Things to Do in Colombia in December

December's drier conditions make this the right month for the Cocora Valley outside Salento. Colombia's national tree, the wax palm, rises 60 metres (nearly 200 feet) from a valley floor that stays shrouded in low cloud until mid-morning. The trail is a muddy loop on its best day. December firms it up enough that you are slipping occasionally rather than constantly. Start before 7 AM from Salento's plaza. The valley is still cold, maybe 12 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit). The mist is thick enough that the palms appear one at a time as you climb. By 10 AM the cloud lifts. The green of the hillsides is so saturated it looks artificial. The hike takes four to five hours at a comfortable pace. The altitude, around 2,400 metres (7,900 feet), is enough to wind you if you push too hard. Bring layers. The morning chill gives way to fierce sun at this elevation. You will strip down to a t-shirt by noon.

Cartagena's walled city in December is hot but not punishing. The Caribbean trade winds take the edge off the humidity. By late afternoon the ramparts along the Baluarte de Santo Domingo catch enough breeze that you understand why colonial-era residents built their houses facing the sea. The Old City is best on foot. Go early. Cruise-ship passengers disembark around 9 AM. The streets of Getsemani, the neighborhood just outside the walls, smell like fried empanadas and fresh fruit from corner carts. Getsemani was working-class a generation ago. Now it is the center of Cartagena's street art and nightlife. The sound is vallenato accordion drifting from an open doorway, overlaid with the clatter of dominoes at a sidewalk table. December evenings in the Plaza de la Trinidad feel like a block party that nobody organized but everyone showed up to.

Medellin in December sits at a steady 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, and the city's famous Alumbrados, the Christmas light installations along the Medellin River, turn evening walks into something spectacular. But the real draw is the daytime neighbourhood tours, in Comuna 13, where the outdoor escalators built into the hillside have become both a practical transit solution and a symbol of how far the city has come. The murals along the escalator route change regularly. The street food vendors at each landing sell mango biche with salt and lime that makes your mouth pucker. The view from the top looks out over terracotta rooftops stacked against a green mountainside. The guides who lead these tours tend to be residents who grew up in the comunas, and their perspective on the city's transformation is frank, complicated, and nothing like the sanitised version you get in a guidebook.

The Rosario Islands sit about 45 kilometres (28 miles) southwest of Cartagena, and December's calmer seas and trade-wind clarity make this probably the best month of the year to get in the water. The boat ride from the harbour at Cartagena takes roughly an hour, and you will smell the diesel of the outboard motor and feel the salt spray long before the water turns from murky harbour grey to the translucent turquoise that the archipelago is known for. The coral reefs here are not pristine, being honest. But they are alive and varied enough that an afternoon of snorkeling turns up parrotfish, sergeant majors, and the occasional ray gliding along the sandy bottom. The beaches on Isla Grande are narrow strips of white sand backed by mangroves, and the lunch served at the beach stations, typically fried fish, coconut rice, and fried plantain, is simple food done well. Water temperature in December hovers around 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit). A wetsuit is unnecessary.

Guatape sits about two hours east of Medellin by road, and the day trip out there is one of those experiences that lives up to the photographs, which is not something you can say about everything in travel. El Penol, the 220-metre (720-foot) granite monolith that rises from the lakeshore like something geological that forgot to stop growing, requires climbing roughly 740 steps to the top. December's clear skies over this part of Antioquia mean the view from the summit, a patchwork of green peninsulas and blue reservoir water stretching to the horizon, is likely to be unobstructed. The climb itself takes about 20 minutes if you are reasonably fit, longer if the altitude and the sun slow you down. Start early. By midday the steps are crowded and the sun is directly overhead with no shade. The town of Guatape below is a postcard of painted zocalos, the colourful bas-relief panels on every building's lower facade that depict animals, people, and local history. Lunch here tends toward bandeja paisa territory: beans, rice, ground beef, chicharron, fried egg, avocado, and a fried plantain, all on one plate. You will need the fuel after those stairs.

Bogota's food identity is harder to pin down than Cartagena's seafood or the Coffee Region's trout and plantain, and that is precisely what makes it interesting. The city eats across altitudes and migrations, and a morning at Paloquemao market, one of the largest wholesale food markets in the country, is the fastest way to understand the range. The fruit aisle alone will confront you with lulo, guanabana, feijoa, and uchuva, fruits that have no adequate English name and taste like nothing in your frame of reference. December is tamales season in Bogota, and the smell of banana leaves steaming over pork, rice, and chicken fills entire neighbourhoods in the weeks before Christmas. The highland cold, which can feel sharp and damp at 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early morning, makes a cup of chocolate santafereno, hot chocolate served with a slice of cheese that you drop into the cup and let melt, feel like the most logical drink ever invented. La Candelaria, the colonial centre, is where most food tours operate. The walls there are thick enough to keep the cold out. The restaurants serve ajiaco, the potato and chicken soup that is Bogota's signature dish, thick enough to stand a spoon in.