Travel To Colombia: Is It Safe For a Solo Traveler?

By notoriouslysinglegirl, May 10, 2025

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Before I traveled to Colombia for a wedding, I watched several YouTube videos created by what now seems to be from amateur travelers or people who didn’t grow up in Los Angeles.

I saw videos from young Canadians that were totally fear based and warned of pick pockets and aggressive sales people. I watched videos made from a husky narcissistic man telling you how to take it easy in Bogota because the altitude can wreak havoc on your body. There was another video that I watched but it was super boring and I hardly remember it.

Who is Influencing You

We are living in an age of social media influencers that share and manipulate people with their opinions. Unfortunately, many of these influencers have zero experience on the subject matter they are talking about. So, after watching these YouTube videos, I was terrified to travel to Colombia.

Colombia = Drug Cartels + Juan Valdez

When you think of Colombia the first thing that comes to mind is COCAINE & Pablo Escobar. Those of us who grew up in the 80’s think about the fictitious coffee grower Juan Valdez & his Donkey. Both are symbols of a chaotic Colombia now rebranding itself.

There’s no direct flight to Colombia from Los Angeles so I had to fly into Houston. On my flight I sat next to a scruffy guy with 3 cell phones and a dog named “termite.”

“Is this really first class” the scruffy guy uttered as he sat next to me. My thoughts exactly. I booked a one way flight to Colombia for $500.00 on United and it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting . “This feels so ancient. Are we in the Truman show?” The scruffy guy verbalized his opinions then quickly buried himself into his 3 cell phones as he gave “Termite” a dose of CBD dog biscuits for the ride.

Houston, we’ve got nose jobs

On my flight from Houston to Colombia I heard several people in the boarding line talking about their nose jobs aka Rhinoplasty. Some had bandages on their noses, others were sharing before and after photos and excited about their pending surgeries happening in Bogota. Much like Turkey, Colombia is trending in Medical Tourism for affordable plastic surgeries compared to US prices.

I asked one of the guys with his nose bandaged if Colombia was safe to travel to?

“It’s pretty safe just like any other city is safe. You have to be a savvy traveler and watch your belongings and don’t leave your cell phone lying around.”

The guy also mentioned he was a Venture Capitalist and that several Venture Capitalists are moving to Colombia from the US.

Beware, the line for customs in Colombia is super long and slow. Even at 4am, I literally waited one and a half hours before I spoke to the customs agent which lasted less than a minute. What fascinated me the most was the groups of black men who all congregated together in the customs line. There seemed to be hundreds of them in line. They were American and from a TikTok post I learned they were “Passport Bros” headed to Cartagena seeking spicy time with younger females. More on Cartagena in another post.

If You Live in Los Angeles, you’ll be fine!

I’ve lived in Los Angeles my whole life. And if you live in Los Angeles, you’ve got to be savvy. You know what neighborhoods are safe and which ones are not.

I’ve also had to work in places like downtown LA, South Central and Boyle Heights in the height of the gang wars. You just learn to practice basic safety skills.

For most of my time in Colombia, I was solo for about 75% of my trip. I copied the itinerary of a group my cousins who were also traveling through Colombia and met up with them on occasion but mainly I stayed by myself in a total of 6 hotels, traveled 5 hours alone with a rooster and a hen on a bus from Santa Marta to Cartagena, went on a Dukes of Hazard type contraband Uber ride from the airport to my hotel in Medellin ( Uber rides from the airport in Medellin are not legal) mistakenly booked my flight from Armenia ( the coffee region) to Bogota and had to wait 6 hours in a small airport by myself and I was totally fine.

Chat GPT was a great resource to use to book hotels in safe places around touristy areas.

Of course if you’re traveling through Colombia it helps if you speak Spanish. Being comfortable with speaking Spanish I believe made my trip that much more successful.

TBC