Stories, tips and experiences to discover Colombia

If you're arriving on an international flight, you'll need to go through immigration and allow enough time to return for your next flight. If you also need to collect your luggage, your available time becomes even more limited. That's why I wouldn't recommend visiting La Candelaria or Monserrate with a layover of just six hours, especially if your connecting flight is also international.

In the tourism sector, a large share of corporate activities is grouped under the MICE concept: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions. And Bogotá has been building an increasingly well-equipped ecosystem to accommodate them.

Traveling alone through Colombia taught me something quickly: being on your own rarely means feeling lonely. You can spend the morning drinking coffee beneath Bogotá's mountains, join a street-art experience with strangers in Medellín and, a few days later, walk beneath enormous wax palms in Colombia's Coffee Region.

Some cities are best known through their monuments. Bogotá can also be discovered with a spoon in hand. When I recommend approaching the Colombian capital through its cuisine, I don't start with white-tablecloth restaurants. I start among papayas, soursops, fresh herbs, corn cobs, and pots that have been simmering for hours.

Bogotá has a unique charm that I always leverage when designing family experiences: within just a few streets, you can travel across several centuries. A colonial facade might stand right across from a contemporary mural; a plaza can tell stories of independence, politics, and religion; and just minutes later, a fruit many children have never tasted before can become the highlight of the day.

Traveling to Bogotá with children has one major advantage: you don't need theme parks every day to keep them interested. One morning you can ride a cable car up a mountain, spend the afternoon searching for tiny golden animals and finish the day running across one of the city's huge parks.