Minca hiking & coffee workshop from Santa Marta

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/10

Duration7h 30m

GroupUp to 12

LanguagesEN · ES

PickupAt your hotel

Walk through coffee farms and rainforest, then make your own chocolate bar

A full-day hiking class in Minca from Santa Marta combines trekking to a sacred waterfall with hands-on workshops in coffee roasting and cocoa making, led by local guides in English or Spanish. Pickup from Santa Marta hotels is included; the day runs about 7.5 hours with moderate hiking, a gourmet lunch in a bamboo house, and time to swim at the waterfall. Children from age 6 are welcome.

7h 30m

Step-by-step itinerary

Full-day hiking and workshops in Minca

Pickup from Santa Marta at 8:45 am
Group introduction and photo exhibition at 9:45 am
Walk 30 minutes to coffee farm
Coffee process explanation (45 min)
Walk 40 minutes to Lost Waterfall
Relax and bathe at sacred waterfall
Walk 45 minutes to Jungle Joe Bamboo house
Bamboo construction talk (30 min)
Gourmet lunch with host Joe
Biodiversity talk (30 min)
Cocoa workshop and chocolate making (30 min)
Visit cocoa by-products shop (20 min)

The Experience

How do you actually learn where coffee comes from? This tour starts with a pickup at 8:45 am from Santa Marta, then a 30-minute walk through the Minca landscape to a working coffee farm. There a local farmer walks you through collection, fermentation, drying and roasting — you see the whole process from the plant to the bean, and the guide explains what makes the altitude and soil here different. It's not a quick stop; you spend 45 minutes on the farm itself.

After coffee, the route climbs to Lost Waterfall, a sacred site for the indigenous communities of the Sierra Nevada. The 40-minute walk gets you there, and the waterfall is deep enough to bathe in — most people do. From there it's another 45 minutes through the jungle to Jungle Joe's bamboo house, where the owner serves a gourmet lunch you don't have to think about. Before you eat, there's a 30-minute talk on bamboo as a building material in Colombia, and you can see how it's used in the structure around you.

The cocoa workshop happens after lunch. You learn the history of cacao and the techniques to bring out the alkaloid content, then spend 30 minutes making your own cacao bar — it's something you actually do, not watch. The guide covers biodiversity of the region in a separate 30-minute session. By the end of the day you've hiked roughly four hours total, learned from people who live there, and have a chocolate bar you made yourself. The tour wraps up with a stop at a shop where the owner sells cocoa by-products if you want to take more home.

What’s included

Private transportation from Santa Marta hotels.
a local guide in English or Spanish.
entry to the coffee farm.
the 45-minute coffee roasting workshop.
access to Lost Waterfall for swimming.
the 30-minute cocoa workshop where you make your own cacao bar.
gourmet lunch at the bamboo house.
a biodiversity talk about the Sierra Nevada region.

Good to know

Moderate physical levelPets welcomePublic transport nearbyNot for pregnant travelersNot for heart conditionsNot for back problemsInfants must sit on laps

Operated by Birdwatching Adventures Jungle Joe Minca Tours

Is this one for you?Choose this if you want hands-on time processing coffee and cocoa with local farmers rather than a tasting-only experience, and prefer staying based in Minca over visiting multiple towns in one day.