Colombia is an American country with beautiful landscapes and a very rich history and culture. Bogotá, Cartagena, Cali, Santa Marta, are some of its great cities but we cannot forget an old and colonial Caribbean city: Barranquilla.
Barranquilla is a coastal city that looks to the Caribbean and is already five centuries old. With so many years on its back, the cultural life of the city is very rich and it is the seat, for example, of the Barranquilla Carnival, the most popular carnival in the country which also holds the valuable title of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Barranquilla, the Golden Gate of Colombia
That is the name by which it is also known, at least since the 40s. It is a city that despite being in the Caribbean area enjoys a dry tropical climate And so, although the average temperature is around 27 ° C if you go in winter you will not feel so hot because winds blow that cool.
Yes, has a dry season and a wet season So make no mistake: from December to April it does not rain but from April to the beginning of December it rains, especially concentrating the water between April and May. And if you are lucky between July and August, you may have to enjoy the “summer of San Juan”.
Tourism in Barranquilla, Carnival time
The hotel offer in the city is numerous, there are hotels, resorts, rental apartments and inns. It is also a destination for business tourism so companies usually organize conventions and events, so there is movement all year round.
Yes, there is nothing like going to Carnival. The city awakens and shines. It is the best folkloric party in Colombia and it usually gathers more than a million people so, if you like the idea of attending, you must book everything in advance (transport and hotels). Carnival begins on a Saturday and ends before Ash Wednesday.
The festivities date back to the XNUMXth century And the costumes are a classic: you will see people dressed up as certain characters called Monocuco, Garabato, Marimonda and Congo, for example, but people can dress up whatever they want and that way more crazy, flashy, delusional characters turn out. There is also no lack of characters taken from the political or cultural reality of Colombia and those seem to be the most anticipated year after year.
The truth is that as soon as the new year begins, the city is already thinking about carnival and other colorful parades follow one another, all part of the pre-carnival festivities: the Guacherna, which is a night parade, the Gay Pride Parade, the carnival of the Children, among others.
So if you like the typical carnival festivities the one from Barranquilla is one of the best in the world. Thinking of America, I think that along with that of Rio he gets all the applause.
What to do in Barranquilla
Barranquilla it's more than carnival so if you don't like crowds of people or popular festivals you can go at another time of the year. The barranquijazz it is a quieter event, for example, and concentrates jazz shows in various venues.
Moreover, the city offers interesting museums such as the Romantic Museum It works in an old mansion and has among its exhibits a collection of carnival queen costumes and Gabriel García Márquez's typewriter. There is also the Museum of Modern Art, the Aeronautical Museum or the Museum of the Caribbean and of course the Carnival Museum.
The best thing is to walk or join one tourist walk through the historic center taking the Paseo de Bolívar as its axis, a wide avenue that is the main artery. It has buildings from all eras and is the heart of the city. The old Customs House of the city was restored in the 90s and today the complex houses archives and a library and represents the importance of commerce for the city.
On the other hand, if you like animals there is the Barranquilla Zoo and if you just want walk the boardwalk of Avenida del Río It is another beautiful walk: it is 700 meters long and 80 meters wide and runs parallel to the Magdalena River.
Barranquilla surroundings
It is impossible to talk about Barranquilla without making references to the beaches. There are no central beaches but a few minutes they already begin to appear: Caño Dulce, Sabanilla and Santa Verónica They are known, but the first place is for Pradomar.
Pradomar is 18 kilometers from the city and it has everything to entertain visitors: restaurants, bars, hotels, water sports. Another interesting coastal destination is Sailboat Port, a beach that is on the route that goes to Cartagena, half an hour from Barranquilla. There are accommodation and restaurants here and it is a great place for surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing. It is a good place if one leaves Barranquilla and continues traveling.
Much less, only three kilometers, is the Swan lake, a beautiful deep pond where people come to practice water sports and fish. The Mud volcano It is another attraction in the area that is 70 kilometers from the city: it is two meters in diameter and seven meters high, so it attracts many people who climb the crater and dive into a perhaps medicinal mud.
As you can see, Barranquilla is not a poor city. He offers his own and with five centuries of existence his is not little. It is just over a thousand kilometers from Bogotá, but if you head towards the Colombian Caribbean it is a city that must be included in the route.