Travel Diary - Cristina's an italian free spirit who is currently travelling solo around South America for several months covering Colombia, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Below is a snippet from her travel diary which which includes some great insight into her feelings, thoughts and reactions to the first part of  her adventure which started in Colombia. [hr] I'd been waiting a long time to take this a ...

Our second day in Sierra Nevada del Cocouy and Marco's first experience riding a horse, it was an adventure to say the least. ...

It was our first evening in Medellin and we were debating whether to go and see the “Zona Rosa”, the modern and trendy part of the city, or take the cable car up to the Santo Domingo barrio, which was once one of the poorest and most dangerous neighbourhoods. Our new friends Elena and Noah, who were both almost full time residents of the city, persuaded us to go with the latter and they promised to show us ...

Hostel accommodation can always be hit and miss; with guidebook information often being out of date and giving the wrong impression of a place. So we thought it would be useful to share our honest reviews of the hostels we stayed in over 7 weeks  of traveling in Colombia. Bogota’: Hostal Alegria – La Candelaria, Colonial house with a nice and relaxed atmosphere. Very good location, in a quite area, very clo ...

During our six weeks of traveling around Colombia in the build up to Christmas we've noticed that lights and decorations are an important part of the Christmas celebrations. Not only in public areas but also on family houses; we saw whole streets illuminated with the most elaborate forms of fairy lights.  The city of Medellin wins the award for the most amount of lights: the Barrio's on the hillsides of the ...

  Ciudad Perdida is an ancient city built by the Tairona people in 700AD in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta jungle, Colombia.  Only officially found in 1975, it is still relatively undiscovered by mass tourism: just 40 people visit the Ciudad Perdida per day compared to the 500 of Machu Picchu in Peru. For this reason and for its isolated location, only accessible by walking 20km into the jungle for 3 ...

Day 2 of our adventures in the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy After staying the night at Cabanas del Pulpito, we were keen to do the trek to Laguna Grande. However we were just debating whether our tired legs could carry us there, the 8 hours of walking the previous day had tired us out.  In the end our host Marline suggested the perfect solution, she offered us a couple of ponies to ride to Laguna Grande. The sma ...

Visiting Sierra Nevada del Cocuy was not part of our original travel plans due to its remote location. It’s a national park situated in the Eastern Cordillera mountain range north east of Bogota .  We took the ten-hour night bus from Tunja to Cocuy town. The bus ride is not something I would want to repeat in the near future: fifty percent of the road is loose gravel and the hairpin bends seemed never endin ...