El Carmen de Viboral · Antioquia · 2,200 m

Two paths leave the same square.

One climbs five hundred metres into cloud forest to a ridge with no railing, no queue and no gift shop. The other follows a road worn into the hillside by two centuries of feet, and stops on the way to watch a man open a kiln.

Both begin an hour east of Medellín, in a town that has painted its plates by hand since the 1890s. You only have to choose one. Today.

The Ridge Cerro Bonifacio · 2,700 m The Old Road Alto de la Madera · 2,700 m

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Choose your path

The fork

Same altitude. Same morning. Two completely different days.

Why you have not heard of this place

Every guidebook sends you to the same coloured village and the same rock with the same staircase. It is genuinely beautiful and there are eleven hundred other people there.

El Carmen de Viboral is forty kilometres from that rock and nobody sends you here. It is a working town of ceramicists and farmers on the edge of the high Andean forest, and the trails above it are used by the people who live on them — not by tour buses, because tour buses cannot get up there.

We are not going to pretend this is a secret. It is simply a place that has never been packaged. Come while that is still true.

2routes, both circular
2,700metres at the highest point
0other tour groups on the mountain
1 hfrom Medellín by road

Elevation profile

Side by side

The same 500 metres of climbing, spent in two different centuries.

The Ridge

Cerro Bonifacio

Capilla San José · 2,200 mCarrera 31 · Avenida Los Libertadores · 2,235 mVía veredal Camargo · 2,310 mEl tanque · 2,430 mBosque alto andino · 2,570 mCima del Cerro Bonifacio · 2,700 mDescenso a Campo Alegre · 2,480 mFonda Campo Alegre · Las Partidas · 2,240 mCapilla San José · 2,200 m2,200 2,700 m 2,200

Choose this if you want the altitude, the silence and the view — and you don't mind earning them in one continuous climb.

Start
Capilla San José, El Carmen de Viboral
Finish
Capilla San José (circular)
Total ascent
500 m
Duration
TO CONFIRM
Read the whole walk

The Old Road

Alto de la Madera

Parque Principal · El Carmen de Viboral · 2,200 mThe old streets · 2,215 mCampo Alegre · 2,255 mThe ceramics workshop · 2,270 mCaminos campesinos · 2,360 mEl camino en canalones · 2,520 mBosque nativo · 2,620 mAlto de la Madera · 2,700 mVereda La Almería · La Unión · 2,560 mParque Principal de La Unión · 2,500 m2,200 2,700 m 2,500

Choose this if you want the walk to have a story in it — craft, history, farmland and food — and you like the idea of ending the day somewhere you didn't start.

Start
Parque Principal, El Carmen de Viboral
Finish
Parque Principal, La Unión (by tuk tuk)
Total ascent
500 m
Duration
TO CONFIRM
Read the whole walk

Schematic. Elevations between the surveyed points are approximate.

Getting to the start

El Carmen de Viboral sits in the Oriente Antioqueño, the highland valley east of Medellín. By road it is roughly an hour from El Poblado through the Túnel de Oriente, and about half an hour from José María Córdova international airport — which means you can land in the morning and walk in the afternoon. Buses to El Carmen run regularly from Medellín. Tell us where you're staying and we'll tell you the cheapest way to reach us.

Confirm travel times and bus routes

So. Which one?

Tell us the date and how many of you there are. We answer in English, usually within the hour.

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