Colombia: open and safe but not quite ready

---

---

Many people will try to discourage you if you intend to go to Colombia. They still have in mind the terrorism and kidnapping of previous decades. These days are long gone. Only remain some little pockets of unsafe territory close to border of Venezuela and Ecuador, but that' s far away from any tourist spot.

But there are pros and cons if you want to come.



CONS:

Colombia is a modern country but development is quite uneven. A city like Medellin is modern and impressive, but not that far away, other regions tell a different story.One big grocery in Cartagena refused my credit card saying that "this type of card does not work here". In a small village in the outskirts of town, same card was accepted. This was the same with gas stations. Problem here is that you need to verify first if you can use your cards or not. To be ready for anything, you then need to get more cash, which is not something wise for a tourist.

Other negative aspect is the roads and general driving of locals. Infrastructure is developing as we speak, but is currently minimal. Real highways with 2 lanes on each side are rare, and even on the ones with one lane, you need to cross tons of villages and pay some pricy tolls. From Cartagena to Santa Marta, tolls totalized about 35$ CAN and about a fifth of this road has 2 lanes. Driving of locals is horrible. I drove in many latin american countries, (Mexico, Ecuador, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama), but Colombia was the worst for me. Apart from the usual annoying motorcycles everywhere that are everywhere and don't follow any rules, bus and truck drivers are aggressive and can double you anywhere, (even on a bridge) and at high speed. According to World Health, traffic accidents is the 7th cause of deaths in the country. For that reason, that limited the range of driving i did in that country, as driving was stressful, and my renting was not a tank but a miniature car. :-)

There are road regulations like speed limits and others, but nobody follows them. But you as a tourist need to follow them.

Last point, as a reciprocity "punition", Colombia charges 85$ USD for Canadians to enter country, to exact revenge on Canada asking colombians to get a visa to enter Canada. This is suppose to end in May 2019.



PROS:

Except in some very touristy places, people are really nice and always try to help you when they can.

Gas price is really cheap.

There are remote places good for excellent nature watching like the llanos, the amazon or the Pacific coast. Even closer wildlife spots offer good opportunities if you know where to look.

Cheap airplane tickets. I had Colombia in my list of countries to visit in a long time, and flights to Cartagena especially fell at about 600$ CAN, and it was a direct. You can easily take an internal flight of about 140-150$ to Bogota or Medellin afterward, which is far cheaper than let's say Canada to Bogota in one shot, (prices were in the 1200$ range, so you can spare lots of money with preparation)





TRIP:

So I arrived in Cartagena and then did a kind of an uneven circle to visit what I want. Big advantage with a car, is you can easily go where you want. I'll detail in following blogs the different spots, some are classics and some not.

---