Visiting Colombia, as a family of four, for the Summer in 2023

Our family’s visit to Colombia: June, July, and August 2023

With summer fast approaching in May, and our 6-month Mexican tourist visas expiring soon, we were on the hunt for a summer option for our family of four. We’d spent the previous summer on the boat in the Sea of Cortez, and stoutly decided that the heat is not for us. We didn’t want to do that again, so we were looking for another opportunity. Out of the many options that we were lucky enough to have available to us, thanks to our hard work to become location independent, we ultimately decided to visit Colombia, South America.

We spoke with friends, strangers, and did TONS of internet research before deciding to venture to South America for the first time. Yes, Colombia has a well-known history of violence, but the country and its people are working very hard to change the way the country is seen from an outside perspective. They want tourists to come visit their country, see the beauty, meet the people, and share with friends and family back home of their amazing visit to Colombia.

As foreigners, getting a 90-day Colombia tourist visa is easy, so we planned on 3 months in the country. It is reported to be fairly easy to extend your 90-day visa to a 180-day visa, but we didn’t try so I can’t comment on the ease of that process.

We rented Airbnb’s one month at a time, making sure to get the full 30 days on the booking to get a heavy discount on the price. When choosing an Airbnb in Colombia (this is probably a good suggestion in general for Airbnb), make sure the listing is not a new listing AND has more than a few reviews.

Highlights of Medellin: June 2023

For our first month in Colombia, we opted to settle in the second largest city in the country: Medellin. We’re not city people, so we knew that we didn’t want to spend a whole month in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia with a population of over 7 million people. Instead, we decided that we would fly into Medellin and stay there for the first month. By comparison, Medellin is a city of 2.5 million – and still felt like WAY too many people for me!

Our Medellin Airbnb for the month was in the Itagui suburb, in the SW section of Medellin. Here’s a link to an Airbnb currently available in the same high-rise apartment building that we rented in. This is NOT the unit we rented – I can’t find the link for that one right now.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Medellin was all the beautiful, beautiful green foliage. Sorry, but this will be a recurring theme throughout this blog post as all the greenery, all the countryside, all of the flora and fauna of Colombia is absolutely, stunningly gorgeous. This may be the most beautiful country that I’ve ever seen. But, I digress.

First views of Colombia in the daylight (we flew in arriving at midnight so we didn’t see this until the next morning)

We were coming from the deserts of Mexico, and as native Pacific Northwesterners, I hadn’t quite realized just how much I missed the green of back home. And the green beauty of Colombia, mixed with truly vibrant colors and flowers everywhere you look, is a step above.

Without going into too much detail and making this blog post longer than anybody is likely to want to read, here are my…

Top six favorite things that we did while visiting Medellin, Colombia:

Metrocable
Botanical Garden
Parque Arvi
Walking Tour in el Centro
Parque Explora
Guatape
Honorable Mention (because we didn’t go but it looked AMAZING): The Planetarium next door to Parque Explora

Also, don’t leave Medellin without getting yourselves some bunelos con queso! These delicious fried balls of dough with cheese inside will be sorely missed by our family.

Highlights of Salento, Colombia: July 2023

After our month in Medellin, we opted to swing to the far opposite end of the spectrum and chose small town life for our second month in Colombia. We decided to spend July in beautiful Salento, Colombia in the coffee region of Colombia.

But first, we had to get there! We had options for moving our family and things the 155 miles / 250 kilometers from Medellin to Salento. We could fly from Medellin to Pereira and then get a taxi or Uber to take us the additional hour drive from Pereira to Salento. Or, we could take a bus from Medellin to Pereira and then taxi or Uber onward. Or, we could figure out renting a car in Colombia and driving ourselves from Medellin to Salento and then return the car the following day to Pereira and taxi/Uber back to Salento.

After fighting with the bus company’s website for days, and eventually giving up on buying bus tickets, Brenden settled on reserving a rental car with the hope that we could figure out getting ourselves to Salento. It turned out to be quite a hassle to get the car, as the first rental car company (Enterprise) didn’t have a car for us when we arrived to pick it up, despite our reservation. Thankfully, Brenden was able to walk to the other rental car company, Localiza, just next door and they had a car available for us without a reservation.

Pictures from the drive to Salento

Ultimately, renting the car and driving ourselves turned out to be the cheapest option and was a much better experience for us than taking the bus would have been! Win-win!

The drive from Medellin to Salento exposed us to even more of the beautiful countryside that Colombia has to offer. Every corner, every bend in the road, every mountain curve revealed the absolute beauty of the country. We drove along mountain ridges with tiny, remote towns clinging to the cliffsides and into the coffee region with its green rolling hills. Beauty is everywhere in Colombia.

Salento, and nearby Cocora Valley, was the basis for the Colombian pueblo and the valley in the popular Disney movie, Encanto. The beauty of this region is unparalleled.

Around town in Salento

Top five favorite things we did in Salento, Colombia: July 2023

Cocora Valley
Horseback Riding Tours in the Mountains
ATV Tour along the Mountain Roads
Ziplining & Climbing to the Mirador
Hiking in the Mountains

We loved the food in Salento! Our favorites:

Pai la Art (ice cream/sorbet)
Tangara on Calle Real (pizza, pasta, microbrews)
Rural Cocina (cheeseburgers, delicious nacho-style french fries)
Fresh Fruit Cups (mango, pineapple, chocolate-dipped strawberries)

Salento was a magical town for our family. We absolutely loved our time spent in this adorable town full of vibrant people and culture. It is a popular tourist destination and we saw MANY people come through that stayed for only a few days. We loved spending a full month in Salento and getting to really explore the town and see it during busy and quiet times. Our Airbnb in Salento was on the outskirts of town and across from a farm where there were lots of animals willing to befriend our kids (cats, dogs, horses, chickens, geese, cows) and we were thrilled to watch the horsemen and women move their strings of tour horses around the town every day.

The older gentleman that walks around town every weekend shouting his advertisements of tamales for sale… don’t ignore him. Buy those the first chance you get! You won’t regret it.

Cocora Valley

Highlights of Finca El Sueno outside Pereira, Colombia: August 2023

For the month of August, we decided to get even further out of town so we rented a car for the month (rental through Localiza) and we picked Finca El Sueno on the outskirts of the city of Pereira. Pereira is a city of about a half million people and is located about 15 miles NW of Salento and 90 miles south of Medellin.

A finca is basically a home in the countryside in Colombia. We LOVED our time at the finca in Pereira. It was about a 15-20 minute drive from the finca to get into the city for groceries or what have you. The property and house were expansive and the entire property was fenced in so we felt very secure. Our kids especially loved being able to spend much of their free time outside on the swings, reading in the hammocks, or just wandering the grounds watching the birds and bugs.

The view from the back porch of Finca El Sueno

I also just want to say how much we fell in love with the design of Colombian fincas, with the open floorplan and full wrap-around porch which allowed dry viewing of the heavy rainstorms that passed through starting in August. The many windows and doors blur the line between indoor and outdoor spaces. Though, we will never understand why the entire country seems to have shunned the use of window screens to keep the bitey bugs outside.

Top five favorite things we did during our time renting the finca outside Pereira, Colombia:

Daytrip to Marsella (10 miles north of Pereira)
Daytrip to Buenavista (30 miles south of Pereira) and nearby Pijao
Daytrip to Filandia (9 miles south of Pereira)
Daytrip through Manizales, around Nevado del Ruiz volcano, and to the town of Murillo (35 miles northeast of Pereira)
Termales Santa Rosa de Cabal

Our 90 days in Colombia wrapped up at the end of August and we flew back to the Pacific Northwest to visit family. We LOVED our summer in Colombia with our family. We never once felt threatened or in danger in the country, at most we felt uncomfortable once or twice while in Medellin but that was much more a factor of being uncomfortable amongst large crowds of people (I am uncomfortable in any city, United States absolutely included!!).

We did find that the language barrier was much harder to deal with in Colombia versus in Mexico. We’re trying hard to learn Spanish but it’s proving difficult. We can get by with Google Translate, but we want to be better. I hope to be conversational in Spanish, some day. It’s harder in Colombia than in Mexico simply because very few of the locals in Colombia speak English, whereas, in Mexico, most speak at least some English and tend to switch to English to speak with you when they learn you’re a native English-speaker. That is not the case in Colombia. And they don’t slow down, either, even when they know you don’t speak their language.

Hopefully this blog post will help other families be encouraged to visit Colombia. It’s a beautiful country with amazing people and a rich culture. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I would love to chat specifics about visiting Colombia. Thanks for reading! ~Rachel