Colombia - the planning phase!
My top priority when planning our family trip to Colombia has to be safety - a new country, a new continent, even, and Colombia has a bit of a reputation (although that has improved significantly in recent decades). If you want to visit but don’t even know where to start, here are some resources I’ve found useful, and some tips for achieving a safe and enjoyable family trip!
Flights
Where to start! Well, Skyscanner is a good first option, but for that you need to know which Airport you’re flying into, and sometimes booking flights direct with airlines can be cheaper, and it was for us in this case!
For our 12 day stay in Colombia, we will be flying out initially with Avianca (cheapest option for 5 of us) indirectly to Cartagena via Bogota. Internal flights we booked for £20 each with lastminute.com, and on the way back, 2 of us are flying with Iberia (reward flights using Avios - read more about that here!), and the other 3 are flying indirectly via Mexico on flights booked through Skyscanner, which were the cheapest option. The great thing about using Skyscanner is you can get an idea of the best times to fly and also the many available options - if you don’t mind having really long layovers those are available to bring the price down. For us, we wanted to balance overall flight time with the total cost!
Cities to Visit…
Colombia is a MASSIVE country. The whole of the UK would fit into Colombia nearly 5 times, so driving between places on the map isn’t really an option, and to get anywhere in Colombia, you need to use internal flights. But travelling with young children, you also don’t want to spend your entire trip flying around!
On top of that, Colombia has had a bad rep in the past. But things are and have been changing, and Colombia has roughly 4 million tourists visiting each year (except maybe for 2020 with the pandemic). I’ve found Facebook forums really useful to get tips from locals about the safest places to visit, backed up with my own research. That’s how we’ve landed on Cartagena as the place where we will spend the majority of our time whilst in the country. After that, we are visiting Manizales and the Coffee region of Colombia before heading back to Bogota for a couple of nights before our flights home.
Why Cartagena?
Well, it’s pretty safe. It’s a built up area, attracts a lot of tourists, and the hotels are mostly big chain hotels because it is situated right on the Caribbean coast in North Colombia. There’s a wonderful history to the beautiful walled city, meaning lots to see and lots of places to look around, and you can also visit the Islands of San Rosario & Baru by boat, with the option to go snorkeling and see the luminescent plankton after dark. We plan to spend 5-6 days here in total and there is plenty to do to fill up that time!
Why Manizales and the Coffee Region?
Pereira and Manizales are smaller internal airports and, like Cartagena, are very built up areas. Pereira is a bit of a financial district and quite commercial, not very much to do for the kids here, but you can find gorgeous rural places to stay in the Coffee Region for a bit of a slower paced holiday. Plus, not far from here are stunning hot springs that you can visit!
The main reason we are visiting this region is for a family wedding, but we plan to spend 4 days here, 2 of which will be wedding related, and the other two just for chilling out by a pool! The flights to Pereira from Cartagena are only £20 each (though you might have to add baggage), and only take 1 hour max, so not too exhausting.
Why Bogota?
Bogota is the country’s capital - we only plan to spend 1 full day here before flying onwards to the Netherlands, as it’s a busy place to be and carries the usual risks any capital city would. But there are so many things for the kids to do, I’m a bit gutted that we can only pick one, and we haven’t chosen yet so if anyone has any recommendations they would be very welcome!
Mundo Aventura Theme Park - more of a UK fun fair vibe than a big theme park, but there are lots of rides, an aquarium and lots of places to eat
Museo del Oro - this is free for under 12s, and free for everyone on a Sunday! Like any museum it is packed full of things to see and do, especially for the kids
Salitre Magico Theme Park - located close to El Parque Central Simon Bolivar (which is something to see in its own right!), and allegedly home to the only water roller coaster in Bogota
