---
type: Country
title: Colombia
description: Harry's observations from a three-week Colombian trip — Cartagena's walled city, the Caribbean coast, Medellín, and a country he keeps calling one of the cheapest he has been to.
tags: [colombia, south-america, caribbean]
timestamp: 2026-08-07T10:00:00Z
---

# Colombia

Harry's first extended stay in South America, built around his brother's wedding
and turning into a vlog series that runs from the Caribbean coast down to
Medellín. He arrives knowing almost nothing about the country and says so
repeatedly; the through-line of the cluster is how far the place is from the
reputation it carries in Britain.

## Observations

### From [First Impressions of Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/d8heYtQXrnc.md)

- **Money and costs**: his headline impression is that Colombia is one of the
  cheapest countries he has been to. A dinner with a drink should not come to
  more than about $7 (from video – unverified), and taxis are cheap enough that
  he remarks on it unprompted. The currency runs in thousands and sometimes
  millions of pesos, and he admits he is still doing the conversions badly
  several days in — which is itself why he overpays a few times.
- **Prices for foreigners**: he is candid that he is quoted gringo prices and
  that he mostly accepts them. He is dressed like a tourist, he says, so of
  course the number goes up.
- **Safety**: nothing about [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md) reads as dangerous
  to him, and a local he asks says the same. This is the first of many times in
  the cluster that he contrasts what he expected with what he finds.
- **Culture and people**: street sellers approach constantly but are not pushy —
  one *no gracias* is generally enough. His summary of Colombians after a few
  days is vibrant, talkative and unbothered by what anyone thinks of them.
- **Weather**: hot in the day but in the windy season on the coast, which makes
  it bearable.

### From [You Must Visit This Beach in Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/KXYIM4JBRqg.md)

- **Safety**: the cluster's first proper answer to the question. Harry argues
  that branding a whole country dangerous is a bad way to think — Colombia has
  dangerous areas exactly as every country does — and is careful to add that he
  is currently in tourist areas and that his read comes from those. He says he
  intends to go to rougher places later and report from them.
- **Money and costs**: the minimum wage is extremely low and making a living is
  hard, which is his stated reason for not haggling over small sums with street
  vendors — see
  [don't grind a price down to nothing](/tips/dont-grind-down-people-with-nothing.md).
- **Culture and people**: what surprises him most is the people — charismatic,
  confident, and highly social, going out in large groups of friends by default.
  He singles out salsa: not nightclub dancing, properly danced.
- **Food**: mango is eaten with salt and often pepper, and is much firmer than
  the English fruit.
- **Street selling**: vendors are everywhere in tourist areas and ask once.
  Harry's read is that a large share of coastal income comes from selling to
  visitors.

### From [Solo at Night in Cartagena, Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/7o94ZDWYXYE.md)

- **Safety, revised**: the first qualification of the confident reading two days
  earlier. A motorbike rider tells Harry not to walk a particular stretch of
  [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md)'s old city at night because his camera or
  phone will be snatched — and turns down the fare while saying it. Police are
  visible at the intersections; a local attributes that to the sex trade rather
  than to street crime.
- **Drugs**: he is offered cocaine and cannabis three times in one evening in
  the tourist quarter. Refusing once is enough each time.
- **Food**: Colombian food is generally not spicy at all. Lemonade is still
  rather than fizzy, served with lime and heavy ice. A meal with a drink in a
  mall food court runs about $10 (from video – unverified).
- **Tourism**: the first place Harry has been in two years with tourism at what
  he calls pre-pandemic levels — American accents and Hawaiian shirts on the
  street — and he reads the street-performing economy as living off it.
- **Language**: enough of a barrier that asking for ice cream got him walked to
  an ATM. He says he would stay longer mainly to learn Spanish properly.

### From [A Day In My Life Living In COLOMBIA 🇨🇴](/videos/EuJASkbvem4.md)

- **Money and costs**: the cluster's most useful price list. A co-working day
  pass with drinks and wi-fi around £4–5; a barber's cut and shave 25,000 pesos,
  about £5–6; a substantial fish lunch $7; a private room in a jungle hostel
  about $60; a 45–50 minute taxi 120,000 pesos, roughly $30 — where a bus would
  have cost a fraction of it (all from video – unverified).
- **Money and banking**: Harry withdraws in 300,000-peso lots and prefers BBVA
  machines, calling them reliable with a good exchange rate. He repeats that the
  denominations are high enough to catch you out.
- **Internet**: around 12 Mbps down and up at the best connection he can find on
  the Caribbean coast, and he doubts better exists locally.
- **Safety**: a man walked alongside him at 10 p.m. in
  [Santa Marta](/places/santa-marta.md) asking for money. Nothing came of it, and
  it is the only approach of its kind in the cluster.
- **Migration**: his barber in Santa Marta is Venezuelan — the one direct sign in
  the cluster of Venezuelan migration into the Colombian coast.
- **Food**: arepa with omelette at breakfast, and fruit with almost everything.

### From [Tourists Not Allowed In This Colombian Jungle 🇨🇴](/videos/DsjAdBn5PCw.md)

- **Indigenous Colombia**: the video's description puts indigenous people at
  **4.4% of the population across 87 tribes** (from video – unverified). The
  community Harry visits outside
  [Tayrona](/places/tayrona-national-park.md) does not admit outsiders at all,
  and access to those that do has to be arranged well in advance through a local
  guide.
- **Coca**: grown, picked and dried by the community, used medicinally and at
  weddings, and chewed daily. The distinction between the leaf and the processed
  drug is made repeatedly and Harry passes it on carefully.
- **Culture and people**: the community lives largely off what it grows, buys
  supplies about once a month, runs its own school, and builds mud-and-bamboo
  houses that stay cool in serious heat.
- **Access etiquette**: some areas are closed to visitors on religious grounds;
  filming elsewhere was fine once he asked.

### From [Colombia Waterfall Hunt 🇨🇴](/videos/4LdGNY4zQtk.md)

- **Nature**: Colombia has the greatest variety of birds of any country
  (from video – unverified). The Caribbean jungle behind
  [Tayrona](/places/tayrona-national-park.md) has giant bamboo used for
  building, trees the guides put at 600–800 years old, and unmarked waterfalls
  that only locals know.
- **Money and costs**: a handmade bracelet on the beach, 6,000 pesos, about a
  dollar (from video – unverified).
- **Indigenous economy**: the mountain communities are largely self-sufficient
  but come down to the coast to sell handicrafts to tourists, because cash is
  still needed for things like electricity.
- **Etiquette**: crossing private land on a shortcut, the guides stopped and
  asked at the house first.

### From [Sleeping on the Beach In Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/vy2ZMxjBMKc.md) and [Hiking to a Nudist Beach in Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/W3IZFKlxjFs.md)

- **National parks**: [Tayrona](/places/tayrona-national-park.md) costs 70,000
  pesos to enter, about £15 or $18. A passport and a yellow-fever certificate are
  officially required and were not enforced on Harry's visit.
- **Domestic tourism is substantial.** The crowd at
  [Cabo San Juan](/places/cabo-san-juan.md) is mostly Colombian rather than
  foreign, because the beach works as a day trip from the coast.
- **Money and costs**: a hammock on the sand $8, a private cabin $50, a meal in
  the park about $10, a woven bracelet 10,000 pesos, a large bunch of coca leaf
  5,000 pesos, a dinner platter in [Minca](/places/minca.md) about $8
  (all from video – unverified).
- **Coca again**: sold openly to walkers by indigenous vendors inside the
  national park, and served as coca lemonade in restaurants.
- **Weather**: his first cloudy day in the country, three weeks in, on the
  Caribbean coast in early February.

### From [Naked Spa in The Middle of Nowhere🇨🇴](/videos/rEyuZHcVMdg.md)

- **Money and costs**: a motor-taxi within [Minca](/places/minca.md) 10,000
  pesos, about £1.50 (from video – unverified). He does not say what the spa day
  cost.
- **Booking**: an Instagram direct message asking for the best experience
  available was the whole of the arrangement — no site, no deposit, no fixed
  menu.
- **Culture and people**: a small mountain town living on backpackers, with a
  visible sustainability-minded incomer scene — the spa is run by a couple
  building an environmentally-designed house on the site.
- **Roads**: largely unsurfaced above Santa Marta; motor-taxi is the practical
  way up and around.

### From [My Brothers Wedding in Colombia 🇨🇴](/videos/OldBGyvMzHM.md)

- **Weddings**: the bundle's record of the Colombian format — a late-afternoon
  ceremony, buffet and drinks, DJs, reception games putting questions to the
  couple in front of everyone, and **"crazy hour" at 10 p.m.**, which is a
  standard fixture rather than something laid on for one wedding. Harry's
  verdict is that they are very different from English weddings.
- **Culture and people**: several people warn him about crazy hour in advance
  and none will explain it, which he takes as part of the joke.
- **Where Colombians say to go**: asked for a recommendation, a
  [Barranquilla](/places/barranquilla.md) spa therapist names **San Andrés**,
  the Caribbean island, describing its sea as having seven colours.
- **Boat days from [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md)**: a chartered boat for
  13–15 people with crew, drinks and a sound system runs a full day out to the
  islands. Vendors come alongside to sell lunch and are pushier than sellers on
  land.

### From [Solo in Colombia's Best City! Medellin 🇨🇴](/videos/OSwpryzqBaY.md)

- **Cost of living**: the cluster's strongest numbers.
  [Medellín](/places/medellin.md) — an Airbnb at $20 a night with fast wi-fi and
  Netflix, two tacos and a juice delivered for about $5, a street meat skewer
  under £1, a printed shirt $5 (all from video – unverified). Harry's summary is
  that this is why the city fills with digital nomads: cheap, liveable, good
  internet, plenty to do.
- **Money**: cash machines run out of money, and a specific bank's machine is
  worth walking to only if it's actually stocked. Withdrawals in 300,000-peso
  lots, about £60.
- **Delivery**: Rappi is the local food-delivery app, and it applies a default
  tip of about 2,000 pesos which Harry leaves in.
- **Safety, the local formulation**: don't display valuables, don't hold your
  phone up, stay out of the wrong areas. Harry passes it on, notes there is a
  set phrase for it, and doesn't attempt the phrase.
- **Safety, his own rule**: stop exploring at dusk. He says this is general
  practice, not specific to Colombia.
- **Culture and people**: older Colombians are noticeably friendlier than
  younger ones — the reverse of his European experience. Medellín is famous for
  graffiti, and for a violent past that has become the basis of its tourism.
- **Climate**: Medellín is called the land of eternal spring — 20–30°C
  year-round (from video – unverified) — and sits in a mountain valley.
- **Street food**: eaten against widespread advice. His argument is that
  warnings about it propagate exactly like warnings about dangerous
  neighbourhoods — a friend of a friend — and are usually wrong.

### From [Exploring Colombia's Famous Hood 🇨🇴](/videos/3CM7u88Xbgc.md)

- **The cluster's closing argument**: [Comuna 13](/places/comuna-13.md) went
  from one of the most dangerous places in the world to a tourist route inside a
  decade, and Harry says it sums up the country. The same video bounds it — safe
  with a guide, on the route, and not everywhere.
- **Displacement**: much of the district was settled by Afro-Colombian families
  pushed out of their home towns and by people displaced by guerrillas. About
  half the housing sits on land the occupiers don't hold title to
  (from video – unverified), and some households pay no taxes or water charges.
- **Policing**: police and army stop people in the street and check ID numbers
  against records on a handheld device.
- **Money and costs**: an Uber across Medellín 11,000 pesos, about £2; an
  informal parking attendant 5,000–6,000; a shirt 25,000; a lookout swing 15,000,
  about $4 (all from video – unverified).
- **Coffee**: grown in Antioquia and, on the evidence of one café, served with
  Baileys, cream and caramel. Colombia is divided into **32 departments**
  (from video – unverified), the equivalent of states.
- **Escobar tourism** is a live trade — branded merchandise is sold openly to
  visitors in Comuna 13.

## Places

- [Cartagena](/places/cartagena.md)
- [Bocagrande](/places/bocagrande.md)
- [Santa Marta](/places/santa-marta.md)
- [Tayrona National Park](/places/tayrona-national-park.md)
- [Playa Brava](/places/playa-brava.md)
- [Cabo San Juan](/places/cabo-san-juan.md)
- [Minca](/places/minca.md)
- [Barranquilla](/places/barranquilla.md)
- [Medellín](/places/medellin.md)
- [Comuna 13](/places/comuna-13.md)