Colombia is an amazing country rich with art and culture, food, history, outdoor adventures, beautiful sandy beaches and warm people.
I learned this when I traveled to Colombia as a guest of award-winning sustainable LGBTQ travel company, Out in Colombia, the country’s tourism bureau, right before the pandemic shut down the world and tourism.
Colombia opened for tourism on Sept. 1, 2020. As of May 1, travelers ages 18 and older need to provide proof of “complete vaccination” or a negative COVID-19 test 48 hours in advance of travel for an antigen test or 72 hours in advance of travel for a PCR test, according to Colombian and the United States government websites.
Colombia is a year-round destination, but the best months to experience the South American country are December to March and June to September.
Jilchristina Vest, founder of the Mini Black Panther Museum and Women of the Black Panther Party Mural in Oakland vacationed in Colombia a month after the museum’s opening in June 2021 for her first trip outside of the U.S. since March 2020.
Responding to the Bay Area Reporter’s questions, Vest wrote in an email interview that Colombians were responding to pandemic life by wearing masks and socially distancing without a problem.
Vacationing on a beach in a small town outside of Cartagena with a group of friends, Vest was enjoying playing in the water and soaking up the sun outside of their vacation rental. She boasted about “views to die for,” the fresh seafood, and how “high-end, yet very affordable” Colombia is for a vacation.
“It is a very friendly and chill vibe here,” Vest wrote. She hadn’t interacted with the local LGBTQ community during her trip like I did, but she had similar observations about LGBTQ Colombians’ openness and showing “public affection with no issue.”
Colombia’s LGBTQ movement has made great strides in gaining rights since 1999, according to the Astraea Foundation’s 2021 report. The South American country’s capital, Bogota, became one of the first cities in the world to establish a government office focused on LGBTQ issues, the Sexual Diversity Department, in 2013. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2016.
This year Colombia’s constitutional court advanced gender diversity reported Human Rights Watch.
Out in Colombia
It was Colombia’s beauty, people and progress with LGBTQ rights that made gay American expatriate Sam Castañeda Holdren, 41, fall in love during his first visit in 2013. He traveled to Colombia on a three-month career break to learn how to speak Spanish fluently.
“I reflected on my time back in Colombia and realized, man, I really loved it there,” he said. “There’s just a lot that makes the quality of life pretty amazing.”
In 2014, the Fresno native packed up and moved to Medellin, once the center of Colombia’s drug trafficking run by the infamous drug cartel Pablo Escobar. It didn’t take long before Castañeda Holdren discovered he loved sharing what he was learning about Colombia and the country’s LGBTQ life with queer people on his blog and with friends in the states.
Gay travelers visiting Colombia found Castañeda Holdren online and asked for help for them to get to know where to go to find Colombia’s LGBTQ community. He started putting together itineraries.
In 2016, he founded Out in Colombia to continue sharing his love of the country and promote its queer culture and businesses. Out in Colombia offers custom and packaged tours in English and Spanish.
In 2021, he set up a foundation, Cocora Alliance, where a portion of the proceeds from traveler’s trips are donated to the local communities.
WHY COLOMBIA?
Colombia is famous for its beauty queens, coffee, beaches, tropical jungles (35% of the Amazon rainforest is within the country’s borders) and its darker side with its drug lords. The country’s drug lords have been pushed deep into the Amazon on the Brazilian and Colombian border with the U.S.’s help, Sebastian Fernandez Leal, a representative with ProColombia who formerly worked at the United Nations in New York, told me in the car from Cartagena’s airport to our host hotel, Estelar Cartagena de Indias.
The South American country offers a lot to travelers. Colombia is home to more than 25 national parks. It is also the only country in South America to boast of beautiful beaches on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. World-renowned artists call Colombia home. Its coffee is famous. The country is a gastronomic hub. Its LGBTQ community is energetic with creative and culinary endeavors. The country boasts of having South America’s destination LGBTQ nightclub in Bogotá.
Mega LGBTQ nightclub, Theatron, features 16 separate but interconnected dance clubs, including a concert hall, all in one building that takes up an entire city block in Bogotá.
MY JOURNEY
My journey through the South American country with Out in Colombia began in Cartagena and took me to Barranquilla, Medellin, and Bogotá, four of Colombia’s largest cities. I was taken by the country and people. Colombia’s dark and violent past has given way to a vibrant and welcoming country with a spirited culture, warm people and natural beauty, particularly in Cartagena, Medellin and Bogotá.
Colombia was discovered in 1499 and the Spanish started colonizing Colombia in 1525. Nearly 300 years later, a major trading hub for gold and African slaves, Colombia was founded in 1810. The South American country remained under Spanish rule until the South American country won its independence in 1819.
Colombia enslaved more than 1 million African slaves until it abolished slavery in 1821.
Today, Colombia is home to the third largest population of Black people outside of Africa, Brazil and the U.S., according to Travel Noire. Colombia’s 11 million Afro-Colombians make up four Black communities “mulattoes,” “raizales,” “palenque” and “zambos.”
CARTAGENA
In Cartagena, “palenqueras,” the community’s women, stand out in the crowds with their traditional colorful dresses and head wraps balancing bowls of fruit on their heads. They can easily be found in the squares, like San Pedro Claver Square, in Cartagena’s historic walled city. Our group enjoyed tasting the “palenqueras” traditional fruit snacks sold from one of the women’s stands. They also pose with tourists for pictures for pay.
Cartageneras lesbian tour guide Belkin Chico of La Mesa, which works with Out in Colombia, guided our group from Castillo San Felipe de Barajas to the walled city telling us the city’s history. In the walled city around the memorial honoring Colombia’s beauty queens where she explained what the crowned beauties mean to Colombians.
MEDELLIN
Cartagena was dazzling and sophisticated. Medellin was gritty, bursting with creativity in the mountain city. Our group enjoyed shopping at a local market and cooking and making cocktails with gay Chef Esteban in the morning. In the afternoon we went to the notorious Comuna 13, locally just C13, that was once under the control of drug cartel Escobar.
Today, artists have taken over the hilltop neighborhood and have transformed it. Cata Gutierrez, our tour guide, grew up during Escobar’s reign of terror in the neighborhood. A gang murdered her family in front of her 8-year-old eyes as they were taking her to school. Her uncles took her in. She started earning money rapping on the subway while going to school. She later joined Casa Kolacho, an artist collective where she found community and thrived.
It’s challenging to be LGBTQ in the community, Gutierrez said. Homophobia remains, but two weeks before our visit a stairway was painted in rainbow colors in C13. Gutierrez said no one had defaced the steps. Instead, the community was enjoying it.
BOGOTA
South America’s fourth largest city, Bogotá is bustling with a thriving LGBTQ community our LGBTQ history tour guide Juan Camilo, an ally, told us.
Colombians were starting to embrace café life, odd as it may seem since Colombian coffee is known around the world. At Café San Alberto, our group enjoyed a coffee and rum tasting, that made Irish coffee look boring. The coffee energized us and the rum gave us liquid courage for our salsa lessons.
On our last night in Colombia, our group enjoyed an elegant evening dining at B.O.G. Hotel and more dancing at Theatron.
WHERE TO STAY
I was a guest of Esestelar hotels in Bogota, Cartagena, and Medellin.
Heather Cassell (heather@girlsthatroam.com) is the publisher and editor of Girls That Roam, an online women’s travel magazine.
