Overview
Learn about the impressive history of a group of locals from the Egipto neighbourhood in Bogotá. Deciding to leave their criminal past behind, they started the initiative Breaking Borders, showing tourists around their streets filled with artwork that tells the neighbourhood’s history. In this way, tourism has formed a real alternative for their personal and professional development and opened the doors to generate a connection between change and transformative narratives with a resilient and welcoming society. The purpose of this experience is to break borders and connect us as humans, allowing us to put ourselves in the other's shoes and understand without judging other points of view, to help people move beyond the difficult decisions they made in the past, as they take responsibility and adopt actions and ideologies to ensure that such suffering never happens again.
This itinerary is customisable. Let us know at checkout if and how you'd like to personalise the itinerary.
Community support
What you will be doing
You will start by meeting your travel guide, the founding place of Bogota. There, you will learn about the project while drinking a coffee or agua panela before heading to Nuestra Señora de Egipto, the church located at the entrance of Barrio Egipto, where the local leaders of Breaking Borders will be waiting for you.
Start going up the Calle Real or Royal Street, once the people's only connection to the city, leading you deeper into the neighbourhood. Your guide will then stop with you at El Cuadrado, a central point in the history of gang fights in the area. While in the past this place was a strategic point for control over the territory for the gangs, today, it is painted with pictures.
Walking uphill through the colourful stone streets of the neighbourhood, you will notice how much the area has changed and transformed into a place of hope, peace, and culture. Your guide will illustrate how things used to work in the barrio, with hidden messages and stories behind many of the murals and street art of Barrio Egipto, making it much more than a Bogota Graffiti Tour.
You will then reach the hills where the modest houses of the local guides and their families are bedded into the steep hills overlooking the vast metropolis down below. Despite the challenging conditions in the neighbourhood, the warmth and determination of its people breathe life and joy into the community, inspiring their children to pursue their dreams with passion and resilience. Where many once turned to violence and vengeance, now there is hope, as the new generation fights for a brighter future.
At the end of the tour, you will pass by the Buena Semilla Foundation, a Christian value organisation aiming to support women and children through their textile, wood and music workshops. If you would like to enter the foundation and experience this oasis in the middle of the desert firsthand, you can choose the same tour with workshop option.
Where we'll meet
🧭 Meeting/pick-up point: Your hotel or Chorro de Quevedo
🗺️ Instructions: We will pick you up from your hotel or meet at Chorro de Quevedo.
Things to know
Accessibility:
Children friendly
Fitness requirement
Any fitness level
Tour Language
English
Spanish
License requirement
None
Additional information:
Wear comfortable shoes and weather appropriate clothing
Inclusion ✅
Tour guide
Snack
Exclusion ❌
Gratuities
About your host
Impulse TravelWe are the Colombian Changemakers. We believe that real luxury travel is one that forges an authentic connection with a place and its people. Our mission is to create experiences that have a positive impact on the lives of travellers and locals. Our curated experiences are the result of a lot of years of browsing, fine-tuning and iteration to reach the perfect recipe of experiences that meet that purpose.
B-corp: B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.
For every trip booked, Kodama Travel donates £1 to Just One Tree to restore our forests and the ocean.