Colombia Holidays & Vacations
Get ready for the magic. Colombia is a country where strange, amazing and wonderful things can, and do, happen all the time. Here have lived some of the most incredible and least-known of the world’s ancient cultures, such as the Muiscas, Quimbayas, and Taironas, whose beautiful gold artefacts still enthral us. Here originated the myth of El Dorado. Here are lost cities, mountains, jungles, and Caribbean beaches. Here you can smell the coffee and ride a riotous chiva bus. Here you can dance salsa (and vallenato, and merengue, and cumbia, and more). Here is home to a rich, sometimes troubled and complex social and political culture that led to the birth of the ‘magical realism’ genre of 20th century literature.
Colombia is considered one of the world’s most important countries for biodiversity, with a proliferation of animal and plant species, particularly in its vast Amazon region. This makes it a must-visit ecotourism destination. The tours can include activities in the Sierra Nevada National Park (where the Lost City is located), the Guajira Desert, the San Agustin archaeological Park, and many more! Our Lost City Hike has been featured in The Guardian: you can read the article Colombia’s Lost City: Lore of the Jungle to find out more about this amazing experience.
Start planning your tailor-made Colombia tour
To start creating your ideal, personalised tour to Colombia, please complete and send this form. Our Colombian partner will be in touch shortly:
Alternatively, take a look at examples of Colombia tours
– Intrepid Colombia Tour: Bogota, Medellin, Amazon Rainforest and Pacific Coast
– Criollo Colombia Tour: Bogota, Villa de Leyva, Amazon Rainforest and Coffee Region
– Undiscovered Colombia Adventure: Bogota, the Amazon Rainforest, a 5-day hike to the mystical Lost City, Santa Marta and Cartagena de Indias,
– Chicamocha Canyon & Colonial Colombia Adventure: Bogota, Villa de Leyva, San Gil, Chicamocha Canyon, Bucaramanga
More about Colombia…
Bogota, the Athens of South America
With over 7 million inhabitants Bogota is the most populous city in Colombia and one of the largest in Latin America. Its generous supply of universities and libraries has earned it the title of ‘the Athens of South America’. Originally the homeland of the Muisca people, the area was colonised by Spanish conquistadores in the sixteenth century, many of them searching for gold and souls to convert to Christianity. Bogota has been at the epicentre of Colombia’s political struggles from independence through to the modern era. The Bogotazo uprising of 1948, in reaction to the assassination of popular Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, is still remembered as a defining moment in the country’s recent history. Today the city offers a wide range of attractions from the spectacular Museo del Oro (Museum of Gold), through to the Botero Art Museum, the old town of La Candelaria, and the Monserrate Sanctuary looking down from the hills to the city below.
Leticia, in the heart of the jungle
Leticia is a small town deep in the Amazon, which was at the centre of a brief war between Peru and Colombia in the early 1930s. The border conflict was resolved in 1934 through the successful intervention of the League of Nations. Founded in the 1860s, according to a local legend this remote city got its name from a Colombian soldier who fell in love with an Indian woman called Leticia. An alternative version is that a Peruvian pioneer named it after a girlfriend he had left back in Iquitos who went by the very anglo-saxon name of Leticia Smith. Whatever the origin, Leticia faces a sister settlement across the Amazon, the Brazilian town of Tabatinga. At one time a centre for drugs smuggling across the three borders, Leticia now rests its development hopes on tourism, with attractions such as its rivers, tropical rainforests, and nature reserves.
Breathtaking Parks and Nature Reserves
On this tour you will visit some of Colombia’s outstanding parks and nature reserves. At the Calanoa Jungle Lodge you will get a chance to stay in a wonderful natural habitat that is also home to birds and monkeys, frogs, butterflies, and the most surprising insects, flowers and plants. At the Aguas Claras Nature Reserve on the Amazon you’ll visit the Ticuna indigenous community and see the Huitoto Malocas, their communal dwellings. For a dramatic change of scene the Utria National Park offers mangrove swamps and mist-covered and thickly vegetated jungle foothills which swoop down to the Pacific coast line. Here you can find ocelots, pacaranas, agoutis, deer, wild pigs, silky anteaters, sloths, and bats. And out in the Pacific Ocean waters there are humpback whales to watch close up.
San Juan de Soco, Colombian Amazonas
During the Criollo experience you will get the opportunity to visit the small community of San Juan de Soco, a small Ticuna indigenous community of approximately 250 people. The living standards are rural and basic, meaning; simple houses with limited electricity, lack of basic sanitation, non-potable water and limited phone coverage. Most families live off small-scale agriculture (subsistance farming) and traditional fishing. The community has a small primary school with limited resources and a deteriorated sports ground. In partnership with the local community tourism has recently been introduced as a form of suplement income to the community and you will see first hand how this partnership has improved both the infrastructure and living standard in the community.
A little bit more of tour add-ons:
Tobacco Workshop: Visit a tobacco farm and an artisanal factory where cigars are produced for export, and learn how this crop has played an important role in the history and culture of Santander, and especially Girón. Learn how to make cigars and how they are used for medical purposes. Finally, participate in a representation of a traditional tobacco ritual.
Santander Specialty Coffee Workshop: A brewer and certified barista for the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe will teach you the art of brewing coffee, the methods, the factors, and the differences between a traditional and a specialty coffee. They will also explain the certification process of this type of coffee, and the importance of this for the consumer. Of course you’ll get to sip on a few fresh brews too.
