Nine days in Colombia: a cold capital, a hot coast, and snow you can see from the beach

The main square, with the cathedral, the capitol, the mayor's office and the supreme court around it and Bolivar in the middle. Every demonstration in Colombia happens here, and the pigeons and the llamas for photographs are permanent.

The biggest church in the country, neoclassical, rebuilt in the early nineteenth century after earthquakes took the earlier ones down. Plain and enormous inside, with the founding conquistador's chapel off to one side.

A small dark bar on the square where Bogota was founded, hung with paintings and full of students and chess players. Order a canelazo, hot aguardiente with cinnamon and cane sugar, which is the correct drink for this weather.

The streets around the university have cheap set menus and a few very good small restaurants. Ask for ajiaco, and take a car back to the hotel rather than walking, even a few blocks.

Tens of thousands of pieces of pre-Hispanic goldwork, arranged by culture and by purpose rather than by date, ending with the small raft that started the El Dorado story. Two hours minimum, free on Sundays, and the best museum in Colombia by a distance.

The streets in between have cafes and menu del dia places aimed at office workers: fast, filling and costing almost nothing. Anywhere with a queue at half past twelve.

Around three thousand works in a group of restored colonial houses: Fernando Botero's own paintings and sculptures on one side, and the Picassos, Monets and Renoirs he bought and gave away with them on the other. Free, always, because he insisted on it.

A church at 3,150 metres reached by funicular or cable car, five hundred metres above the city. Sunset is the hour and the queue is longest then, so go up before it and come down after dark. Take a layer: it is properly cold at the top.

A working salt mine with a cathedral cut into it, 180 metres underground: fourteen chapels down a sloping tunnel, then a nave with a cross carved into the rock face and lit from below. Tours run continuously and take two to three hours. Cool down there, but not cold.

The colonial square above the mine has restaurants under the arcades doing set lunches for a fraction of Bogota prices. Trout and ajiaco are the local orders.

The town's own cathedral on the main square, unusually handsome for a small Colombian town, its interior laid out in a chequerboard of red brick and white limestone. Twenty minutes, and the square around it is why you linger.

A small museum beside the mine on the geology of the deposit and how salt was cut here for centuries before the conquest. Half an hour, and it explains the cathedral rather better than the cathedral does.

The square inside the main gate, under the yellow clock tower that is the emblem of the city, and the slave market for two centuries. Arcades, sweet stalls and horse carriages now. Read the plaque, then walk on.

Begun in the 1570s and knocked about by Francis Drake's cannon before it was finished, which is why the tower came later. Plain and cool inside, on the grandest square in the old town with palms and colonial mansions around it.

A bar built on top of the western rampart facing straight out to sea, and the most reliable sunset in Colombia. Drinks cost several times street prices and everybody pays it. Arrive an hour early for a table on the wall.

Ten minutes outside the landward gate, Getsemani has the same colonial streets at a fraction of the prices and rather more going on. The main square fills with people, food carts and drumming from about nine.

A 150 metre hill east of the city with an early seventeenth century convent on top, a courtyard full of flowers, and a view over the whole bay, the walls and the fortress. Go by taxi and ask the driver to wait; there is nothing else up there.

The largest fortress Spain built anywhere in the Americas, begun in 1657 on the hill commanding the land approach and enlarged for a century after. Sloped walls that shot glances off, and a warren of tunnels beneath. Take a torch and go early: no shade at all.

A set lunch at a local place off the main squares costs a fraction of the restaurants on them. Fried fish with coconut rice and plantain is the standard and it is very good.

The church and convent where Pedro Claver, a Jesuit priest, spent forty years meeting slave ships at the dock with food, water and medicine. He is buried under the glass of the high altar, and the cloister beside it is one of the quietest places in the city.

A colonial sugar estate on the edge of town where Bolivar spent his last days, preserved with the bedroom, the mill and a botanical garden of enormous trees around it, plus a museum of modern art in the grounds. An hour and a half.

Pre-Columbian pottery and Tairona goldwork in a colonial building on the seafront, with a scale model of the Lost City and a room on the indigenous peoples who still live up in the Sierra. Free, air conditioned, and about an hour.

The pedestrian streets a few blocks back from the water hold most of the town's restaurants, from a plastic table with a set menu to seafood on a rooftop. Buy water, sunscreen, repellent and cash tonight for tomorrow.

The road end of the park, where the shuttle from the gate drops you: a wide beach backed by palms with the mountains behind it. The sea here is unswimmable, and the walk east starts from the far end of the sand.

The one bay along this stretch protected by a reef and a rock bar, which makes it calm, shallow and genuinely safe to swim. Shade at the back, and the best hour of the day is spent here rather than pressing straight on.

The restaurants at the campgrounds do fried fish, rice and cold drinks at prices reflecting the fact that everything arrived by mule. There is no alternative inside the park, so budget for it and take cash.

Two curves of sand separated by a rocky headland with a thatched hut on top, and the picture most people have of the Colombian Caribbean. Hammocks, tents and a bar for anyone staying, and a lot of people by mid afternoon. Swim only in the marked cove.

A coffee plantation above the village running on water power and Victorian machinery, entirely self-sufficient, with a tour from the slope to the roaster. Two hours including the tasting, and the road up is rough enough that a jeep or a motorbike is the sensible way.

A waterfall with a natural pool beneath it, an hour's walk up from the village or a short ride, with hammocks and a bar at the top. Busy in the middle of the day and lovely first thing or late.

The village has small restaurants doing soup, a main and a drink for a few thousand pesos, plus a couple aimed at travellers with better coffee and worse value.

A ridge above the village with the whole Sierra on one side and the Caribbean on the other, which is the clearest way to understand how close these mountains are to the sea. Best in the late afternoon.

The seafront in the middle of town: fishing boats, families, football, ice cream carts and a good view back at the mountains. Twenty minutes' walk end to end, and best before nine in the morning when it is not yet thirty degrees.