Colombia

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The country of coffee, salsa, arepas, Botero, Pablo Escobar, cocaine and extremely smiley and friendly people which will make your visit so pleasurable. A country surrounded by green landscapes. So is Colombia, green everywhere. A great destination for those who want to interact with nature.

We enjoyed our time in the country, but for us something WOW was missing!… Something impressing and jaw-droping. Still, for many travelers we met on the way, this is one of their favorite countries in Latin America. And forget everything negative you’ve heard about security issues, the Pablo Escobar and FARC age has passed.

NOTE: This time we didn’t visit Bogotá, because we had gone on another trip. But we include here the pictures and tips.

What was worth it: the charming city of Cartagena, the amazing landscape of Salento’s surroundings, the wild nature of Parque Tayrona and the exotic salt church of Zipaquira.
What we wanted to do but we didn’t: explore the northern region of Bogota visiting the rustic towns of Villa de Leyva and Barichara, do a trekking in the lost city.

A few tips:

• TRANSPORTATION: The long distance buses are expensive and can reach 70 USD to 13 hours in some areas. Also we do not recommend the use of night buses because the drivers are crazy and they go too fast. You will shake all night like a potato and will not sleep just hoping to arrive alive at your destination. Not fun! A good option for long distances is trying to find a cheap flight at the local airlines: Viva Colombia and Avianca. We got a flight between Medellin and Cartagena for just 44 USD, much cheaper than the bus and much more comfortable.
• SAFETY: Do not be influenced by the bad image of insecurity that Colombia had for many years. The crazy times of Pablo Escobar and FARC attacks has passed. There is still a level of insecurity just as all Latin American countries and also tourism is not advisable in some regions of the Amazon on the border with Brazil, but during our passage we never had any problems and we felt safe.
• CROSSING THE BORDER WITH PANAMA: This is certainly the most complicated border crossing of all countries we’ve been. You need to take 12 hours by bus from Cartagena to the weird Turbo town, spend a night there, then take a 2 hour boat hitting your back on the wooden bench to the paradisiacal Caribbean city of Capurganá, from there take another boat to the first stop in Panama, Puerto Obaldia, where you must fly to Panama City! There is no option overland! The good side is that you can enjoy a few days in Capurganá in Sapzurro, two hidden paradises of pure tranquility. The bad part is that the flight from Puerto Obaldia is very small and normally fully booked, so if you don’t want to be trapped in the uninteresting Puerto Obaldia you should book your flight in advance (for this you can send an email to reservaciones@flyairpanama.com) or you can try to find some transportation via boat to the closest stop to Panama City or San Blás, which is not always possible. From sure is better to make this crossing frm Panama to Colombia.
• BOAT FOR PANAMA: A popular way to get to Panama is making the boat trip, which usually takes 5 days and includes three days of island hopping in San Blas in the Caribbean. The trip costs about 550 USD per person all inclusive, but drinks, but they were already thinking of raising prices when we were there. In our opinion it doesn’t worth much. The first two days you spend locked in the boat without seeing anything just crossing the ocean and for who gets seasick it can be really bad, then the cost per day is too high for what you get. The best part are the San Blas Islands, but if you are in Panama city you can visit San Blás for less the that, because the boat trip is about 110 USD per person per day and the packages of San Blas in Panama are around 50 USD per person per day. If you still would like to make the trip at this site do Blue Sailing you can find a good selection of boats that make this journey.

Our itinerary (27 days)

We crossed the border of Ecuador and Colombia by Tulcan and stopped in Pasto to spend the night, the following day we took a bus to Popayan and from there visited Tierradentro for two days. Returning to Popayan we took a night bus to Medellin and from there we went to visit Salento for 4 days. Back to Medellin we flew to Cartagena and went by bus to spend a few days in Taganga and Tayrona National Parque and then returned to Cartagena to catch the boat to Panama on a 5 days trip.

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