Day 1 –  Fly to Bogota                                                

Today you will fly to Bogotá: Colombia’s mountain capital – set in a beautiful bowl of mountains in the high Andes.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 2 – Arrival in Bogotá & Excursions

You will be welcomed at Bogotá’s El Dorado international airport by your English-speaking Earth Trip guide and transferred to a stylish colonial hotel in the Candelaria neighbourhood – Bogotá’s Spanish Golden Age heart. We will spend the first 2 nights here.

Bogotá sits in a vast bowl-shaped valley, surrounded by the crags of the Andes mountains. The city sits at 2,625 metres, so it can be breathy, and we begin things slowly, starting the day with a visit to the typical market of Paloquemao. Here you will get a feel for the rich flavours and aromas of Colombia – the scent of ripe mangoes, of spicy cupuaçu fruit, of chilli, coriander and tamarind, of steaming stews and roasting coffee. And we meet the locals – enjoying a chat with stall holders learning about everyday life in the capital.

Returning to the historic center with its crumbling palaces, Spanish mansions and bell towers, we take a light walking tour. We visit the Plaza de Bolivar and the stately government palace, the glittering churches of San Francisco and La Tercera and finish with a cable car ride up the Monserrate mountain, Bogotá bathed in warm late afternoon sunshine.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 3 – Bogota Gold Museum-Villa de Leyva

After breakfast, we visit Bogotá’s Gold Museum – the greatest collection of Pre-Colombian treasures in the world; with over 30,000 exhibits. We then drive to Zipaquira, a pretty little town with a central square lined with mansions fronted with Spanish balconies. We visit the giant subterranean salt cathedral – its naves and towering arches, altars and vestries hacked from interior of a mountain above the town. After lunch we continue to Villa de Leyva via the pilgrimage site of Chiquinquira and Raquira, a village of brightly painted houses and sleepy churches, that has changed little since conquistador horse-hoofs echoed off the rough-hewn 17^th Century cobbles. We stay overnight, in a magnificent colonial-era hotel, just off the handsome Plaza Mayor square.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 4 – Villa de Leyva-Tatacoa Desert

After breakfast, we continue our exploration of Villa de Leyva and visit the echoing cloisters and flower-filled gardens of the 17th century Ecce Homo Dominican monastery. During agricultural excavations, the fossil remains of a huge Pliosaur were discovered here, cleared of rubble and left in situ in the town museum. We then drive back to Bogotá, visiting Puente de Boyacá bridge, where in 1813, Simon Bolivar defeated the Spanish in battle, claiming independence for the Andean nations. It is Colombia’s most important modern historical monument. We then fly to Neiva to overnight in the Tatacoa desert – one of the great star-watching destinations in Spanish America.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 5 – Tatacoa Desert-San Agustin

After breakfast, we take walk through the desert landscapes – bizarrely sculpted like a Salvador Dali painting from red earth and sand, cutting through cactus-filled canyons, eagles soaring overhead. We then drive through the Andes on a spectacular route running parallel to the rushing Magdalena River to San Agustín – one of the most impressive and important pre-Colombian sites in the Americas. Scattered through the misty cloud forests and jungles throughout the region are hundreds of tombs and haunting statues – jaguar-fanged and bird-headed men, huge tablets and effigies of intricately patterned animals. The bird-watching in and around the archaeological park is superb: toucans in every other tree, Blue-necked tanagers trilling in the bushes and rarities like the Plumthroated Cotinga, Plain-backed Antpitta, Chestnut-eared Aracari and Wire-crested Thorntail.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 6 – San Agustín

After breakfast we begin to explore San Agustín in earnest, with a guided walk along the forest trails inside the protected archaeological park, where the regions most celebrated figures: the Alto de los Ídolos Alto de las Piedras are situated. We’ll see the plunging Salto del Mortiño falls, set in a woodland glade. On the way back to San Agustín village, we stop at the narrows of the Rio Magdalena, the largest and longest river in the country outside the Amazon, where it cuts in a rushing torrent through narrow canyons barely two metres wide. In the afternoon, we continue with a short hike to the archaeological sites of El Tablon and La Chaquira, from where there are wonderful views over the Central Cordillera of the Andes, with the ribbon of Magdalena at are feet and forests carpeting the ridges and valleys all around.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 7 –  San Agustin-Popayan

After breakfast we are ready for one of Colombia’s most beautiful drives – from San Agustin right across the spine and high plains of the Amazon and through the Puracé Volcano National Park to Popayan. It’s a five hours drive, but the views and landscapes are marvelous every inch of the way, and there’s a real chance of seeing Andean condors en route. We arrive in Popayan – the white city, in the early afternoon and check into another gorgeous colonial-style hotel. Popayan developed into an important political, cultural, and religious center during the colonial era and was an obligatory stop for the Spanish conquerors on the route from Cartagena to Quito. It is replete with glittering baroque churches, mansions and museums and is busy with indigenous peoples, in brightly-dyed wooled ponchos, bringing produce to market. We spend the afternoon exploring the town.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Days 8 – Popayan-Coffee Zone

After breakfast, we journey on the famous Panamerican highway to the Salsa capital of Cali and Colombia’s coffee zone.  Arriving mid-afternoon, we receive our introduction to the world of coffee at a very special coffee hacienda nestled in rolling hills. We discover how the beans are planted, harvested and roasted and sample some of the world’s best coffee for ourselves.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 9 – Coffee zone

After breakfast, we head to the Cocora Valley with its plunging valleys, rushing rivers and distant snow-capped peaks. We take hikes into endemic wax palm forests, with huge 60-metre tall trees, and cloud forests busy with ultra-rare humming birds and cotingas. Pumas, tapir and Spectacled Bears live in the region and condors are a fairly common sight. On the way back to our coffee hacienda we stop off in the pretty village of Salento, whose cobbled streets are lined with bubble-gum pink, baby blue and mint green cottages, many of them turned arty cafes or boutiques.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Days 10 – Coffee Zone-Medellin

After breakfast, we say goodbye to our lovely hosts at the coffee hacienda and head off along the coffee motorway to Medellín. Nowhere symbolizes modern Colombia more than this gorgeous little city. Just over 20 years ago, it was one of the most dangerous cities in the world – headquarters of the drug lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín cartel. But since his demise the city has transformed into a lovely, modern metropolis of classy shops and swish restaurants; in the hills above a string of rehabilitated communities linked by a web of cable cars and the surrounding mountains are dotted with delightful villages. Our hotel is in the modern El Poblado district, not far from great restaurants, bars and shopping centers. We spend the next two nights here and explore Medellín’s great transformation.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 11 – Medellin

We set off on a tour of Comuna 13 – a suburb emblematic of Medellín’s great transformation, climbing high into the suburbs on one of the world’s great urban cablecar rides. Comuna 13’s paintbox cottages tumble over a hillside, Medellín glittering at its feet. Locals walk us through the neighbourhood, explaining Medellín’s transformation and the lives it has saved and transformed. We take a walking tour of the city center, through San Antonio Park, San Ignacio Square, the traditional Avenida La Playa passed the scalpel-shaped Coltejer skyscraper by

Germán Samper Gnecco – Colombia’s Le Corbusier; and visit the sculpture park, which is dotted with statues by South America’s most celebrated sculptor, Fernando Botero. We visit Pueblito Paisa, an Antioquia region model village with the best Medellín views and a foundation providing homes for street children.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 12 – Medellin-Santa Marta/Tayrona region

After breakfast, we drive to Medellin airport just outside the city and fly in less than an hour to a completely different world – the coconut-palm coastline of the Colombian Caribbean and Santa Marta. On arrival, our local team is already waiting for us, and we head off to some of the most beautiful beaches in northern South America – in Tayrona National Park. Here we spend 2 nights winding down, cocktail in hand.

Tayrona national park lies at the foot of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the second highest coastal mountain range in the world – rising from the Atlantic Ocean to nearly 6000 metres in less than 50km. The biodiversity of the region is staggering; and it is one of the most important preserves of Indigenous Cultures in the world; home to the Kogui, Wiwa, Arhuaco and Kankuamo peoples who preserve intact cultures and traditions from the pre-Colombian period.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 13 –  Santa Marta

Today is a day at leisure. Enjoy it on the beach, or enjoying a reef and rainforest hike through the national park, whose trails are well signposted. Guides can easily be arranged.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 14 – Santa Marta – Cartagena

After breakfast in the morning, we drive along the Caribbean coast to Cartagena – one of two Spanish-era walled cities in the Americas and a colonial city rivalled in its splendour only by Salvador in Brazil. En route we visit the huge lagoon and mangrove forest at the Ciénega Grande de Santa Marta reserve. Once we arrive in Cartagena, we are taken to our hotel in the historic center, where we spend the last night of this round trip. We enjoy the unique combination of Caribbean flair and colonial architecture. In the cool of the afternoon, we take a city walk of Cartagena’s colonial gems: the monastery of La Popa (the highest point in the city – at around 140 meters), the fortress of San Felipe de Barajas, the largest military structure ever built by the Spanish in their colonies and a string of beautiful churches and mansions. On the last night you have the chance to dine in one of the city’s great restaurants or sip an icy mojito in one of its celebrated bars. Cartagena has several entries on the most authoritative ‘world’s best’ lists for both.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast
• Dinner

Day 15 – Cartagena – return flight

You will have much of the day to spend in Cartagena at leisure – to take a community tour of the mangrove wetlands with a local fisherman, a rumble through the old city in a horse-drawn carriage or a browse in the arty shops. In the afternoon you will be transferred to the airport for an extension to your Colombia holiday or your flight home.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast