Arriving in Cali starts in another town. Alfonso Bonilla Aragón airport sits in Palmira, across the Cauca river, so every arrival begins with a drive, and the best days out of the city — south to Popayán, west to the Pacific, north to the coffee region — are longer drives again. This page has the roads we drive from Cali, with the guide or the tour for each one.
Cielo.Travel runs its transfers through Safe Transfers by Cielo.Travel: a vetted driver, an insured car, a fixed price with the tolls included, and an operations team that works in English and Spanish around the clock.
Book a Cali transfer
Airport to hotel, hotel to airport, a driver for the night, or the road south or west. Pick the direction, tell us the date, and you get a fixed price before you commit.
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Jump to: Starting at CLO · The city at night · South and west · North to the coffee region · What you are actually booking · Other cities
Starting at Alfonso Bonilla Aragón
Colombia's civil aviation authority runs the airport, and it was back in service within a day of the earthquake of August 10, 2026. The part people miss is the crossing: the road into Cali runs over the Cauca and into another municipality, which is why an airport taxi here charges a meter plus a fixed rate, and why it pays to know the total before you land.
CLO to your hotel in Cali
San Antonio, Granada or the south of the city. A host meets you inside arrivals with a Safe Transfers sign, your flight is tracked, and a late landing does not change the price. Since the earthquake, ask your hotel one question before you book: whether it is open.
The city at night
Cali's nights end at two different hours. Bars inside the city close at three; Juanchito, across the Cauca in the municipality of Candelaria, stays open until five from Friday to Sunday, and the crossing between the two is where a night out usually goes wrong. A driver booked by the hour solves it: the driver waits through the set, and the ride back across the river is part of the booking, agreed at the hotel rather than at the club door.
Salsa first, then the city
Take the lesson before the club: Cali dances fast and on the balls of the feet, and one class changes how the night feels. By day, the city tour takes in Cristo Rey and San Antonio, and the Alameda market tour is the same city eaten rather than climbed.
South and west
Two roads leave Cali for places that are nothing like it: south on the Panamericana into Cauca, and west over the mountains to the Pacific. Both cross areas that foreign travel advisories name, so read our guide to whether Colombia is safe before you book either. The route pages on Safe Transfers carry the tolls and the current state of each road.
Cali to Popayán
The White City, whose Holy Week processions UNESCO lists as intangible heritage. Its own airport has been closing for ash from the Puracé volcano this year, one more reason to land in Cali and drive. There are works along the road south, so we check the road and the volcano bulletin the morning you travel.
Cali to Buenaventura, for San Cipriano and the whales
The road west drops out of the mountains to Colombia's main Pacific port, and there are two reasons to take it. San Cipriano is a river of clear water in the rainforest, reached on the brujitas, motorbike-powered carts that run on an old railway line. And from July to October humpback whales calve in the Uramba Bahía Málaga national park, off Buenaventura. If you would rather the day were guided, both are tours we run.
North to the coffee region
Cali to the coffee region
North up the Valle del Cauca, past Buga and Tuluá, and into the hills of Quindío and Risaralda. Since the August earthquake we point most people at Armenia rather than Pereira; the airports, the towns and the farms up there are on our coffee region transfers page.
What you are actually booking
A private transfer, not a seat on somebody else's schedule. The car is yours for the route, the driver is one of ours, and the price you see in the booker is the price at the end: tolls included, no extra charge when your flight lands late, and nothing to renegotiate at the door.
You can put stops in the plan — a town on the way, lunch, a viewpoint — and the quote accounts for them rather than penalizing you later. If you want the day to be more than the drive, a guided tour is usually the better purchase, and the cards above link to the ones we run. If the route you want is not listed, ask: the list is what we publish, not what we can do.
Other cities
The same service runs out of Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Barranquilla and the coffee region. Start at the Colombia transfers hub for the full list.
Everything we have written about these places, and the rest of Colombia, is in Colombia Travel Guides.