About Mompox

Mompox is one of Colombia’s best-preserved colonial cities. Founded in 1537, the city has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995. Mompox has 44,000 inhabitants and is located deep inland on the Río Magdalena, more than 300 km southeast of Cartagena.

“Little Cartagena”
Time has stood still in Mompox. Old crafts are still practiced, such as iron, silver and goldsmithing. The people are friendly and proud of their city, and nature is always nearby. You can walk through atmospheric streets with white houses, across squares with beautiful colonial churches, and along the waterfront. Not for nothing is Mompox also called “Little Cartagena.”

A piece of history
Until the mid-19the century, Mompox was an important port, as a connecting point between the coast and the Andes. Then ships had to find another route, due to erosion of the river. The inhabitants moved elsewhere and Mompox was cut off from the outside world for years. The city inspired the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. Consequently, there are strong similarities between Mompox and the fictional village of Macondo from his novels.

Mompox, Mompós or Mompoj?
There are several names you will come across on the Internet if you google Mompox. The original name is Mompoj, named after the chief of the Malibú Indian community. The official name is Santa Cruz de Mompox. After Mompox -as the first city in Colombia- declared its independence from the Spanish, people began using the name Mompós. The inhabitants are called “Momposinos” and “Momposinas.”

In this travel guide you will read all about Mompox: how to get there, what to do, what are the nicest hotels and much more.

6 Tips for fun things to do

How to get there

By bus:
Mompox is easiest to reach from Cartagena, you can get there in about 6 hours. From Bogotá, it’s a long journey of about 14 hours. The price of a bus ticket Cartagena – Mompox with Unitransco (Expreso Brasilia) is around COP70,000/$19. Buses leave from the Terminal de Transportes de Cartagena, about a 45-minute drive from the center.

There is also –puerta a puerta – bus transportation with Marsol (5-6 hours). Departure is from Marsol’s office in Cartagena. Prices are on request.

By plane: There are no flights to Mompox (yet). (July 2023)

By car: In Mompox, you don’t need a car. The city center is easy to explore on foot.

Climate and best time to go

• You can visit Mompox year-round. Just keep in mind that it is very hot and humid. The mercury can reach about 38 degrees. Therefore, an air-conditioned hotel is definitely recommended.
• During Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Easter and during events, Mompox is popular with Colombian tourists. Accomodations are quickly booked up then and prices tend to be higher.

Events

Mompox Jazz Festival – September
The festival is well known in Colombia and far beyond. Every year in September, national and international artists and visitors come to Mompox for this event.

Semana Santa – Easter week
Mompox is one of the best places in Colombia to experience Easter celebrations. The celebrations there are a centuries-old tradition. They include processions and the many churches are beautifully decorated.

For both popular events, be sure to book your accommodations well in advance.

Dia de independencia de Colombia- July 20
During Independence Day, parties are celebrated in Mompox, including traditional dances such as cumbia and bambuco. With the beautiful clothing of the dancers, this provides quite a few nice pictures.

In this travel guide (updated March 2025) you will find tips for fun things to do, hotel and restaurant tips and useful facts for planning your trip to Palomino.

Palomino is a village of 6,000 inhabitants located between Santa Marta and Riohacha. Because of this location, the village is also called the “gateway to la Guajira.” Palomino is a popular place to spend a few days relaxing on the beach while touring the highlights of northern Colombia, such as Tayrona National Park, the Lost City trail and La Guajira.

With its laid-back atmosphere and cozy hostels, Palomino has become a popular spot among backpackers in recent years.

8 Tips for fun things to do

The beach

Good to know:

• Due to strong currents and high waves, you cannot swim far out to sea. Keep a close eye on the red warning flags.

• In 2020, the sea swept away much of the beach and palm trees, leaving only a narrow strip of sand in many places.
• Most beachgoers (and vendors) linger at the beginning of the beach. As you walk further out of the village, it gets quieter.

How to get to Palomino

Below you can find the approximate distances and prices of transport to and from Palomino (updated March 2025)

By bus:

From Tayrona: 1u (COP7,500/€2)
From Santa Marta: 2h (COP30,000/$8)
From Riohacha: 2h (COP25,000/€7)
From Cartagena: 6u (COP68,000/$17)
From Baranquilla: 4h (COP59,000/$15)

Climate and best travel period

How long to stay and where to stay overnight?

If you come to Palomino to chill on the beach, a day or 2-3 will probably be sufficient. If you want to do some active trips alongside this, stay a little longer. There are plenty of hostels and hotels to choose from. Because Palomino is so small (there is 1 main street), you can easily walk to the beach and eat out. You don’t have to walk further than 15 minutes. There are also moto cabs to take you.

$ Price range up to $30

$$ Price range $30 – $50

$$$ Price range from $50

Restaurants and bars in Palomino 

For a small village like Palomino, there are many restaurants, from simple ones where you can eat the local specialty -fish with coconut rice and patacones-, to French-Caribbean restaurants. Many of the restaurants in Palomino, belong to a hotel or hostel. Even if you are not staying there, you can join them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Opening hours can change depending on the season. There is no vibrant nightlife in Palomino, as bars close at 11 p.m.

Practical info A-Z

Airplane

Aeropuerto Internacional Rafael Núňez in Cartagena (CTG) is easily accessible, including:

• Direct KLM flight or with a stopover in Bogotá
• Avianca, Latam and Viva Air from Bogotá, Medellín, Pereira (coffee triangle)
• Wingo from Bogotá
• American Airlines, Jet Blue and Spirit from Miami
• Copa Airlines from Panama

Transportation from airport
The easiest way to get into getting to the city center is by cab. Follow the “yellow footsteps” and you will come out to a counter. Here you say where you need to go. You will then get a printout with the price and be assigned a cab. A cab ride to the city center takes about 15 minutes and will cost you around 14,000COP (€4).

Bus, car and boat

Bus
There are connections from St. Marta (5 hours), Medellín (12 hours), and Bogotá (22 hours), among others. The Terminal de Transportes de Cartagena is about a 45-minute drive from downtown. If you are traveling to Cartagena from St. Marta, puerta a puerta (door-to-door transportation) is a convenient option. (See transportation from Cartagena).

Car
Cartagena is easily accessible by rental car, but parking is difficult in the city center. Moreover, the center is easy to walk around. If you are traveling with a family or a group and want a little more freedom, it may be worthwhile to rent a car, for example at the airport.

Boat
Cartagena is a popular destination for cruise lines. Consequently, many tourists get to know Cartagena for the first time on a cruise. There are also sailing trips between Cartagena and the San Blas Islands in Panama.

In Cartagena

Hop-on-Hop-off bus

The distinctive red buses of Citysightseeing Cartagena, are especially popular with tourists who want to see the highlights of Cartagena in a short time. You can hop on and off at 14 stops as much as you want, during the duration of your ticket (24/48h). With English-language audio guide.

From Cartagena

• Cartagena has a tropical climate and there is a high humidity of around 80%
• It is warm all year in Cartagena; the average temperature is a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 32 degrees
• A room with air conditioning is not a luxury!
• Because of the heat, it is convenient to plan your active things in the morning or late afternoon. At the hottest part of the day, you can then seek air conditioning in a coffee shop or restaurant, museum or mall
• May-September is the warmest period; the “coldest” months are January and February
• December through April is the dry season, October is the wettest month

There is a lot to see in and around Cartagena, but where do you start? Here is some inspiration for a trip of 2 days and 3 days or more.

3 days or more

With a day or more added, you can take it completely easy and soak up the city. You can also take a cab to Bocagrande, to stroll along the modern boulevard, shop and see the contrast of “little Miami” with the old town.

With 3 days or more, you can do a trip to PNN Islas del Rosario y de San Bernardo or take the bus to the colonial town of Mompox inland.

€ price range up to €25

€€ price range €25 – €100

€€€ price range above €100

El Centro

San Diego

Getsemani

Bocagrande

In this travel guide Barranquilla you will find everything you need to know for your trip to Barranquilla: what are the best neighborhoods to stay in, what to do, where to go carnival celebrate carnival, what about safety and other practical information. You can read it here.

The golden gate of Colombia
Barranquilla, with 1.2 million inhabitants, is the 4th largest city in Colombia. The city on the Caribbean coast is located on the Magdalena River and has the largest port in Colombia. Due to its strategic location, Barranquilla is also known as the Puerta de Oro (Golden Gate).

2nd Largest Carnival in the World
Most people know Barranquilla for its carnival, the largest carnival in the world after Rio de Janeiro. Barranquilla does not have the tourist attractions of Cartagena, or the beaches of Santa Marta, yet the city has enough to do to keep you entertained for a few days, even if you don’t come for the carnival. For example, there are excellent restaurants and lively bars and interesting museums. In 2020, Barranquilla won the World Travel Award for best new cultural destination in South America. If you are not in Barranquilla during carnival, at least visit the carnival museum to get into the carnival atmosphere!

Shopping city for every budget
The modern shopping malls in Barranquilla, are generally a lot kinder to your wallet than the more touristy cities like Cartagena (and Medellín and Bogotá).

Do you want to visit this lively city? Then check out our Barranquilla travel guide here with handy tips & tricks for your trip to Barranquilla!

From Sept. 11 to 23, 2023, we toured along the north coast of Colombia, from Barranquilla to Santa Marta. In Barranquilla we visited relatives of my travel partner. Meanwhile, she showed me some of the sights of “her city.” After this we went hiking in Tayrona National Park, after which a good dose of relaxation was scheduled during our stay at a wellness resort near the park. After this, the round trip along the north coast continued to the mountain village of Minca and Tierra Adentro nature reserve. To conclude the trip, we stayed two nights in Santa Marta, the oldest city of Colombia.

For us, this trip proved to be a perfect combination of city and nature. Would you also like to take a trip like this? Then read about our North Coast roundtrip here and check out our insider tips for fun things to do, transportation and the best hotels.

DAY 1-4, BARRANQUILLA

The arrival in Barranquilla was unlike any other city I had been to before, such as Cartagena, Medellín and Bogotá. Barranquilla came across as a bit chaotic, when we drove through the suburb of Soledad to Barranquilla. It was a lively scene with bici-taxis, tuktuks and even horse and carriage, driving through the narrow streets.

Barranquilla is known for its delicious food and the Barraquilleros love to enjoy that food. On every street corner we saw a BBQ restaurant or a toko with a few tables. The Riomar district where our (excellent) hotel GHL Hotel Collection was located, is a fairly new neighborhood, with neat, clean streets filled with trees and more expensive stores. A huge contrast to the chaotic Soledad!

The locals are super nice and have the cheerful character of the Costeños, the inhabitants of the north coast. Barranquilla has relatively few attractions and tourism is not as developed as in nearby Cartagena. We didn’t encounter a single Western tourist during our 4-night stay, even at the hotel, which was frequented mostly by Colombian tourists and businessmen.

During our stay in Barranquilla, we did many fun things with the family. For example, we took a mototaxi to Bocas de Ceniza, where the sea meets the river, we went to eat and watch Colombian soccer on the Malecón, (the Avenida del Rio), posed for a photo shoot at the monument Aleta del Tiburón and took a trip to Puerto Colombia, the city where immigrants first set foot in Colombia. Furthermore, we tasted the atmosphere of carnaval in Barranquilla in the carnaval museum, shopped in the giant shopping malls Buenavista 1 and 2 and Mall Plaza and had a bite to eat in hotel El Prado, Latin America’s first luxury hotel. Read the travel guide Barranquilla for more information and tips.

DAY 5-7 TAYRONA NATIONAL PARK

After the super fun and busy stay in Barranquilla, it was time to say goodbye to the family and we left for the Kantawa Eco Spa hotel, near the Tayrona National Park.

We found this a super place to completely unwind. We relaxed in the pool, while the birds and butterflies were flying back and forth and we spotted a squirrel during a walk in the beautiful garden.

We hiked in the jungle of Tayrona National Park, home to various beautiful beaches, such as Playa Arrecife and the popular Cabo de San Juan beach. Along the way we saw monkeys (white-shouldered capuchin monkeys), which we were able to spot at very close range. After a hike in the Tayrona park -which involved a lot of sweating with the humidity of 79%! -, body and soul were well pampered in the pool with hydromassages, a superdeluxe jacuzzi and a massage “by the river”.

We didn’t do that, but it is also possible to stay overnight in Tayrona National Park, including at Playa Arrecifes, Cabo de San Juan or Playa Brava.

Read the travel guide Tayrona National Park for more information and tips.

DAY 8 MINCA, center

After a wonderfully relaxing stay at Kantawa Eco Spa hotel, we left for Minca. Before spending a few nights at the Reserva Natural Tierra Adentro would stay, we had booked 1 night in the village of Minca at Hotel Minca-la Casona, the only hotel in the middle of the village.

We wanted to look around the village before heading to the nature reserve. I had been to Minca once 4 years ago and I was curious to see if much had changed in that time. I noticed how many restaurants and stores had been added. Minca is booming! Despite being a small village, we really enjoyed wandering around.

In the morning we had breakfast at the hotel, which really comes highly recommended. The food is delicious, but it’s all about the many hummingbirds that descend on the trays of sugar water. With the mountains of the Sierra Nevada as a backdrop, the hotel’s terrace is great to linger on at any time of day, but in the morning the hummingbirds are most active. Before we left for Reserva Natural Tierra Adentro, we wanted to take a coffee tour do at Finca La Victoria. Motomink’s mototaxis took us to the finca and had promised to wait for us until the tour was finished. The drive through the mountains and bamboo forests was beautiful. During the coffee tour, the guide explained to us all about the interesting history of Finca La Victoria and the coffee process. After this we got back on the motorcycle for the beautiful ride through the mountains. Tip: you can also spend the night near the coffee inca, in Casas Viejas.

Read the travel guide Minca for more information and tips.

DAY 9-10 MINCA, RESERVA NATURAL TIERRA ADENTRO

Via Reserva Natural Tierra Adentro we had arranged transportation by 4×4. This solid car was absolutely no luxury, because it was a “bumpy ride” to the hotel. Driver Jesús was very experienced and maneuvered the car along boulders, potholes and through streams that flowed into the road. This ride was an adventure in itself and after we passed the Marinka waterfall, it was another short drive to the nature reserve. Once we arrived, it was an oasis of calm. We installed ourselves on the terrace with mega-hangmat and spent the rest of the afternoon just enjoying the amazing view.

A fun activity at the nature preserve is a short tour of the animal sanctuary. Hierdoor krijg je een beter beeld van de achtergrond van de dieren, die worden gered van de illegale handel, zijn aangereden of door andere dieren zijn aangevallen. Via een trap, kun je naar een klein kreekje lopen, van waar je een mooi uitzicht hebt op het bos. Vanuit het natuurreservaat is het maar 10 minuten lopen naar de waterval Cascada de Marinka. I almost didn’t recognize the place anymore, because recently all kinds of artwork had been placed at the entrance, made of colored caps. There were also several additional mega hammocks installed, so you now have a nice view of the waterfall from several spots.

From Tierra Adentro, you can also hike to Mirador Los Pinos.

Here you can read more about fun things to do in Minca.

DAY 11-12 SANTA MARTA

Santa Marta was the finale of our trip along the North Coast, before we got back on the plane to Bogotá and then back to Curaçao. This was a city of which I had hardly any expectations. Most travelers stay only one night in this city in transit to refuel from an intense trip to Ciudad Perdida or Tayrona National Park. Because of this, we heard few stories about Santa Marta from other travelers. Nevertheless, we found it a great place to stay. Our hotel Catedral Plaza was in a great location in the historic center, near Santa Marta’s Malecón. This boulevard is a nice place to watch the sunset. Carrera 3 is a very pleasant street with many restaurants and street performers in a setting of colorful murals. There is also a (free) Gold Museum in Santa Marta, but unfortunately it was closed when we were there.

Read the Santa Marta travel guide for more information and tips.