Why you should visit Manizales and Pereira in Colombia’s Coffee Region! Here are the highlights of my four days in the UNESCO Colombian Axis region.

Before I went to Colombia, I knew almost nothing about it. I’d heard of Bogotá and Cartagena, of course. Beyond that, I wasn’t even sure Colombia was in South America. How bad is that?

I consider myself a well-traveled person, but South America is a big hole in my travel story that I looking forward to exploring. So when I got the invitation to travel to Colombia with the Society of American Travel Writers, I signed up as quickly as I could. I was especially excited to travel to Pereira and Manizales because they have everything I love:

• Mountains
• Coffee, fruit, and chocolate
• Hot springs and thermal baths
• Delicious gastronomy
• Horses and mules

I spent two days in Pereira with BnB Tours and two days in Manizales with Kumanday Tours. All four days were filled with amazing activities that I would love to revist in another trip.

Pereira: Two Days with BnB Tours

I arrived at the Pereira Airport on a warm April morning with a couple other SATW travel writers and was picked up by Andrea Marín from BnB Colombia Tours. BnB is a Pereira based tour group that’s carbon-neutral, a partner with Stand for Trees to offset every tour with carbon credits, and are recommended by Responsible Travel.

Andrea led us through the drives, fruit tasting, and the horseback ride with local knowledge and warmth. She was very personal, always taking time to answer questions and helping us understand whatever we were curious about. I really enjoyed my time with the BnB group!

Within hours of our arrival in Pereira, I was soaking in the Santa Rosa de Cabal hot springs and tip toeing through cool waterfalls. This area was one of the prettiest sights!

Our Horseback Ride at Hacienda Santa Mónica

The horseback ride at Hacienda Santa Mónica through the UNESCO Coffee Cultural Landscape was the single most memorable moment of my entire ten days in Colombia. Here’s what made it:

• The Andes sweeping around us
• A foal trotting behind his mother for the entire ride
• A dog named Pippa who appointed herself our trail guide
• Gir cattle — an Indian breed with the most magnificent floppy ears completely unfazed by our presence

BnB Tours also organized:

• Tropical fruit tasting at the Galeria del Arte Hacienda Castilla — lulo, guanábana, maracuyá, pitahaya, and the infamous chontaduro. Interactive, educational, yummy, and a lot of fun!
• A full coffee tour at Finca Don Manolo, a small Colombian coffee producer dedicated to producing delicious single farm coffee
• Rum tasting at Sazagua where we also tasted the Colombian drink Amarillo which reminded me of Greek Ouzo

An (Un)related Side Note

I happened to pull up my Pereira itinerary on my phone before my trip to Colombia on a flight out of Atlanta in March. It was supposed to be my family’s spring break trip to Belize but we ended up in the Dominican Republic instead through a series of comedic errors. You can read that story here: 1 Blizzard, 2 Tornadoes + a Missed Flight = Dominican Republic Family Vacation.

The man sitting next to me on the flight from Atlanta to NYC leaned over.

He apologized immediately for being nosy, but said he simply had to say something because he saw the name Hotel Boutique Sazagua on my screen. This hotel happens to be his favorite hotel in the world, he said. He was Colombian, from Pereira, an immigration lawyer who lives in New York City. If I mentioned his name to the staff when I arrived, he promised they would know exactly who he was.

He told me his name which I promptly forgot it. However, I didn’t forget the story. And when I arrived at Sazagua, I told someone on the staff anyway. Between us, we figured out who he was. Small world doesn’t cover it.

Sazagua delivered on every word he said. Eighteen unique rooms. Lush gardens thick with flowers and birds. My own private hot tub and yard. A gang of squirrels stealings banana from the property’s trees. I would move in permanently if the logistics allowed.

Manizales: Two Days with Kumanday Tours

My time in the coffee region was split into two separate visits. After enjoying Pereira, I left for a few days in Cartagena. After three days in Cartagena’s Caribbean heat, I headed back to coffee region to explore Manizales.

I felt the temperature drop the moment our transfer climbed into the mountains. By the time we reached our first hotel, Atardeceres del Cafe, I had my rain jacket out of my carry-on and enjoyed having to search for an umbrella to keep the cool rain off my head.

Kumanday Adventure Tours also offers a lot of tours around the entire country of Colombia. We were happy to spend a couple of days with them.

Kumanday Adventures basics:

• Leading tours through Colombia since 2005
• Specializes in trekking, mountain biking, and mountaineering across the Central Andes
• Guides include Ana María Giraldo, one of the first three Colombian women to summit Mount Everest
• Named after the volcano that dominates the region. Kumanday is the original Indigenous name for Nevado del Ruiz, the active volcano on the Caldas-Tolima border

Our guide was Juan Diego, who led us through the area with so much local knowledge. We threw questions at him left and right and he answered them all.

One of my favorite expereinces in Manizales was another ride – this time on mules. Our mule ride through the PCC UNESCO landscape started at Finca La Juana mule farm, where we met Juana, the model mule who’s been photographed as Juan Valdez’s mule. Juan Valdez is the iconic figure of Colombian coffee.

Before we left for our ride, we went through a series of limbering exercise and a thorough explanation of how docile the mules were. We were given instructions on how to hold our reins, how to sit in the saddles, etc. Riding through the steep Andean trails, down muddy trails and steep inclines was a lot of fun.

After the ride, we sat down to Fiambre — one of my favorite meals in Colombia. A few things that make it special:

• Born from muleteers who needed something they could carry through a long day in the mountains
• Ours had chicken, pork, egg, cassava, rice, and potato wrapped together in a banana leaf and tied so the food steams in its own heat as you carry it
• Tastes a little smoky, a little earthy, entirely unlike anything from a restaurant kitchen

More of our Manizales itinerary:

• We climbed to the top of Manizales Cathedral — the tallest in Latin America, with views over the whole valley
• We enjoyed a private tango performance, where we were pulled up to dance and were spectacularly bad at it
• Spent the night at Termales El Otoño. with warm pools of volcanic water from 6,600 feet underground. The finest thermal experience I had in Colombia. And I had two.

Our last day included a coffee stop at Hacienda Venecia was the moment Manizales, the perfect way to end our time in the Coffee Region. This is one of Colombia’s most acclaimed working coffee estates. I understood what Colombian coffee actually is: not a commodity but a relationship between a specific hillside, a specific microclimate, and people who have been tending both for generations. I wanted to stay. Alas, it was time to go home.

Manizales or Pereira? Honestly, It’s a Tie.

Both tours were fantastic with a ride, a coffee experience, and a thermal component. Both were led by knowledgeable, passionate local guides. If you’re expecting me to pick a winner, I can’t.

What worked better in Pereira:

• Staying at Hotel Boutique Sazagua for the entire time meant no packing and unpacking. I lived out of one room, settled in, and came back to the same peaceful property each evening
• Sazagua itself is so beautiful that returning to it felt like part of the experience, not just a place to sleep
• The horseback ride with sweeping Andes views is the single best thing I did in Colombia

What worked better in Manizales:

• The cathedral climb gave us a glimpse of the actual city: its scale, its streets, its everyday life
• The Termales El Otoño thermal soak after a long mountain day was extraordinary
• The coffee experience at Hacienda Venecia was really amazing

My one regret across both tours:

We didn’t get much time to explore either city on foot. I caught a brief glimpse of Manizales from the top of the cathedral and loved what I saw. We didn’t see downtown Pereira at all. When I go back, I’ll build in at least a half day of free time in each city to wander, find a coffee shop, and see how these places actually live.

One practical note for trip planners:

If you’re doing both cities back to back, pay attention to the hotel situation. Staying in one place for your entire Pereira leg is easier than moving between hotels in Manizales.

The Coffee Region rewards slow travel. Both tours moved faster than I would have liked. That’s not a criticism. It’s the nature of a press trip. But if you have the time, give yourself more of it here than you think you need.

Frequently Asked Questions: Manizales vs Pereira

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