September 14, 2026
Honda is the closest thing Bogotá has to a river town. It sits where the Gualí meets the Magdalena, about three hours down off the savanna, and for three centuries it was the place where everything moving between the Caribbean and the capital had to change hands. The colonial centre is still standing, 64 blocks of it under national protection, and almost nobody goes.
The short version
Go for the centre, the bridges and the river, and go in the cooler half of the day. The Museo del Río Magdalena is the one thing you should not skip. Honda is hot — the municipality’s own development plan gives an average of 27 °C, and the regional environmental authority records a range from 28 °C to 34 °C on the flat — so the town works best early morning and late afternoon, with the middle of the day spent indoors or in water.
It is a day trip from Bogotá that most people do as a stop on the way north rather than a destination in itself. That is a fair way to use it. It is also why the centre is as quiet as it is.
What Honda is
The full name on the municipality’s own documents is Villa de San Bartolomé de las Palmas de Honda. Spaniards came down the river to the mouth of the Gualí in June 1539 and found a settlement there; the town records the founding as 24 August, by Captain Francisco Núñez Pedroso. It was erected as a villa in 1643 under Felipe IV, and raised to the category of city on 30 June 1815.
What made it matter was geography. Honda is at the head of the navigable Magdalena — above it the river is not usable in the same way — so cargo coming up from the coast stopped here and went overland to Bogotá. The municipality’s history describes it becoming “desembarcadero español”, a distribution centre, a seat of militias and merchants. In 1778 the growth of the tobacco trade made it the seat of the tobacco and aguardiente revenue administration.
Two things ended that. An earthquake in 1805 wrecked the town and, in the municipality’s blunt phrase, it “perdió su protagonismo comercial y se arruinó”. Then the railway and later the roads made the river route unnecessary. The 2018 national census counted 23,616 people in the municipality, 22,086 of them in the town itself.
The heat, and two numbers that disagree
Honda is hot and low, but exactly how low is not settled between official sources, and we would rather tell you that than pick one. The municipality’s Plan de Desarrollo puts the town at 225 metres above sea level. CORTOLIMA, the regional environmental authority, records the cabecera municipal at 349 metres and the municipality as a whole ranging from 200 to 825 metres. Both are official. They do not agree.
Temperature is similar. The municipality gives an average of 27 °C. CORTOLIMA’s fire contingency plan says the temperature “generalmente varía de 28 °C a 34 °C”, with an average of 30 °C on the flat and 24 °C up in the cordillera, and its risk management plan widens that to 24–34 °C, rarely below 22 or above 38. The tourism network puts the average at 29 °C. What all of them agree on is that you should plan around the heat.
The road from Bogotá
There are two ways out of Bogotá towards Honda and they are not equivalent; both end in Villeta and from there the road is the same. The last stretch into town is the piece the national road agency keeps having to work on, and it is worth having a driver who checked it that morning rather than finding out yourself.
We have not found an official figure for the road distance from Bogotá to Honda, so we are not going to publish one. The municipality does publish the distance to Ibagué: 136 kilometres.
Book the drive to Honda
Three hours and a long descent off the savanna, on a road where the last stretch into town changes week to week. The driver checks it the morning you travel and the price is agreed before you get in.
Tolls, road condition and the corridor detail are on Safe Transfers: Bogotá to Honda.
The centre: 64 blocks under national protection
The historic centre of Honda was declared a national monument by Decreto 1192 of 26 May 1977 — today the status is Bien de Interés Cultural del ámbito Nacional. In 2017 the Ministry of Culture approved its management and protection plan by Resolución 217 of 3 February 2017, which defines the protected area as 64 blocks in two topographic sectors, with a buffer zone of a further 49 blocks.
That plan is also a useful list of what is worth looking at, because it names the buildings it protects: the Bodegas Bavaria, the Santuario de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, the Teatro Honda, the Edificio Nacional, the Centro Cultural Alfonso Palacio Rudas, the old passenger railway station, the Teatro Unión, the Plaza de Mercado, the Concatedral de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, the Museo del Río Magdalena, the Casa del Sello Real, the Casa de los Conquistadores, the Casa de los Virreyes, the Casa del Ayuntamiento and the Museo Alfonso López Pumarejo.
Honda has also been part of the Red Turística de Pueblos Patrimonio, the national heritage-towns network run by the trade ministry and Fontur, since 2010.
The Calle de las Trampas
The most photographed street in Honda is a working piece of colonial logistics. The Banco de la República's cultural encyclopaedia describes the Calle de las Trampas as the route linking the port on the Magdalena with San Sebastián de Mariquita, carrying minerals, salt, gold, silver, quinine, honey and aguardiente, and housing the principal customs administration — la administración principal de alcabalas. It calls it "ese camino mágico y andaluz, empedrado y zigzagueante".
It is short, steep and cobbled, and it is the one place in town where the scale of what used to move through here is obvious.
The bridges, and Puente Navarro
Honda is called the city of bridges. The heritage-towns network puts the number at "más de cuarenta", crossing the Magdalena, the Gualí, the Guarinó and the Quebrada Seca. The regional authority RAP-E uses the same label.
The one everyone comes for is the Puente Navarro, the iron bridge over the Magdalena. It is classified at the highest protection level, Conservación Integral, in the 2017 management plan, and the heritage-towns network records it being raised to national monument status in 1994.
Its construction date is another place where the sources split. The municipality's own Plan de Desarrollo says the two banks of the Magdalena were joined by the iron bridge in 1889. The state broadcaster RTVC — a press source, not a heritage authority — reports construction beginning on 13 July 1894 and finishing on 24 December 1898, built to a design by the San Francisco Bridge Company of New York with structural calculations by the Colombian engineer José María Villa. We cannot reconcile those, so we are giving you both.
One thing we could not establish from any official source is whether the Puente Navarro is currently open to pedestrians, to vehicles, or closed. Check locally before you plan to walk it.
The Museo del Río Magdalena
This is the reason to come, and it is genuinely good. The museum describes itself as "un aula viva que busca restablecer y potenciar los vínculos de la sociedad colombiana con el río-país" — a living classroom for rebuilding the country's relationship with its river. It covers the first inhabitants of the area, the history of navigation, and the fauna and flora of the region.
It is at Calle 10 # 9-01, Barrio el Retiro. Its own published hours, checked on 14 September 2026: closed Monday; Tuesday to Thursday 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and the Sunday before a public holiday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; ordinary Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Its published prices, same date, sorted into categories that tell you what kind of museum this is — nationals are "Especies Endémicas y Migratorias", foreigners are "Peces Foráneos": nationals $10.000, foreigners $12.000, Honda residents and seniors $5.000, students $5.000.
The Concatedral, and a naming correction
The church on the main square is often called the cathedral. Strictly it is not. The Conferencia Episcopal de Colombia lists the seat of the Diócesis de Líbano-Honda as being in Líbano, at the Catedral de Nuestra Señora del Carmen; the Honda church is the Concatedral de Nuestra Señora del Rosario. The diocese was created on 8 July 1989.
The Casa Museo Alfonso López Pumarejo, in the historic centre, sits within the national Ministry of Culture's museum group. We found published opening hours and free entry for it, but only in the context of a temporary exhibition that ran in 2025, so we will not present those as a standing schedule. Check before you go.
La Subienda, and what has happened to the fish
The subienda is the annual upstream migration of fish in the Magdalena, and it is the thing Honda is most associated with. AUNAP, the national fisheries authority, describes it as traditionally falling around Semana Santa and coinciding with the rains, and names the species: bocachico, nicuro, capaz and bagre.
The same AUNAP article carries the number that should change how you think about the river. Catches across the whole Magdalena basin are now estimated at over 10,000 tonnes. In the late twentieth century the figure was 40,000 tonnes. In the 1970s it was 80,000 tonnes of bocachico alone.
There are legal protections. AUNAP's standing closures put the bagre rayado of the Magdalena off limits — fishing, storage, sale and transport — from 1 to 30 May and from 15 September to 15 October, across the Magdalena, Cauca and San Jorge rivers. Minimum sizes apply too: bocachico 25 cm, capaz 20 cm, nicuro 18 cm, bagre rayado 80 cm with the head on.
The Carnaval, and when it is
The town's festival is the Carnaval Cultural y Reinado Popular de la Subienda. The Tolima departmental culture office announced the 56th edition for 19–22 February 2026, on the theme "Río de Fantasías", run with the municipality, with competitions for the most agile fisher, the largest net catch and the best casting technique.
Note that the heritage-towns network's own calendar lists the Carnaval de la Subienda under January. The dates move. Check the departmental culture office before booking around it.
When to go
IDEAM's national picture is the best guide we have, because we could not obtain station-level data for Honda itself. The first rainy season across most of the Andean region runs from mid-March to mid-June. The drier season begins in mid-December and runs to the end of March — and in 2025 IDEAM put Tolima on red alert for forest fires and high temperatures during it. CORTOLIMA's summary for Honda specifically: the dry seasons are long, the wet ones short.
In practice: come in the cooler months if you can, start early whenever you come, and treat the middle of the day as indoor time.
A day that works
Arrive before ten. Walk the Calle de las Trampas while it is still bearable, then the centre and the square. Be at the Museo del Río Magdalena by late morning — it is air-conditioned thinking time and it makes everything else make sense. Eat, sit out the worst of the heat, and go down to the river and the Puente Navarro in the late afternoon when the light is on the water.
If you are heading north to Mariquita, the coffee country or the coast, Honda is the right place to break the drive. If you are coming from Bogotá and going back the same day, leave enough margin for the last stretch of road.
What we do differently
We do not run a guided tour in Honda, and we would rather say so than sell you one. What we do is the drive: a private car from Bogotá with a driver who has checked the road that morning, a price agreed before you get in, and stops on the way quoted into it rather than charged after.
If you want the day built around Honda — a stop in Guaduas or Villeta, lunch somewhere specific, a late return so you get the river at the right hour — tell us and we will plan it with you rather than sell you a fixed itinerary.
Questions travelers ask
Is Honda safe? Neither the UK Foreign Office nor the US State Department lists Tolima or Honda among the areas it advises against travelling to. Both advisories name other parts of Colombia specifically; this is not one of them. Ordinary city sense applies.
Can I swim in the Magdalena? This is a large, fast river with commercial history and current. We do not recommend it and we have found no official bathing area in the town.
Is one day enough? For the centre, the museum and the bridges, yes. If you want the river in the early morning as well as the late afternoon, stay the night.
Is it worth it if I have already seen Villa de Leyva or Barichara? It is a different thing. Those are colonial towns preserved as towns. Honda is a working river port that stopped working, and it reads that way.
The rest of the hot country
Honda is one of three hot-country places Bogotanos drive to, and they are not interchangeable. Girardot is the busy one, closer to the capital and full on every long weekend. The Tatacoa Desert is further south and the only one of the three worth travelling for on its own account. The month you pick matters more than the place, and the rainfall for that is in when to visit Colombia. The city you are leaving is in our Bogotá guide.
Plan it with us
Honda is three hours and a long descent from Bogotá, and the last stretch is the part worth arranging properly. Every road out of the capital is on Bogotá transfers, with the booking widget on the page. Honda is not one of our products either; the days we run from the capital are on our Bogotá tours page.
Sources
Ministerio de Cultura, Resolución 217 de 2017 (PEMP del centro histórico de Honda, citing Decreto 1192 de 1977). Alcaldía de Honda, Plan de Desarrollo. CORTOLIMA, Plan de Contingencia Municipal Simplificado en Incendios Forestales — Honda, and Plan Municipal de Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres — Honda. DANE, Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda 2018, ficha municipal 73349. Banco de la República, Red Cultural, "Calle de las trampas, Honda". Red Turística de Pueblos Patrimonio (MinCIT / Fontur), ficha de Honda. AUNAP, "Subienda en el Magdalena con menos peces", vedas vigentes and tallas mínimas vigentes. Dirección de Cultura Departamental del Tolima, Carnaval de la Subienda 2026. Museo del Río Magdalena, hours and prices as published, checked 14 September 2026. Conferencia Episcopal de Colombia, Diócesis de Líbano-Honda. IDEAM, temporadas de lluvias 2025. UK FCDO and US Department of State Colombia travel advice. Puente Navarro construction dates from RTVC / Radio Nacional de Colombia, a press source, flagged as such in the text.