We are a French-Colombian couple. Alejandra was born in Medellín (Antioquia, Colombia). Thanks to a scholarship, she traveled to France in August 2007 to complete her studies at the École Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Metz (ENIM). There, she met Arnaud, who was born in Besançon (Doubs, France).

We both worked for nine years in France and Switzerland as engineers in our respective fields. Every year, we traveled to Colombia at least once, organizing trips for our families and friends. Witnessing the strong growth of tourism in Colombia since 2014, we decided in 2017 to move to Colombia at the beginning of 2018 with the goal of creating an “eco”-tourism company (offering complete travel organization, family-style lodging and cabins, transportation, and guiding services).

We love to travel, host guests, organize trips, cook, and share with other cultures. We both speak Spanish, French, and English. We know Colombia well—its landscapes, nature, and people—so we decided to take the leap! As the French say: “The train only passes once; if you miss it, there won’t be another!”

Why Girardota?

We chose Girardota, a small town only 30 minutes from downtown Medellín (the second most important city in Colombia after the capital, Bogotá), because Alejandra’s family comes from this region. The international airport is nearby, the climate of the “eternal spring” is delightful, and above all, the region offers an impressive variety of landscapes, climates, colonial towns, crops (coffee, sugar cane, fruit, cocoa, flowers…), rivers, and activities to enjoy.

Medellín—known as “the city of eternal spring” or “the capital of the mountain”—attracts more and more visitors each day thanks to its ideal weather, lush vegetation, industry, lively atmosphere, modern transportation network, complex past, and the kindness of its people.

Medellín is also very well located: about 200 km (5 hours) to the south lies the Coffee Region and its glaciers reaching up to 5,300 meters; about 300 km (6 hours) to the north, you reach the Caribbean Sea, its beaches, coral reefs, and the legendary Darién jungle, which still separates the two Americas.

We realized that these three regions together offer nearly everything Colombia has to offer in terms of landscapes, all while minimizing travel time and cost.

Our Lodging

Together with Aleja’s parents, we decided to buy a traditional “paisa” country house in Girardota to live with them and offer a family-style guesthouse. This will be the headquarters of our company and the main arrival, departure, and meeting point for our clients.

Thanks to a wonderful opportunity, in 2017 we also bought a small cabin in Triganá, in the middle of the Darién jungle on the Caribbean coast—a little preserved paradise that can only be reached by boat. Our idea is to build treehouses and a canopy tour there in the future.

Our Concept

We decided to offer custom-made tours for small groups of 2 to 7 people, with no more than 3 hours of travel between two stages, operating only within these three regions (Caldas/Risaralda/Quindío, Antioquia, and Chocó), and always adapting as best as possible to our clients’ wishes.

If our clients want help or advice for visiting other regions in Colombia (Santa Marta, Santander, Caño Cristales, the Amazon…), we will gladly assist with the planning—but we likely won’t be able to accompany them directly. Our goal, like any good company’s, is to provide a quality product at a fair price accessible to everyone.

To offer truly personalized trips, we need to get to know our future travelers. So, even if it might seem a bit tedious, we’ll ask them to complete a short questionnaire to help us design the trip that best fits the group’s preferences in terms of accommodation, food, activities, climate, destinations, and budget.

Our Travel Philosophy

Tourists usually have only two or three weeks of vacation—always too short to see all the treasures of this beautiful, mountainous country, where the average driving speed rarely exceeds 40 km/h.

Travel guides often suggest crossing the entire country in two weeks to see the “must-sees,” but internal flights (with checked luggage) aren’t cheap despite low-cost airlines. Buses are comfortable but journeys are long—very long—and you still need taxis and local transport to reach your final destinations.

Our philosophy is to minimize long distances and travel logically—that means organizing the trip in stages, in a natural order, avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth, and replacing wasted travel time (and money) with meaningful on-site activities like hiking, water sports, horseback riding, or cultural visits.

This makes the trip more enjoyable and helps keep prices stable—or even lower—if the chosen activities are affordable. Of course, it also means traveling light, since we’ll be moving around continuously. However, there will be one or two returns to our main house in Girardota, so travelers won’t need to carry all their luggage on each internal trip.

Our Guests

Our target audience is broad—from backpackers traveling on a budget to well-off families looking to have fun, as well as Colombian couples who simply want to discover their own country.

We’ll be delighted to take care of everyone… absolutely everyone!