On one of our recent trips to Colombia, we discovered the work of Cathy and her local travel agency offering guided tours of Medellin in english.
With her, we visited Moravia, a neighborhood totally off the beaten track, with a striking history and symbolic of Medellín’s transformation. A great guided tour of a neighborhood we’d never have set foot in without Cathy, who supports a community gardening project in the area.
After this wonderful experience, we decided to give you the chance to discover authentic Medellin with a english-speaking guide.
What’s more, Cathy also offers tours in english around Medellin (Guatape, Jardin, Jerico, Santa Fe de Antioquia, etc.)
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Disclaimer: we apologize in advance for any grammatical or syntactic errors, as our native language is not English (we're a Colombian-French couple), so we hope you'll forgive us and still enjoy the information we share with you! Please note that all the information on our blog is based on our own experience, and is checked and updated regularly.
City tours of Medellin
Tour guide to discover Medellin and its region
For the past 10 years, Medellín has been a city in the throes of change, whose transformation is in itself an inexhaustible source of discovery for travelers. Cathy offers guided tours of Medellin in english to discover the region, its culture and its people.
Comuna 13: Street Art and lunch with local people
Tour content
A tour that starts in downtown Medellín and draws on its history, then moves on to the hills of Comuna 13 to discover street art, and ends with lunch with a local family.
Contribution of this tour to the community
Support for the women’s collective, victims of the armed conflict, who are developing a process of reconstruction through handicrafts and cooking.
Moravia: transformation and community gardens
Tour content
Immersion in the Moravia district, around a former open-air landfill that has now been rehabilitated into community gardens. A fascinating visit where we meet the people behind the gardeners’ guild project, described in detail in our post Moravia and the Sowers of Life.
Contribution of this tour to the community
Support for the local gardening collective
La Sierra: Medellin’s past and present
Tour content
This one-day tour begins with a visit to the Medellín Memory Museum, followed by a visit to the once-infamous La Sierra district (comuna 8), where you’ll be welcomed by young people who will show you where they live. Here, history is intertwined, and the visit is punctuated by lunch with a local family.
Contribution of this tour to the community
Support for the “La Sierra es otro cuento” educational project.
Local experiences
Cathy also offers local experiences to immerse you in the paisa culture and atmosphere of the city of Medellín:
Market discovery and cooking workshop
A dive into the atmosphere of Medellín’s popular market to taste local products. The tour ends at a family home, where you’ll discover the chef’s best recipes.
Salsa Night
Learn the basics of salsa in a family’s living room, then set off to practice your skills in Medellín’s two most famous salsa bars. The tour ends with a concert!
Contribution to the community
Support for host families
CONTACT CATHY FOR A City TOUR in MEDELLIN and its region IN english
Discover Medellin’s surroundings
Guided tours of Medellin and surrounding area in english
Cathy also offers tours of the region around Medellin, always with an eye to responsible tourism. Each experience is an opportunity to participate, meet families and discover great local initiatives.
Ecotour: from vegetable garden to plate
Half an hour from Medellín, you’ll discover a farm like no other, run by an artist committed to a permaculture process. On the program: picking, tasting of garden produce and discussions about a different way of farming today.
Contribution to the community
Support and visibility for a local, ecological initiative
Guatape
Guatape needs no introduction! Here we take you to discover the must-sees of this village of a thousand colors and the view from the famous Piedra del Peñol.
Community contribution
Support for local trade
Coffee tour
Drive to a coffee-producing finca 1h30 from Medellín. The family is developing organic production based on permaculture. It’s an opportunity to discover the cultivation of coffee, Colombia’s national heritage, and another way of producing the black gold!
Contribution to the community
Support for a family of independent producers practicing permaculture
Santa Elena
Mentioned in our post on things to do around Medellín, Santa Elena is the village of the silleteros! This ancient tradition of floral art culminates each year in the Ferria de las Flores de Medellín parade. An opportunity to discover the entire production process at a local flower farm and share a meal with the family.
Contribution to the community
Support for a family of silleteros in Santa Elena.
2 or 3-day stays in a beautiful village
Discover the Medellin area in english
Finally, the local travel agency also offers 2 or 3-day trips to villages a little further from Medellín, for a deeper immersion in the rural culture of the coffee region. Each of these trips is also an opportunity to support interesting and hopeful local projects.
Jerico
Jerico was one of the highlights of our 2018 trip! It’s a sublime village lost in the mountains, where you can gently feel the days go by in an authentic local atmosphere. We invite you to spend 2 days and 1 night there and discover all its secrets.
Contribution to the community
Support for local business and a host family
Fredonia
This 2-day, 1-night visit immerses you in the world of a Colombian artist who is developing eco-building and permaculture projects in Fredonia, a village 1h30 from Medellín. A participative stay where you can take part in various workshops (ceramics, ecoconstruction, cooking…)
Contribution to the community
Support for a local artist developing eco-responsible projects.
Salamina
Spend 3 days and 2 nights in one of the most beautiful villages in the coffee region, Salamina, located 5 hours from Medellín. Discover how coffee is grown, take part in the reforestation of the Samaria Valley by planting a wax palm (Colombia’s national emblem) and stop off in Aguadas, another heritage village, for a participatory hat-making workshop!
Contribution to the community
Support for the Samaria Valley reforestation project, coffee producers, local businesses and host families.
Who is Cathy and what does her local travel agency offer?
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM IN MEDELLIN
Cathy has been based in Medellín for a while now, and founded her travel agency in 2017. As Cathy explained to us during our first meeting, the idea behind this travel agency is to manufacture another way of discovering Medellín and its region in direct contact with local people.
But what makes Cathy’s trademark, that little extra that makes the difference, is the idea that every visit, every discovery must involve a meeting with the local population, must contain a moment of sharing and must support local initiatives.
Responsible tourism
The travel agency is committed to responsible tourism, and every guided tour we offer has been designed to enable encounters with a family, an association or a local initiative. In this way, every activity benefits local communities.
This is where the travel agency’s work really comes into its own. You’re not just visiting a neighborhood, a village or a region. We benefit from a genuine intercultural exchange that we certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience otherwise, and our visit supports relevant initiatives and Colombian families.
