When the season starts, and when it ends
Christmas in Colombia opens on 7 December and runs to 6 January. That is a month, not a day, and it is the first thing to understand if you are planning a trip around it. The opening night is Día de las Velitas, the Day of the Little Candles, when families light candles and paper lanterns along doorways, balconies and window ledges. It is the formal start of the season and it is observed across the country, Cartagena included.
The nine nights from 16 to 24 December are the novenas: nightly gatherings of prayer, food and music held in homes, one night at a time, working up to Christmas Eve. Epiphany on 6 January closes the whole thing.
What this means for a visitor
The novenas are family occasions more than public spectacles, and that shapes what you will and won't see. This is not a season of ticketed events you book in advance. It is a season of lit streets, households at full volume and a city that is emphatically not at work. Some of the best of it happens behind doors you weren't invited through, and that is fine; the light and the noise reach the street.
So: come for the atmosphere, not for a programme. Walk the walled city after dark in the middle of December and you'll have understood more than any itinerary would have given you.
Picking your dates
| Dates | What's happening | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December | Día de las Velitas, candles and lanterns | Anyone who wants the single most photogenic night of the season |
| 8 to 15 December | The season underway, city decorated | Travellers who want December warmth without the peak crush |
| 16 to 24 December | The novenas, nine nights running to Christmas Eve | The fullest version of a Colombian Christmas |
| 25 December to 6 January | Christmas through to Epiphany | Long stays and family groups |
If you can only pick one night, pick the 7th. If you can pick a week, pick the novenas.
Book earlier than you think
December is high season on this coast and Colombians travel domestically in large numbers over these weeks. Rooms, boats and tables all tighten at once. We'd say the same thing we say to anyone asking about December: reserve, and reserve early. That goes double for our boat, which has limited capacity. If you turn up unreserved and there's no space, it's a long wait for the next crossing, which is a poor way to start a holiday you planned for a year.
One piece of arithmetic worth having: door to door from Rafael Núñez International Airport to us is an hour. Going the other way, leave us three hours before your flight departs. Build that into your return date rather than discovering it on the morning.
The quiet version, out on Barú
We're on the water at Bahía de Cholón, on Barú Island, 30 minutes to an hour from Cartagena on our boat. Six rooms across three houses: Villa Orquídea, Casita Veranera and Casita Laguna. That is the whole property, and in December it means the version of Christmas you get here is a small one.
What we'd actually recommend, if you're here over the season, is to treat the city as an evening rather than a base. Go in for the lights, come back across the bay, and give your mornings to the mangroves. Dawn on the bay in December is flat water and birds, and the kayaking is better at that hour than at any other.
Groups tend to take the whole place. All six bedrooms can be rented as a single villa, which is how most families book us for the holidays, and Villa Pinto is the three-bedroom house with its own pool and direct sea access if you want a household within the household. Casita Laguna has a private pool, an outdoor bathroom and its own gazebo over the bay.
Eating over the holidays
Our kitchen was built by Chef Silvestre Saiz Cortázar, born and trained in Ibiza and raised in the kitchens of Bogotá, and Pedro Mosqueda has since taken over as Executive Chef. Tell us in advance about dietary requirements and they're handled without fuss. Vegetarian and vegan eating is well covered here, and lactose and gluten intolerance are familiar ground, not an inconvenience. Over a holiday period when you're likely to be a larger party than usual, telling us early is the difference between a good week and a fiddly one.
A note on costs
Foreign residents pay no tax on hotel accommodation in Colombia. For Colombian residents, IVA is already included in what you see. We charge a resort fee of 20 USD per night. There is nothing else waiting at the end, which is worth knowing when you're comparing a December stay out here against a city hotel.