Everything below is a road we actually drive. Cielo.Travel runs its transfers through Safe Transfers by Cielo.Travel, which means a vetted driver, a car that is insured for the route, a price agreed before you get in, and somebody answering the phone if the plan changes at the airport. There is no meter, no auction, and no stranger deciding what the ride is worth once you are already in it.
Use the booker to price and confirm any of these. Then read the guide for wherever you are going, because a transfer is only half the day.
Book a Santa Marta transfer
Airport to hotel, hotel to airport, round trip, or straight east to Tayrona and Palomino. Pick the direction, tell us the date, and you get a fixed price before you commit.
Prefer to ask first? Message us on WhatsApp and a person will answer.
Jump to: Starting at SMR · East along the Sierra · West along the coast · What you are actually booking · Other cities
Starting at Simón Bolívar
Santa Marta's airport is small, close, and on the wrong side of the city for most of what you came for. Simón Bolívar International (SMR) sits on the coast road south of town, 16.5 kilometers from the historic center by the airport's own figure, next to the Pozos Colorados hotel strip — and on the opposite side of the city from Tayrona, Minca and Palomino. That geography decides everything: if you are going east, the airport run and the first day's drive are the same drive, and it is worth booking them as one.
SMR to your hotel, or straight past the city
The historic center, Rodadero, the Pozos Colorados strip, or on east to Tayrona and Palomino without stopping. The driver meets you inside arrivals with a sign, and if the plan is to keep going, the car keeps going.
East along the Sierra
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the highest coastal mountain range in the world, and the road east runs along the foot of it. Both of these trips are governed by an opening time or a tide rather than by traffic, which is the argument for a driver who is working to your hour rather than to a bus timetable.
Santa Marta to Tayrona
Nineteen thousand three hundred hectares of forest, coves and reef, declared a park in 1964, less than an hour east of the city. Cabo San Juan — the beach most people picture when they picture Colombia — is at the end of a jungle walk that takes most of a morning, so the gate you enter and the hour you reach it decide the day.
Santa Marta to Palomino
Past Tayrona and over the departmental line into La Guajira, an hour and a half to two hours east, to where the river comes down off the snow and meets a long beach with surf on it. The Kogui walk through the village on their way up the mountain. The highway is the only way in and the only way out.
West along the coast
One route runs the other way, back down the coast towards the Magdalena.
Santa Marta to Barranquilla
The short version of the coast road, usually done for a flight out of Ernesto Cortissoz, for Carnaval, or because Barranquilla is the one city on this coast that most travelers skip and should not. A river port that grew on arrivals rather than conquest.
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 and parking included, no surcharge for a late flight, no renegotiation 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 every card above links to the one we run there. 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 and Cartagena. Start at the Colombia transfers hub for the full list, including the airport transfers we run in cities with no day-trip routes of their own.
Every destination above has its own guide in Colombia Travel Guides.
