1-month itinerary in Colombia: from Medellin to La Guajira

In this review of our 2018 trip to Colombia, it’s going to be about diversity, wonder, men and women, dreams realized and new desires, cultures and landscapes, questioning, reflections, and the desire to go back!

For those of you who haven’t been following our journey on Facebook or Instagram, we featured an article in which we explained the choices and desires we had for this new trip.

This trip was an opportunity for us to meet people involved in responsible tourism, to highlight initiatives that we thought would be interesting to present to you.

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.

Contents

1. 1-month itinerary in Colombia

2. Our favorite part of this 1-month trip

3. A journey of encounters

4. Our gripe of this 1 month-trip in Colombia

5. Images from this 1-month trip

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• Itinerary tips
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Our idea being to encourage you to travel differently and respectfully in a country like Colombia that badly needs to develop sustainable tourism.

1-month itinerary in Colombia

from Medellin to La Guajira

How would you sum up our chosen itinerary? Frankly, we’re really glad we did this itinerary. It totally lived up to our expectations, both in terms of discovering regions we hadn’t yet visited (Jerico, Pacific coast, Lorica, Minca, Seydukwa, La Guajira) and in places we already knew about and where we had initiatives to discover(Medellin, Necocli, Cartagena).

Seeing the diversity of Colombia

This itinerary offered us some truly impressive contrasts, and we can tell you that it was an opportunity for us to remember the immense diversity of our beloved Colombia, both in its landscapes and in its cultures! Truly fabulous. Each region we visited brought us its own share of surprises, discoveries and wonder: Antioquia, the Pacific coast of Choco, the Gulf of Uraba, Cordoba, Magdalena, Sierra Nevada, Guajira… so many regions, so many differences. Okay, we ate a lot of fish / rice / patacon, but otherwise it was great diversity!

And when you consider that this itinerary only covered a small part of the country, you realize that Colombia has a truly fascinating wealth..

Organization

In terms of organization, everything went according to plan, or almost! We had to stay an extra day in Medellín and Cartagena, as each time one of us was ill and needed to rest. As for the ups and downs of the trip, we’ll soon be concocting a little anthology for you, because even if everything went well, we still had our share of mishaps, as in all travels! It all adds up to memories.

And if we had to do it all over again? We’d do it again without hesitation, quite simply because we know we’ll be back, and we’ve got several years to visit all the places we’ve dreamed of in Colombia. For this trip, we had chosen destinations that we absolutely wanted to discover (the Pacific coast and Guajira), and also because the contacts we had made in the other destinations before we left promised to be great encounters.

It’s important to understand that this itinerary was conceived both according to our desires as travelers, but also according to our desires as bloggers. After all, our aim is to help you discover new destinations! Add to that the opportunities we’ve had to meet new people, and you’ve got a packed schedule! The only problem with such an itinerary is the frustration of not being able to stay longer in each place. But that just makes you want to come back and enjoy!

The last little thing was to spend almost 1 month in the heat and humidity of the Colombian coast, so the coolness of Bogota on our return did us a world of good! And to think thatalternating climates can be a good idea if you want to spare your horse.

Our favorite part of this 1-month trip

THE PACIFIC COAST OF CHOCO!

Definitely. Without a doubt. Without the slightest hesitation. Nothing. The favorite of our 2018 trip to Colombia goes to the Pacific coast of Choco! There we experienced a week of madness, a week of daydreams, a week of fulfilled fantasies, a week of abundant nature, human encounters, intense pleasure, a trip within a trip that will remain etched in our memories forever.

Of course, the whales..

Of course, this dazzling spectacle is so difficult to describe, because it’s such a powerful emotion that apart from saying “Fuck” “Oh my god” “Aaaaaaaaah” “it’s not possible”… No string of words, no phrase, no literature can describe what we feel when the whales appear from nowhere and begin their magical dance.

It’s as if the earth, the planet, the universe were sending you a wave from the depths of time, from the depths of the oceans, something mystical crashing into your face and literally taking your breath away. It’s certainly one of the most beautiful experiences you can have. And we were lucky enough to see them every day. FUCK! It was insane.

And all the wild magic of Choco!

Nature on the Pacific coast of Choco is to die for… if you’ve ever seen the documentary “Colombia Magia Salvaje”, otherwise known as Colombia, the Wild Magic, well, the Pacific is just that, wild magic!

A dense, luxuriant forest filled with improbable species of plants and animals, waterfalls that literally fall onto the sand of a deserted beach, fluorescent plankton that illuminates the black waters of the night, mangroves that weave their webs over landscapes drawn from the imagination of a fantasy author, this culture mixing Afrodescendants and Embera natives..

Choco? It’s a shock! And the result is that we’re just itching to discover other corners of the Pacific coast like Bahia Malaga or Isla Gorgona..

A journey of encounters

RESPONSIBLE TOURISM INITIATIVES

If there’s one thread that runs through this trip, it’s meeting people. Throughout our journey from west to east in Colombia, we were lucky enough to meet many people.

At the turn of a street

At the turn of a street, a market or a beach, we verified the adage that Colombians are welcoming. All you have to do is go up to them, talk to them, ask them how things are going, ask them a simple question about the weather, their life, their job, and the conversation begins… Juanito the fisherman from El Valle, Mayo the cook from Lorica, Delfina the cleaning lady from Cartagena, Dario the Carriel maker from Jerico, Luciana the hostal manager from Palomino, the fishermen from La Punta de los remedios and so many others..

Our fascinating guides

And then there were our guides, those passionate people who were able to pass on to us their love for their territory… Mailer in PNN Utria, Mayerli from PNN La Makuira, Jaime in Jerico, Isaias l’Arhuaco from Sierra Nevada, Mike from Comuna 13 in Medellín, William from Moravia Gardens in Medellín..

They are the linchpins of projects bigger than themselves, but it is they who make the big ideas dreamed up by other masterminds a reality. It is they who, through their knowledge, their adherence to values and their willingness to share, transform the journey into an experience of initiation, education and understanding. Without these guides, who shared their stories, traditions and knowledge with us eye-to-eye, we probably wouldn’t have had the same trip.

Great initiatives

And finally, there were the people we asked to meet, people we were interested in meeting. Since we have a travel blog that aims to show you the best of Colombia, we thought that this trip should also serve to highlight local initiatives. So we rolled up our sleeves and looked for people who offer a different way of seeing or doing tourism in Colombia. The result of this work is that in almost every destination we visited we were able to meet these people who are working for a different kind of tourism on a more or less large scale.

Here are the people we met on this trip, all of whom have a greater or lesser impact on their territory, a greater or lesser experience, but all of whom, at their own level, small or large, are working towards emancipatory tourism:

• Medellín: Hervé and Cathy, young Frenchmen who are starting up tourism in Medellín in an intelligent, responsible way.
• PNN Utria : Josefina de Mano Cambiada, a strong woman who has been working for 20 years to enable the social and economic emancipation of local youth
• Lorica : the Lorica tourist office team and the school teachers who are trying to raise local awareness of the cultural richness of their small town.
• Necocli : Eylin from the Necocli town council, who federates all local energies, and the volunteers from the ARCOETUR sea turtle protection project
• Cartagena: The team of young people from Volunteers Hostal and their fabulous FEM Cartagena social project for fragile communities
• Seydukwa Sierra Nevada: Adrian, leader of an indigenous community tourism project to help the Arhuaca indigenous community reclaim its territory.
• Riohacha: Laura, creator of the La Guajira Cultural project, which aims to develop a new way of discovering Guajira
• Jerico: Cristobal, a simple hotelier, is so passionate about his adopted village that he’s doing his bit to unite the local tourist industry.

We’ll be presenting these projects and telling you more about our encounters in a series of articles to be posted in the “Responsible Tourism” category of the blog. We invite you to encourage these initiatives by visiting them as tourists!

Young people at the helm

What struck us most during this trip was the strength of these young Colombians, in love with their region, their culture, their country, eager for change, for evolution, for a revolution in mentalities, and who become leaders of strong and impactful projects. These beautiful people have a huge heart, big enough in any case to irradiate their community with positive vibes and hopeful projects.

Eylin in Necocli, Adrian in the Sierra Nevada, Laura in the Guajira… you have amazed us with your communicative energy, your sense of the common good, your determination to take back control of your territories… you are the future of this country, and we hope that elsewhere, everywhere in Colombia, other young people will take the same path and create projects that work in the right direction.

Our gripe of this 1 month-trip in Colombia

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN COLOMBIA

As you’ll have gathered, we’re returning from this trip with our heads full of memories, magical moments and a host of encounters, each more enriching than the last. It’s a trip that’s made us grow in our approach to travel, that’s taken us out of our comfort zone and taken us where we weren’t expecting to go, it’s a trip we won’t forget.

Garbage everywhere

But it was also a trip on which we came away with questions and thoughts about the enormous amount of work still to be done in the country to educate people about environmental issues. The subject is so vast and complex that it would take more than a few lines to talk about it, so perhaps we’ll write about it… But how sad to see the pollution that reigns in every corner of the country, often in the most remote areas, closest to nature, where you’d least expect to see waste denaturing the landscape.

In Choco, some beaches are flooded with plastic from the sea; in Nuqui, the situation is even more impressive, with the town’s central beach a veritable open-air rubbish dump… In La Guajira, plastic is also rampant, with the wind blowing all the bags and bottles into the trees and cactuses… Generally speaking, in the countryside, on the outskirts of villages, it’s a rubbish dump… in the towns, the rivers are in a deplorable state..

Whose fault is that?

That’s where it’s hard to answer! What we see everywhere is people not bothering to throw their garbage in a garbage can, drinking a can, bottle or water bag (one of Colombia’s calamities) and throwing it straight into the street, as if the street = garbage can mechanism were inscribed in the collective unconscious, and this starts from a very young age..

In remote rural areas, there’s no waste collection organized by the local authorities or the state. It’s important to understand that the remote corners of Colombia are often also the poorest regions of the country, and that unfortunately one of the reasons for this pollution is clearly the lack of education among the population. But you can’t blame the people for everything. But what are the authorities doing? Becauseto organize collection, to provide containers, to educate people, you need resources! You need people! You need support! And there’s nothing. And the result is often frightening.

In the cities, the situation is a little better insofar as part of the population is educated, and selective sorting is more or less organized, but there’s still a lot of work to be done… generally speaking, there’s a huge amount of work to be done in Colombia.

Be careful! We also see foreign tourists unable to put their garbage in the right garbage can when sorting is proposed… Or not having the presence of mind to leave with their garbage when they are in a region where garbage collection is obviously impossible. It’s up to us tourists, too, living in countries where waste collection and sorting is organized, to make the effort and not let ourselves get carried away doing what everyone else is doing!

Let’s hope that in the years to come an awareness will take place and measures will be taken by those in power, because this has to change.

Images from this 1-month trip

from Medellin to La Guajira