooklyn. However, we had issues each time since we don’t have a Colombian ID number, just a U.S passport. Usually, the taxi drivers will still take you, but you can tell that they’re stressed out
Language Barrier: I had never felt so at a loss when it comes to communicating. In every place aside from Medellín, English was close tononexistent. Luckily, my friend Jenn knew Spanish and kudos to her for doing all the communicating. If you are traveling there with no Spanish knowledge, I highly recommend pre-downloading the Spanish Language in Google Translate.
Everything operates on their own time. I should have known better, as my trip to Guatemala taught me that nothing runs on time/nothing is punctual (which is hard for a New Yorker like me). I think if I had the opporunity to re-do my Colombia trip, I wouldn’t have picked so many places to see in just 7 days. However, it’s in my nature to jampack attractions in one trip.
Book all bus tickets well in advance. We put off buying tickets until we got there, which was a mistake, because we spent a lot of time trying to find tour operators on our phones that wouldn’t process our U.S. information, and the timings we wanted were no longer available.
The Bogotá Transmillenio bus system is confusing. We attempted to use it, and it made absolutely no sense. I heard from locals it’s also very confusing, so it might be worth just ubering/taxiing given how cheap that is.
Day 1: Bogotá
If you’re coming from the U.S., you’ll find that a lot of flights land in Bogotá at odd hours like midnight/1am. I recommend booking a hotel for the day before so that way you can just check-in in the middle of the night. Just be sure to notify your hotel and be sure that there is 24/7 concierge service! Our hotel confirmed a few days earlier that there would be someone waiting for us at the airport, so the transfer was very easy.
Accommodations: Casona Usaquen. We had heard that Usaquén was a beautiful, safe neighborhood, a little bit more north of central Bogotá. This was ~30 minutes from the airport & rooms/service was comfortable.
Initial plan: Visit Chicaque National Park
What we ended up doing: Exploring Usaquén/Bogotá
I had read that Chicaque National Park is just 1.5 hours south of Bogotá, so a perfect escape from the bustling city. You can read more about the National Park in this Culture Trip article. I also had looked up on the main website that there is an express bus on weekends which picks you up from Bogotá and takes you right to the National Park entrance.
We followed the directions as to where to catch the bus, but couldn’t find it for the life of us. We tried to ask people in broken Spanish, but the Chicaque Express Bus was nowhere to be found. After about an hour of literally hunting for this bus, we decided to admit defeat and explore Usaquen (whereUsaquén our hotel was) and Bogotá. It ended up being a really nice day dedicated to just exploring the city.
We walked around Usaquen, La Candelaria (downtown area with unique street art), and took the cable car up to Montserrat (fortress overlooking the entire city - watch out for that altitude!) Note that on Sundays, Usaquén is known for its bustling flea market. We managed to see several vendors set up shop starting Saturday.
Day 3: Travel to Tatacoa Desert
Initial plan: Spend the day exploring Bogotá and taking a night bus to the Tatacoa Desert
What we ended up doing: Taking a 6:45am bus, ultimately reaching the Tatacoa Desert much earlier
This is where my tip on booking tickets in advance comes into play. We ended up having to take a 6:45am bus out of Terminal del Sur in Bogotá to Neiva (the gateway to the Tatacoa Desert). Guys - get to Terminal Del Sur with enough time to get lost a few times, because that place is massive & hella confusing. We ended up asking 4-5 people for help since we couldn’t figure out how to navigate it and SPRINTING with our backpacks to catch the bus on time.
A few tips for Terminal Del Sur -
Be sure to print out your purchase confirmation before arriving at the terminal. You will need to find this big hall that has ticket windows for all of the different bus operators. This is where you will show your purchase confirmation in exchange for a ticket as well as the bus number
After getting the tickets, you will show security your ticket and stay in a waiting room where you will see a board with all bus times. If your bus number isn’t up there, the bus hasn’t arrived.
Once it has arrived, you will need to take the escalators down to the bus loading area
This all sounds easy but let me tell you, it wasn’t self explanatory when we got there.
Travel Details -
Terminal del Sur, Bogota —> Neiva
Bus operator: Coomoter
Duration: 6 hours
Once we got to Neiva, we took a taxi to Villavieja (the closest town outside of the Tatacoa Desert), which was a 40 minute taxi. There should also be Tuk Tuks, but I didn’t see any.
Accommodations: Hotel Colonia Villavieja. It was a lovely, family-owned hotel with AIR CONDITIONING, which was necessary given the heat (100F/40C). We wandered around the small town, and the hotel arranged for the only english-speaking guide in the area, Joy, to take us to the stargazing session in the dessert. The entire thing was in Spanish, but my friend translated for me luckily. They brought out telescopes and the visibility that night was perfect!
Day 3: Tatacoa Exploring
We pretty much spent the whole day exploring the Tatacoa Desert with our tour guide. There are 2 main sections - the red desert and the gray desert. It was really great learning about how the desert came to be, all the types of cactus/plant life, as well as the critters who live there.
Fun fact: Tatacoa means rattlesnake in Spanish. Luckily, we did not see any rattlesnakes.
Day 4: Travel from Tatacoa Desert to Salento (New Years Eve)
This day was a complete bust. We had flights from Neiva to Armenia through Avianca Airlines in order to see the beautiful Corcora Valley. We were originally supposed to get into the town of Salento at 2pm. Instead, we got there at 10:30pm due to flight delays. No pictures to share from this day, but below is some travel information -
In order to get to Salento, the nearest airports are Armenia and Pereira. We chose to go through Armenia. There are usually buses every 30 minutes from the Armenia bus station to Salento, but they stop at 8pm. We ended up taxiing to Salento, which is about 45 minutes from the Armenia airport.
When we did finally reach Salento, the town was BOPPIN’. Everyone was out in the main square celebrating NYE with live music and several food carts. It was really nice to see a small town in Colombia get energized for the holidays.
Accommodations: Hostal Vista Hermosa Salento
Day 5: Valle de Corcora (New Years Day)
Wow. What a beautiful way to spend the first day of 2020. I had heard about the Corcora Valley from other friends, and I’m so glad we planned the trip so that we were starting off the year hiking through the beautiful area. If you don’t know, the valley is famous for having the world’s tallest palm trees (145 feet!) This part of the trip was my absolute favorite and Jenn & I were both in our happy place.
A few helpful tips -
There are jeeps downtown which will take you to the entrance at 6am, 7am, 9am, and 10am. We picked the 7am slot and actually dodged a lot of crowds since presumably people were still hungover from NYE
This costs $3/person
The entire trek through the valley is a loop. We decided to go counterclockwise in order to bang out the hard part first
There are two main Miradors (viewpoints), but we were amazed by the beauty every second
Time it takes for full trek: ~5.5 hours
There is a hummingbird house with amazing coffee and food as well, which servse as a perfect hike break.
We then spent the rest of the day exploring downtown Salento which is very colorful and charming. We had a lot of time to kill before our overnight bus, so we went to a few restaurants and cafes. FYI - Salento is part of the coffee triangle in Colombia, so if you’re a coffee lover, I’ve heard it’s worth doing a coffee tour!
We had an overnight bus from Armenia to Medellin this day and once again, the transportation gods weren’t in our favor. A few notes -
We booked a bus from Armenia to Medellin with Flota Occidental. To sum it up, the bus miraculously left on time, the AC was blasting at 50 degrees the entire time (I basically draped a sweater over my head), and the bus driver was a lunatic. I’m talking speeding around mountain switchbacks. I had a seatbelt on and was still pretty much sliding side to side for ~3 hours.
Give yourself a lot of extra time for getting from Salento to Armenia. The line for the buses in Salento gets long, and they typically only allow 20 people per bus (buses depart every 20 minutes). We begged to cut the line to catch a bus sooner, and ended up having to stand for 45 minutes.
It does seem that there are buses directly from Salento to Medellin (skips the step of having to get to Armenia first). We had somehow read reviews online that it wasn’t favorable, but sounds more logistically accurate to me to do so.
Days 6-7: The City of Eternal Spring
We got into Medellin at around 5am. We decided to sit at the bus terminal for a good 30 minutes after the traumatic bus journey since we were both nauseous from it. We took a taxi to our hotel which was in El Poblado, a hip and trendy neighborhood in Medellin (only 10 minutes from the bus terminal)
Accommodations: Hotel Poblado Boutique Express. They allowed us early check-in for just $30 total, which we jumped on given the fact that we didn’t sleep at all on the overnight bus.
The best part about Medellin - they have a metro system! Who knew I’d actually miss trains…
We had a late start on the first day, so we tackled the Botanical Garden and signed up for a free tour of Columna 13 through GuruWalks. I was excited for this tour because I wanted to learn more about Colombia’s history. For more general information, read this article. This neighborhood in Medellin essentially was HQ for drug warlord Pablo Escobar. But, with help from the government and local people of Medellin, the area has completely transformed. While it was beautiful to see how far the area has come, I didn’t love the tour. The area was almost too touristy for me, taking away from the history of what had transpired there a few decades ago.
The second day, we took a free walking city tour and it was one of the best tours I’ve ever taken. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, and did a good job of keeping us in the shade as well. I highly recommend taking this walking tour! It was the first one I had done in a while.
And that completes our Colombian adventure. Despite all the bad luck, I do want to go back to Colombia. There was so much we didn’t end up exploring, and I think I’ll slown down the pace during round 2.
I learned about Colombia’s past, how it’s still transforming itself, and how lovely and warm the Colombian people are. I am already excited to explore more of Colombia, and before that next time comes, I’m going to try and learn more Spanish…