Colourful cities, traditional markets, unspoiled nature and loads of hiking: Colombia won’t be easy to leave. Especially because this is one of those countries where traveling on a small budget is not difficult to achieve. Cheap food, sort of cheap accomodation and plenty of opportunities to visit places on your own are nothing but the backpacker heavens. Even though moving around with buses can be extremely expensive (here’s the black sheep), taking everything at a slow pace will make your money worth more!
Here follows a collection of our budget experience during our one-month and a half roadtrip throughout Colombia. We tried putting together a comprehensive guide to help you organize your trip from the start. Just choose your budget and go with it!
1# Accomodation Cost
Finding the right accomodation for any budget is an easy task in this country. Even in highly touristy areas such as Cartagena, Medellin or Bogota, there’s a great variety of hostels, homestays and plenty of local hotels from basic to luxury.
Normally, we always slept in double rooms (some with private bathrooms, some with shared) in a central location and prices were in the range of 30’000-50’000COP/night (9-15€/night).
In most cases, booking via internet happened to be cheaper for big cities and for small towns, checking before and then showing up at the door, worked better.
For all those looking to spend the minimum (sometimes as low as 10’000/pp/per night), camping or hammocks are the way to go; expect to find hostels offering these all throughout the country, especially in more secluded areas.
2# Food & Eating Out
In Colombia the standard lunch or dinner menu always include a soup/broth of some kind, plus a main of meat/fish with sides such as rice, french fries or more commonly plantains. All around the country, expect to pay anything from 4’500-7’000COP.
For other more traditional dishes (which are usually ordered apart) such the Bandeja Paisa or Ajiaco expect to pay around 7’000 to 10’000COP at the cheapest.
Streetfood is usually a good way to have a quick snack. Meat-skewers, pizza slices, tamales or sandwiches can all be found for around 1’000-2’000COP.
Funnily enough, if you go out or party, in Colombia alcohol is cheap. National beers such as Aguila or Colombia (the latter much much tastier especially the roja) can be bought at less than one dollar (nearly 0.50€).
Buying fruit and veggies at local markets is incredibly cheap but for the rest big supermarkets have also very very low prices. Truth to be told, it is not always cheaper cooking yourself or going out at a cheap restaurant.
3# Transport & moving around
As mentioned before, transport is THE most expensive thing in Colombia, especially if compared to most of central america.
Long-distance buses are mostly new, very comfortable and sometimes even feature on-board entertainment and food. This make them a good option for travelling at night (and worth) even if the prices are high.
During our trip, we calculated that one a general rule the price for traveling with buses at 2.5$/hour of travel. This might not sounds much but if you consider that in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador you could travel for around 1$/hour this is double the price!
Other means of transport such as taxis and tuk-tuks are not expensive but neither cheap. At times we used them but otherwise, especially in big cities like Bogota or Medellin (both featuring great bus/metro systems), urban buses are much much cheaper.
Even though buses have a pretty good coverage, to reach more secluded places shared cars, colectivos or just pick-ups are used. All are very cheap, rarely expect to pay more than 1’000-2’000COP per leg. Hitchhiking is also widely used in the country but be aware that many colombians (especially in the south) are scared of robberies so will rarely stop.
4# Tours & Day-Trips
In terms of tours and day trips, the information available about major sights is pretty extensive so pretty much all can be done on yourself. During our stay, we managed to do everything, we did a lot of hiking (e.g. Tayrona, Chichamocha Canyon, Cocora Valley), by the DIY manual. Obviously, guided tours were available all throughout but it was never really necessary.
With a bit of research, you can do a lot on your own!
Final Thoughts
Wandering around Colombia was, to be down in a single word, great. Even though the buses kind of pushed up our daily budget, we never felt like were spending too much for the amount of stuff we were doing. That being said, from how other fellow travellers always described Colombia we were expecting it to be much cheaper (kind of another Nicaragua) than what we spent. Maybe the fact that was our first hit in South America could be the cause? Could be!
All in all, we enjoyed going around Colombia a lot and in a long time, it felt like one of those countries where we didn’t have to worry too much about the budget (sometimes we did let ourselves go a bit too much though!).
The final budget for Colombia was around 122’000COP/day for the both of us and it was broken down into the following:
Food & Eating out – 42’000COP (12.7€)
Accomodation – 39’000COP (11.8€)
Transport & Moving Around – 32’000COP (9.7€)
Tours & Day Trips – 6’000COP (1.8€)
Extras – 3’000COP (0.9€)
TOTAL – 122’000COP/day (36.9€)
PLANNING A TRIP TO COLOMBIA? CHECK MORE GUIDES BELOW!
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