Hi, everyone! I need your help with a couple of things in preparing for our trip to Colombia.in February/March 2025. First, please recommend some guide book that would be helpful in DIY-travelling around Colombia. Second, we are planning to visit the Barranquilla Carnival. We are going to be 20 days in the country. The carnival lasts four days. Do you recommend to stay all four days, or may be two days is enough, if so which two days of the four are the most interesting? In which part of Barranquilla you are recommending to stay? Anything that we should be aware of while visiting the carnival? Are there any places of interest around Barranquilla that shouldn't be missed? Thank you so much! Gyandevi

Can’t help with Barranquilla as it was one of the places we didn’t visit. As far as guidebooks are concerned, I used Lonely Planet and Rough Guides . Whilst I generally prefer RGs I felt LP did a better job for Colombia.

we were travelling around Colombia for three months as part of a longer journey around South America and would often spend a week or more in places. In the context of a 20 day trip I do feel that 4 days is a big chunk of time for one location. We always try to spend three nights in a place as that gives two full days of sightseeing and whilst Colombia is relatively easy to get around, it does take time.

Here is a link to our blog of our travels which covers most of the places we did visit https://accidentalnomads.com/category/colombia/ . Hard to pick favourites, but we loved Bogotá, Jardin, Salento. I think Cartagena is fairly close and we really enjoyed teh side trip we did from there to Mompox. Difficult to get to but we’ll worth the effort. We found we enjoyed the smaller towns to the big cities though they clearly involve more challenging/ time consuming transport. Barichara was a particular favourite.

Dear crellston, thank you so much for your answer! It helps a lot! I read your blog and found many useful things! We are actually thinking of missing Cartagena. The tentative plan is to spend first 3 days in Bogota, then fly to Barranquilla, spend the 4 days of carnival there, then to fly to Medellin (3 days), from their to Jardin (2 days), then to Salento (3 days), then fly back to Bogota for a couple of days with the possible day trip to , and back home. Do you know anything about the buses between Medellin and Jardin, and between Jardin and Salento? Do you think 2 nights and 3 full days are enough for Medellin? how many nights/days would you recommend for Salento? Can you recommend any of the coffee farms? Thank you so much!

You are very welcome.

Firstly , when deciding on how much time to spend in a place , I always think in terms of NIGHTS in a place. i.e. 3 nights allow 2 full days of sightseeing. Any half days on arrival or departure that are "usable" are a bonus. I don’t really see how the 2 nights in Medellin will give you 3 days?

That aside, I think we had 4 nights / 3 days apiece in both Bogotá and Medellin which seems about right though Bogotá was our last destination before flying to Lima t9 meet friends and I do recall wishing we had spent more time there. On balance , in your situation, I think I would want more time in Bogotá than Medellin.

Buses are everywhere in Colombia . Accommodation providers are usually very helpful in sorting out transport. For the shorter journeys like Medellin - Jardin we just turned up at the bus terminal and bought tickets on the spot. The Rome2Rio app or website is very helpful in sorting out times and routes.

Between Jardin and Salento ,I THINK we had to change in Periera or Manziales . It was a while ago!

Jardin and Salento need around the same amount of time. As per our blog, I would recommend the hike/ jeep trip to the caves and waterfalls in Jardin . The village itself is beautiful. Maybe take a cable car or two and definitely head to the Plaza for the evening. In Salento , it was mostly about the Valle de Cocora which is a all day trip/ hike. Visiting a coffee farm - just ask around it is very easy though I was not especially impressed!
If you can , hit Salento at a weekend as much closes down midweek and it gets very quiet.

Thank you so much! It is very helpful!