Gay Group Trip: Luxury Colombia Explorer, Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena

Day 1: Arrival in Bogotá

Welcome to Colombia. Your driver meets you at El Dorado International and takes you straight to the Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia, your home for the next three nights, set in the smart northern neighbourhood of Chicó.

Check in, settle in, and meet your host at the hospitality desk. The afternoon is yours. Most guests use it to shake off the flight, though the streets around the hotel reward a slow wander, with good coffee and a clutch of design shops and restaurants on Zona G, a few blocks away.

At 5:30 pm, the group gathers for a welcome reception with cocktails and canapés. A chance to meet your fellow travellers before a short walk to dinner at a nearby restaurant, where the trip starts properly over the first of many very good Colombian meals.

Meals included: welcome reception, dinner

Accommodation: Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia

Day 2: Bogotá and La Candelaria

After breakfast, your private bilingual guide collects you from the hotel for a six-hour exploration of La Candelaria, the historic core of the city. Cobbled streets, painted colonial facades, and the layered political and artistic history that has shaped Colombia for four centuries.

You’ll walk through Plaza de Bolívar, ringed by the Cathedral, Congress, the Palace of Justice, and the Mayor’s Office. From there, the day shapes itself around your interests. The Gold Museum holds the largest collection of pre-Columbian gold in the world. The Botero Museum is dedicated to Colombia’s most recognisable artist. The Gabriel García Márquez Cultural Center is for the literary-minded. Lunch is at a local restaurant chosen for the food, not the foot traffic.

The afternoon returns you to the hotel for downtime before dinner. For those who want to see how Bogotá moves after dark, an optional gay nightlife tour runs this evening, led by local guides who know the city’s queer scene from the inside.

Meals included: breakfast, lunch, dinner

Accommodation: Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia

Day 3: The Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá

A slower start this morning before heading out of the city for one of Colombia’s stranger and more striking sights. Zipaquirá is an hour north of Bogotá, a colonial town best known not for what’s above ground but what lies 600 feet beneath it.

The Salt Cathedral was carved into a working salt mine that closed in the 1950s, and rebuilt in its current form as both a place of worship and a feat of engineering. The Colombian Congress has called it the country’s first wonder, and it earns the title. A sloping passageway lit in deep blue opens into a cavernous main nave with a floor-to-ceiling cross, statues of the Stations of the Cross, and a basilica dome, all hand-carved from salt.

Lunch is in Zipaquirá before the drive back to Bogotá. The evening is yours, with restaurant recommendations from your guide if you want them.

Meals included: breakfast, lunch

Accommodation: Sofitel Bogotá Victoria Regia

Day 4: Bogotá to Medellín

A short flight this morning takes you over the Andes to Medellín, the City of Eternal Spring, named for the climate that hovers somewhere around perfect all year round. Your driver collects you at the airport and takes you to the Wake Medellín, a residential-style stay in El Poblado, the city’s most walkable and design-forward neighbourhood.

Time to settle in, and use the rooftop pool if the weather agrees, before the group meets again for dinner at a local favourite. Medellín’s food scene has come a long way in a short time, and tonight is a useful introduction to it.

Meals included: breakfast, dinner

Accommodation: Wake Medellín

Day 5: Medellín, Plaza Botero, and Comuna 13

Today is the city itself, and the story of how it changed. The morning starts in the civic centre with a guide who walks you through the arc of Medellín’s last forty years, from the violence of the cartel era to the urban planning, public transport, and cultural investment that have reshaped it into one of the most talked-about cities in Latin America.

You’ll pass through Parque de las Luces and Plaza Botero, where 23 of Fernando Botero’s bronze sculptures stand in the open air, and visit the Palacio de Justicia, now a working market with two floors of galleries above it. Lunch is local and traditional.

The afternoon belongs to Comuna 13, the hillside neighbourhood that was once the most dangerous in the most dangerous city in the world, and is now one of its most visited. The transformation came through public investment, including the outdoor escalators that connect the steep streets, and a generation of street artists whose work covers almost every wall. You’ll meet some of them, hear the story from people who lived it, and see how a neighbourhood reinvents itself in plain sight.

Back at the hotel, freshen up, then meet the group for a rooftop bar crawl across El Poblado, panoramic views and signature cocktails included. Dinner is on your own.

Meals included: breakfast, lunch

Accommodation: Wake Medellín

Day 6: Coffee country

You can’t really come to Colombia without spending a day in coffee country, and today is that day. A 90-minute drive out of Medellín, through the green folds of Antioquia, takes you to a working family-run finca where coffee is still grown, picked, and processed the traditional way.

You’ll walk the grounds, learn the full process from cherry to cup, and taste the result. There’s also a lesson in how to brew it properly at home, and the chance to buy direct from the farm. Lunch is on the finca.
In the evening, an optional group salsa class for those who want to learn how to dance like a Colombiano, with a same-sex partner and a patient instructor. The group reconvenes for dinner at a local restaurant.

Meals included: breakfast, lunch, dinner

Accommodation: Wake Medellín

Day 7: Guatapé and El Peñol

This morning you leave Medellín for Guatapé, two hours east through rolling farmland and pine forest. The first stop is El Peñol, a 200-metre granite monolith that rises out of nowhere, with 740 steps zig-zagged up its side.

The climb is optional, but the view at the top is the kind that justifies the effort, looking out over a flooded valley of emerald islands and snaking inlets that has become one of the most photographed landscapes in the country.

From there, into Guatapé itself, a small town painted in extraordinary colour, with brightly tiled bas-relief panels (zócalos) wrapped around the lower half of every building. A walk through the streets, then a private boat across the reservoir, drinks and music optional. Lunch is at a lakeside restaurant before checking in to The Brown, your hotel for the night, set on the water with private balconies and an infinity pool. Dinner is on your own.

Meals included: breakfast, lunch

Accommodation: The Brown, Guatapé

Day 8: Guatapé to Cartagena

After breakfast, transfer back to Medellín for a short flight to Cartagena. The shift is immediate. The temperature climbs, the light changes, and within an hour of landing you’re checking into the Bastión Luxury Hotel, a 16th-century building inside the walled city, all interior courtyards and British colonial detail.

In the evening, a private catamaran takes the group out into Cartagena Bay for sunset and the city skyline lit up against the water. Dinner follows.

Meals included: breakfast, dinner

Accommodation: Bastión Luxury Hotel

Day 9: The Walled City

The morning is a guided walk through Cartagena’s old town, a UNESCO-listed maze of cobbled lanes, flower-draped balconies, and pastel facades inside the 16th-century walls the Spanish built to keep pirates out. You’ll walk a stretch of the wall itself, look in at the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, the largest Spanish fort in the Americas, and pass through the Palace of the Inquisition and a series of small plazas, each with its own rhythm.

Lunch is on your own, with recommendations from your guide.
In the afternoon, a rum and chocolate tasting at one of Cartagena’s best bars, four rums paired with chocolates, and a knowledgeable host walking you through the history of both, neither of which arrived in Colombia by accident.

The evening is the trip’s culinary high point: a ten-course tasting menu at a restaurant whose lab has spent four years researching the food of the Colombian Caribbean. The result is a meal built around the region’s full history of arrivals, Spanish, African, Lebanese, Syrian, and the indigenous cuisines that came before any of them.

Meals included: breakfast, dinner

Accommodation: Bastión Luxury Hotel

Day 10: Departure

A final breakfast at the hotel before your driver takes you to Cartagena’s Rafael Núñez airport for your flight home.

Meals included: breakfast