There is a lot to do around Cartagena, depending on your interests:
Convento de la Popa
El Castillo de San Felipe
Walk around the beautiful streets
Isla Tierrabomba (beaches)
Islas Rosario (The company Cultura del Mar offers an individualized snorkeling tour that in my opinion is better than the bigger tours that include stops at aquariums and other stuff not really related to the island)
Boquilla (beach)
Totum Volcano
Birding in mangroves or the Laguna Totum
Look for sloths, monkeys and iguanas in Parque Centenario
Inquisition Museum
Cartagena Gold Museum
Chiva bus
Good live music at La Havana
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Colombia is safe if you stay on the main routes that most backpacker do. Cartagena, Santa Marta, Bogota, Med, Cali, Pop onto Ecuador or the other way onto Venezuela.
Public transport is very safe and secure on big city to big city routes. The old city of Cartagena is safe for strolling etc. In Bogota the La Candalaria area is very interesting and worth a visit but the area gets a little dodgy around 10 pm or so, so head for a bar, club or restaurant recommend norte de Bogota.
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Corrections to Lonely Planet on Caribbean Colombia
Taganga: Booooring. I usually love sleepy towns, but there was truly nothing to do in this town except get bit by mosquitoes, get drunk, or take the bus to Santa Marta. Taganga is fine for, well, about a 1 hour visit, and Casa Felipe folks are really gracious. But to stay in Taganga is more hassle than it’s worth, and Playa Grande can be bested by spending an extra afternoon on plenty other beaches in Colombia.
Santa Marta: Under rated. Plenty of boutique hotels to choose from, a good and affordable place to have as your ‘base camp’ so you can have easy access to everything from street markets to malls, short trips in any direction to places like Rodadero, the hot springs, Taganga. The only downfall is their main mercado (outdoor market) is a cespool, extremely filthy, but most tourists wouldn’t know how to find it anyways, so no worries.
Rodadero: Not as garrish or hoity-toity as Lonely Planet authors seem to suggest, and compared to other beaches mentioned here, this one scored the best for water temperature and smooth motion, ease of swimming, least aggressive vendalores, best security presence, best sunsets, best variety of restaurants, plenty of ATMs, my pick for the days you just want to beach it. The hotels here are twice what you pay elsewhere, so just stay in Santa Marta, only 20 minutes away by cab, 30 by bus.
Hot Springs: Not mentioned in Lonely Planet’s book, but everyone in Santa Marta knows of it. It’s on the way to Barranquilla maybe 45 minutes from Santa Marta, and local tour guides know of it too. You can take a cab directly to the driveway, or a cheaper options is that they can let you off on the highway and you can walk down a dirt road for about 2 km and across some railroad tracks and you’re there (but be sensible and don’t walk at night and don’t walk alone). It’s pretty homespun but the spring is clean and the attendant will give you a mud massage for about $20 per person if you want. You then wash off in a separate hot spring and then a cool spring. Very nice and very untouristy.
Tayrona: MAKE SURE TO NOT LEAVE YOUR PASSPORT AT THE HOTEL OR IN SOME LOCKER! Bring your passport with you as the military guards the entry to the park and registers everyone who comes in. One guy was told he didn’t need it to go hiking in the park and so he left it in a locker in Taganga, and he was told to go back and get it, that’s a good 2 hours in a sweltering bus. The hike from Canaveral all the way to Cabo San Juan de Guia is very easy and flat, so if you pack light you won’t need to waste your money on a horse. However, the hike from Cabo to Pueblito is not to be taken lightly and treacherous, especially if you go the rock route rather than around through the nudist beach, and it’s deceptively easy to get lost via the beach trail. It’s an all-day agenda just to get there and back from Cabo San Juan, so don’t try to push yourself all the way to Pueblito from Canaveral unless you’re an avid mountain climber and love heat and humidity. The showers at Cabo are co-ed, boys and girls nekked together, so you’ll have to get over your bashfulness real quick. Be careful about walking too slowly in flip-flops through grass or trails, as some of the ants do bite. As beautiful as the beaches were, it’s the park in general that’s worth visiting Tayrona for, not the beaches themselves because you’ll probably like several other beaches outside of the park better for swimming. Oh, they do have lockers at Cabo for you to use, but you’ll need to bring your own padlock. No need to bring food; they have a village cabana that is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Cartagena: Spendy, but worth it, so splurge here. However, the boat trip out to Playa Blanca is too long for a mildly great reward. The beach at Playa Blanca is really wonderful (not as good as Rodadero or Covenas in my opinion, but close), but just find an express route there via cab or bus and don’t bother with the boat to Isla Rosario, as all you’ll get is a few mediocre pictures, cabin fever, and a visit to a little aquarium - big whoop. Boca Grande has nice hotels, but the vendalores on this beach are the most aggressive and the water is dirty that even my Colombian boyfriend wanted to get out of there as quick as possible and found it an embarrassment to his country.
Tolu and Covenas: Why Lonely Planet doesn’t even cover this in their book on Colombia stuns me. These twin towns are only three hours south of Cartagena and absolutely wonderful. There are so many zillions of little hotels, hostals, and houses for rent, from backpacker places to luxurious estates, you don’t even need to reserve unless you’re going on a holiday or a high season time. Tolu has more restaurants and a “town” feel, whereas Covenas is strictly for finding seclusion and beauty. A great thing to do is walk the beach between the two towns, but this takes all day (5 hours), not 15 minutes as some people seem to think (it’s fifteen minutes maybe from the southern border of Tolu to the very most northern border of Covenas, but even that’s only if you’re Speed Racer). And do not, do not, do not, think you go between the two towns on the road. It’s very dangerous, sticky, and unpleasant, although there are all kinds of buses and trucks you can hop on if you need. It’s the beach you want to walk, and it’s fabulous. Plus, they have so many beautiful lagoons on the way, I lost count.
Mompos: I think Lonely Planet kind of glosses over how difficult the journey is to get here, and makes too much of the town. Yes, it is historical, there is beautiful architecture, and maybe one of the museums will open, but otherwise it is very scant and you have to spend aaaaall day just to get here from Tolu or Cartagena. It’s also in a swamp, with all the stickiness that goes with that. The bike shop Lonely Planet indicates you can rent a bike - out of business, sorry, you’ll have to walk around town. Lonely Planet says there’s only one ATM; actually they now have three. And there are other ways to get out of Mompos, you don’t have to go back the same way you came. We came from Tolu, but took a different bus company and smaller ferry from Mompos to Busconia (three hours on a dirt road, ouch), and then Busconia direct to Santa Marta. The one really cool thing about Mompos is visiting the ‘medicine man’ (Lonely Planet calls is the ‘Jardin Botanico’, but that’s a bit misleading). He has an astounding variety of medicinal plants, chocolate plants, coffee plants, a plant for HIV treatment, and so much, much, more, it was dizzying, pardon the pun. Plus, you get to smell and nibble all the way through is little jungle and listen to the monkeys swing through the trees.
