This great tour is offered by many Experience Hosts and explores the sometimes intimidating downtown Medellin Centro, and will also provide you with a great overview of the highlights and pitfalls of local history (which goes beyond the drug trade and Pablo Escobar). You’ll need to make a reservation days before you want to take the tour. Expect to spend about 3 to 4 hours walking through the downtown center, so wear your comfortable walking shoes. The tour is conducted in English and offers a great opportunity to meet other travelers as well.

Santa Fe de Antioquia sits a few hours drive west of Medellin, at an elevation about 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) lower than Medellin, making it much hotter than El Poblado in Medellin (where Energy Living is located). Here you will find one of the best preserved colonial pueblos (villages) in all of Colombia (and possibly all of South America), right up there with Barichara and Villa de Leyva. You’ll find small plazas, cobblestone streets, and colonial architecture. Santa Fe de Antioquia is where many Local Colombians go when they want to soak up some heat and sun while lounging beside a pool at a farm home. If you go with a tour, you can expect to hit the town’s highlights, including the famous bridge that hangs over the Rio Cauca.

Guatapé would probably be the best and most popular day trip from Medellin, where you will find colorful buildings, a stunning man-made reservoir, and a large and imposing rock monolith known as El Peñol. Here you can hit the water for a boat tour of the reservoir, including the bombed out ruins of a Pablo Escobar mansion and here the story about the town that they flooded. Then you can climb the 800+ stairs to reach the top of the rock monolith which offers up one of the best views that you’ll find in all of the Department of Antioquia. Eat lunch on the main street in Guatape and enjoy the local sights and sounds of this popular tourist destination!

Comuna 13 (a formerly dangerous neighborhood) has become one of the parts of the city that best exemplifies the progressive and innovative approach that the City of Medellin has taken in terms of the impoverished parts of the city. Here you will enter the so-called slums (or barrios), where you will find a poor and once crime-riddled (not to say that things are the best now) part of the city that has cable cars and electric escalators to help residents move around better and safer. Part of the character of this neighborhood has been the urban artwork or graffiti that brightens up what might otherwise be sad or dilapidated buildings, houses, and structures. You can explore this interesting and evolving part of the city with a local guide or local graffiti artist who will lead the way.

Colombia and coffee, they go together better than anything and Colombia is famous world-wide for its coffee. If you’re going to be visiting Colombia’s coffee axis to the south the Eje Cafetero then you may want to hold off on this tour, but you can also take an awesome coffee tour on the outskirts of the City of Medellin. Here you will be able to visit a coffee plantation, learn more about this world renowned drink, exactly what goes into making a good cup of joe, and so much more. Consider a coffee tour a must-do for any tourist to Colombia, even if you don’t particularly love coffee, its an amazing experience to say the least and highly recommended as it explores the driving economic export of Colombia.

Colombia is not all just coffee, there is also a ton of amazing and exotic Colombia food to explore and perhaps nothing shines quite like the local fruit. An exotic fruit tour will take you to the Minorista market, a sprawling and traditional market downtown, where you will explore the sights, smells, and tastes of tons of exotic fruits that you most definitely won’t find back home. Things like cherimoya, granadilla, guanabana, lulo, mamoncillo, maracuya, pitahaya, and many, more! Fresh fruit and amazing fruit juices are always at hand in Colombia, so don’t miss a tour to get know the wide variety available. The tastes of these will last a lifetime, long after your vacation at Energy Living has ended.

Colombian Food isn’t exactly renowned outside of Colombia, but they have some pretty tasty street foods and other fast food that is worth checking out. Whether it is the delicious empanadas envigadenas, chuzos de pollo, or a fat and decadent arepa with cheese and condensed milk. Tasting new and different street food can be an intimidating prospect for many tourists, which is why it makes sense to take a City of Medellin street food tour with a guide that will show you the best things to eat and the best places to eat them.

Do you love the adrenaline rush of ripping down dirt roads through the lush green hillsides surrounding outskirts of the City of Medellin on the back of your own ATV? Then this dose of adrenaline might be just what you need to experience the country side of Medellin from a perspective that few see or experience. These sorts of excursions are not only good to get the adrenaline flowing but to get you out of the big city and back into nature — even if it is tearing through nature on the back of a all terrain vehicle. Expect an excursion of about half a day and don’t forget to bring your camera.

Do ATVs sound a little lame in terms of adrenaline? Then maybe soaring high above the city of Medellin would be more your style. Paragliding is a amazing, and there are some reliable thermals, particularly around the village of San Felix, where you can strap in with an experienced pilot guide and see the city from a new perspective. If you have never been paragliding before, then its highly recommend doing it! This excursion can last about a full day, and the memories will last a lifetime!