How to plan a vacation to Colombia
You want to visit Colombia, what are the steps to ensure you have the perfect vacation?
About The Colombian Way
Designing amazing vacations to Colombia is what we do. The Colombian Way is one of the longest established tour operators in Colombia with one of the broadest and most comprehensive portfolios.
The basics
The minimum we need to know is
- How many people you are
- When you are thinking of travelling?
- How many days do you want to visit Colombia for?
If you have contacted us for the first time then we will gladly start working with you to establish your aspirations and goals for Colombia, your travel style and preferences, and we will start gathering ideas from you that will ultimately help us suggest destinations and activities for your vacation.
Be inspired
Many clients want to understandably do their own research and direct the course of their own tour’s design. Our website has detailed and impartial information on all destinations and activities. We went, we took the photos, we wrote the content.
We have published and priced round trips such as The Colours of Colombia, a perfectly optimised 15 day tour of Colombia’s highlights, or Short Coffee Tours, our own itinerary for making the most of Colombia’s coffee zone in just 3 nights.
See all destinations in one place. And all day trips available by region.
Browse by activities. Nature, relaxation, beaches and diving, architecture, gastronomy, hiking, and many others. All destinations and day trips are also grouped by activities that you can find in those locations.
Search is your friend
Our website’s search feature is like no other. It does not search page content, instead we have taught it over 16,000 search terms. Over 1800 birds, Colombian departments, famous characters, ecosystems and landscape features, rivers, plants, travel styles, types of activities, wheelchair accessibility, pueblos patrimonios, foods, IATA airport codes and dozens of other search cues.
If you want to see something specific then our search feature will tell you where to find that exact something.
Be demanding
A client with demands is a client with demands that can be satisfied. The more you are personally invested in your Colombia tour, the more personal the experience will be. It is after all your vacation that you are designing with us. It is not uncommon for a client to spend up to a year planning their tour with us and to make 20-30 iterative tour plan changes before they are satisfied.
Work with us to build a logical and engaging tour
Colombia is vast and varied. Seeing everything is not going to happen in two weeks. Working with The Colombian Way to build a logical and optimised itinerary will unlock the best value, variety and engagement. The Colombian Way is expert at efficient itinerary design and finding best value ways to link disparate regions. Our goal is to minimise your transit times and maximise your time discovering Colombia.
Unlock savings
Be open to suggested route or order changes to achieve better value for your tour. Avoiding the crowds and high seasons that you may not know about will make your tour more efficient. Such efficiencies free up your budget for more activities, upgraded hotels rooms or more spending money.
Speaking of savings, how much will it cost?
We don’t know, this depends on the itinerary that you build. What we can tell you though is that we are committed to price transparency and our website has live multi-currency prices for most day trips and round trips. Our website prices page explains how these prices work. If you are planning a vacation for a family of four then the prices you see on our website will be the exact price that you pay if you incorporate that into a tour.
Our tour store categories also allow you to make informed decisions by comparing the prices of tour options from a specific city. Medellín for example.
When building a custom tour we are happy provide prices as soon as it is practical. This means have a relatively certain version of your tour for which we can calculate costs. We will calculate a costed outline tour plan at this point.
Or go semi-independent.
Some people like planning travel itineraries almost as much as we do. People like to research their hotels and even book their own internal flights. That’s fine too because for those people we have a tour store. Our own proprietary online booking system offering over 100 day trips, experiences and even difficult to organise multi-day tours in Colombia. These are the exact same experiences that we include in our custom tours.
When is the best time to visit Colombia?
This question really does not have an answer and anyone that tells you it does is ill-advised. Many will say that the weather is at its best between December and March. That is at best an inconsistent truth, if you visit during that period then Caño Cristales will not be in season and Parque Tayrona will be closed for the whole of February. Whale watching in Bahía Solano and Nuquí is not possible between December and March.
Ciudad Perdida does not operate for the whole of September. There are certain restrictions if you travel during Easter and Christmas.
Colombia has a tropical isothermal climate. Seasons do not exist in a conventional sense, somewhere is always going to have rain showers, rain never ruined anyone’s vacation. Many of our day trips such as our Bogotá city tour, Guatavita and Cocora are programmed to take into account typical daily weather patterns.
The only correct answer is that you can visit Colombia whenever you wish.
Where to find Colombia travel advice?
Be aware that many offering Colombia travel advice are offering it from a narrow perspective, a limited experience and as a snapshot of that experience fixed in that moment in time. Travel guides and even government websites are often out of date.
The Colombian Way deigns to place as much relevant information as possible in the public domain. Our general FAQ covers topics such as travel and essentials. Our web content is revised frequently and can be depended upon to be a reliable source of information about destinations and activities.
Our Caño Cristales FAQ is the most comprehensive public resource of its kind. On a continuing basis we are adding advice that answers travellers questions such as what to wear, strategies for spending money in Colombia, and special dietary requirements and allergies in Colombia.
We also have online and offline packing lists and orientation advice for destinations such as Amazonas.
How to start designing your vacation with The Colombian Way
Simply get in touch using the contact forms at the bottom of each page. Either tell us the basics, or share your thoughts on a more elaborate plan. Speak to us without obligation, start realising your Colombia goals.
