The Best Resorts in Colombia

The bricks in the walls were made from the estate's own soil, which sets the tone for this mountainside eco-lodge in Antioquia. Ten rooms and eight freestanding cabins sit above the Valley of San Nicolas, with loft-style interiors that feel clean and considered rather than rustic-for-the-sake-of-it. A permaculture garden feeds the restaurant, trails trace pre-Hispanic indigenous paths, and the lodge holds two Michelin Keys. Pack good boots.

A Four Seasons spread across a collection of restored colonial landmarks in Getsemaní, with tropical gardens, sea views, and eight restaurants and bars to choose from, including one inside a 1920s building designed by a French architect. Two rooftop pools, a spa, fitness classes, and a hair salon round things out. The neighborhood outside is one of Cartagena's most interesting, and the hotel will happily arrange ways to see it for you.

The dirt road in is bumpy and framed by cacao and pineapple trees, which is a pretty good sign of what follows. Hacienda Bambusa is a restored colonial villa on a working farm, with eight suites wrapped in thick clay walls, copper fixtures, and wooden shutters that open onto hammock-strung balconies. It holds a Michelin Key. Coffee and cacao tastings, mountain biking, and bird watching fill the days; barefoot afternoons by the pool handle everything else.

Twenty minutes by boat from Cartagena, this eleven-room boutique hotel on Tierra Bomba takes its cues from south-of-France beach clubs: rosé, a DJ spinning afro-latino beats, and a turquoise-tiled pool ringed by sunbeds. After dark the party clears out and the place turns quietly yours. Rooms come with private terraces, many with hammocks and plunge pools, and there's a PADI scuba center for the coral reef just offshore.

Ten dome cabins, each called a "mushroom," sit tucked into native forest above the turquoise Peñol-Guatapé Reservoir, with transparent walls that make the trees feel like wallpaper. This boutique glamping hotel keeps things simple inside, king canopy beds and open-air showers, but the heated infinity pools overlooking the lake are designed for nighttime use, which tells you something about the priorities here. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Boat-shaped eco-cabins arranged to face the sunset are the whole resort on this tiny Caribbean island, where there is no town to wander off to because the hotel is all there is. Titi monkeys and macaws fill the forest, turtles have a protected zone of their own, and the beach needs no improving. Kayaking, snorkeling, and a library handle the afternoons; the Sunclub handles the evenings.

You arrive by boat from Cartagena, which is itself half the point. Hotel Las Islas is a thatched-bungalow resort on the island of Barú, inside a national park, where the rooms either hang in the tree canopy or open directly onto the Caribbean. The bungalows run generous and come with Hermès bath products, because nature immersion and five-star comfort are apparently not mutually exclusive. Snorkeling, diving, and kayaking fill the hours the hammock doesn't.

Perched on a mountaintop outside Colombia's coffee capital Armenia, this eco-hotel organizes its rooms not as accommodations but as Habitats, most of them suites with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the plantation valleys below. The Aviary rooms go further, elevated into the forest canopy with glass on all four sides. A Slow Food-style restaurant pulls from local suppliers, and the activities list runs from birdwatching to horseback coffee-farm tours.