Monkey Spotting and Hiking Near Cartagena on the Howling Trail

Cartagena is best known for its gorgeous colonial architecture, its hopping nightlife, and the beautiful beaches and islands nearby.

It’s not very often viewed as a nature or hiking destination.

However, there is one person working to change that.

Olinto, the founder of Taroa Adventures, leads a handful of Cartagena hiking tours that specialize in hiking, nature, and wildlife. Susana and I went on one of his hiking tours near Cartagena several years back, and we really enjoyed it.

So, I was very excited to get to join Olinto on his newest hiking day trip from Cartagena during our visit during the summer of 2024: The Howling Trail.

While I was excited go hiking near Cartagena again, I was even more excited about what sets this tour apart and makes it a bit of a hidden gem: the chance to see monkeys!

It didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed the hike, got to see a variety of animals in the wild, including several groups of monkeys!

Read on to learn more all about my experience on the Howling Trail and how you can see monkeys too on this Cartagena, Colombia hiking day trip.

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You Can Go Hiking Near Cartagena and See Monkeys? Say What?

As I mentioned above, Susana and I met Olinto back in 2019 when he invited us to join him on his Jaguar’s Footprint hiking tour through the dry forest of the Montes de María to a set of ancient petroglyphs and a fun workshop on Gaita music.

You can read about our experience on Jaguar’s Footprint here.

I noticed on that trip that Olinto, who fell in love with nature while working as an engineer in remote areas of Colombia and surfing in his free time, was passionate about showing off these places he had discovered.

I also noticed that there’s more wildlife, nature, and hiking near Cartagena than I had realized or that it gets credit for.

Tayrona National Park, the mountain town of Minca, and the Lost City Trek are meccas for nature and hiking lovers on Colombia’s Caribbean coast and are popular additions to a trip to Cartagena.

Even though these places are just up the coast, they do require overnight trips though.

So, I really like that Olinto has focused on offering hiking day trips from Cartagena.

Olinto mentioned to me shortly before we relocated to the US that he had started up a new tour known as The Howling Trail where you could see monkeys in the wild.

To be honest, I had no idea you could see monkeys anywhere near Cartagena!

We’ve seen monkeys in more far flung nature destinations in Colombia like the Rainbow River of Caño Cristales, when we visited Colombia’s Amazon, on our wildlife safari on the plains of Los Llanos, and hiking to the amazing rock wall paintings in Guaviare.

However, outside of the Parque Centenario or getting extremely lucky along the trails in Tayrona, I had not heard of anywhere else where you can easily see monkeys near Cartagena.

We were, unfortunately, unable to go on this hike to see monkeys near Cartagena before we moved.

However, I was really excited to get a chance to go when we made our first return visit to Cartagena in the summer of 2024. Since we had our 9 month old daughter with us, I went solo along with Richie and Bianca, a couple nice enough to let me join them on this hike near Cartagena.

I’ll be sharing my full experience below, but you can learn more or go ahead and book the Howling Trail hike at the Taroa Adventures website.

My Experience on the Howling Trail

Olinto picked me up early just before 6 am, and we headed north.

It brought back a few memories heading out of town on the same route I used to take every morning when I was teaching at a school outside Cartagena.

The trailhead for our hike was about an hour away, but we stopped into a small restaurant for breakfast along the way.

I’m not a big breakfast person, but I can never turn down some tasty eggs, arepa, and hot chocolate. Plus, I figured I would need the energy.

After breakfast, and a short ride down a muddy dirt road where Olinto’s 4 wheel drive came in handy, we reached the trail head.

I appreciated that Olinto brought along some rubber boots for each of us since it had been raining a good bit in recent days

While the trail itself was not too awfully muddy, we did walk across a shallow creek and walk up the very muddy banks to get there from where we parked, and the boots were clutch for that.

At the trailhead, we met Kike and Ale, two locals who would accompany us along the trail.

Olinto explained how it was important we stayed together and stayed on the trail since there are poisonous snakes in the area.

As we set out on the trail though, it seemed spiders were the bigger threat!

There were tons of spider webs all along the edges of the trail.

Come to think of it, maybe this was why the mosquitos that I felt like were biting us a ton at first seemed to disappear as we got further along the trail.

We also saw tons of pretty butterflies as we hiked along.

There were some neat stick bugs crawling around in some of the bushes by the trail too.

Oh, and tons of millipedes curling up underfoot and all around the trail. (They are harmless if a bit creepy crawly).

As we hiked through the forest, Olinto explained the significance to the forest of a number of different species of trees as well as their traditional uses by indigenous peoples and locals today.

This ecosystem is a tropical dry forest. Unlike their more well known sister tropical rain forests, which receive rain year round, tropical dry forests are able to sustain themselves through a dry season.

This ecosystem is also considered endangered.

Soon we came to the early highlight of the hike for me: a pair of toucans.

We managed to hear and then see them perched high up in a tree over a clearing in the trail.

We were able to get some great glimpsess of them before they flew off (it’s not a horrible idea to take along a nice pair of binoculars, by the way).

Not long after seeing the toucans, Kike and Ale spotted some tamarin monkeys.

Unfortunately, before we could get a good view of them, they had moved on. It’s a good reminder that even with the best guides, there’s never a guarantee you’ll see animals in the wild.

The disappointment of missing the tamarins wore off when we entered a clearing that Olinto calls the “butterfly garden.”

There must have been hundreds of butterflies flying around (Can you say a swarm of butterflies?). It was really neat and another one of the highlights of the hike for me.

As we entered back into the forest after leaving the butterflies behind, it seemed to grow denser, or maybe it was just a weird sense of foreboding that the shrill sound of the cicadas gave me.

There are times when out in nature that you can just tell you are definitely the outsider.

However, there was another sound mixed in with theloud hum of the cicadas that was eerier: a sort of guttural growl in the distance. Olinto joked it was a tiger, but one that lives in the trees.

It was in fact the sound of the howler monkeys Olinto has named this hike after.

If you’ve never heard their calls before, they do sound like a larger animal, perhaps even a big cat. I can imagine Spanish conquistadors crapping their pants at that sound when exploring the forest.

I had noticed a few of these calls earlier, but they were clearly much closer now.

And we were in fact soon rewarded with our first sight of a monkey.

It appeared as if a single solitary howler was peering down at us, almost like a silent sentinel. It definitely made me wonder just who was observing who.

A moment later, it turned out this monkey was not alone, and we got a glimpse of his partner climbing along stealthily in a nearby tree.

It’s fascinating that as loud and ominous as their howl seems in the distance, when you’re close them, they seem to barely make a sound.

They are definitely neat animals!

We headed past a new section of trail that Olinto hopes to have open soon, opting to loop back towards the trail head along the old trail that goes up a short incline before proceeding along a narrow creek bed.

I guess the first two monkeys that saw us didn’t see us as much of a threat, because we started to spot more and more monkeys.

We were fortunate enough to see several more groups of howler monkeys. I want to say we had maybe 5, sightings in total, including one larger group.

We got to see them do some jumping between branches and put on a little show.

So, while we didn’t catch a glimpse of the illusive tamarins or of the titi monkeys Olinto also sometimes sees, I’d say it was a grand success overall.

Oh, and we did see one tiny nonpoisonous snake, so a success there too!

I’ve got to say, the fact Olinto, Kike, and Ale spotted this little guy who was sitting absolutely still and perfectly camouflaged like he was a root is pretty impressive and a testament to just how in touch with nature they are as guides!

As we headed down the last section of trail, we also got to see a big woodpecker hard at work.

When we reached the trailhead, we got to enjoy a very refreshing fresh coconut. It hit the spot perfectly after the sauna like humidity of the forest!

After a change into some less sweaty clothes, we headed back towards Cartagena, stopping for a terrific fish lunch along the way.

Tips for this Cartagena Hiking and Monkey Spotting Day Trip

The hike itself is mostly flat, with a short section of higher incline and some climbing over rocks that are waist high or shorter. It was not particularly taxing or difficult, but I was thankful I had breakfast.

The hike took us about 3 and a half hours, and we were back in Cartagena around mid-afternoon.

It was oppressively humid, which is likely to be the case during the rainy season from approximately April-November.

Most of the hike is under the shaded cover of the forest, but during the dry season, it’s probably a good idea to have sunscreen (and well, really, you need sunscreen in Cartagena itself year round).

As I mentioned, there was some mud too, but Olinto does provide rubber boots when conditions call for them. If not, hiking boots, hiking shoes, or just comfortable walking shoes you don’t mind getting a bit dirty should be good.

Long pants are definitely a must due to the brush along narrow sections of the trail and the mosquitos.

I had on a pair of these lightweight Wrangler trail pants, perfect for the tropical temperature. A light long sleeve shirt is a good idea too. Bug spray is a definite must as well.

Plan Your Hike on the Howling Trail

If you want to see monkeys near Cartagena or simply do some hiking near Cartagena on a day trip, I definitely recommend the Howling Trail.

You can book your hike on the Howling Trail via the Taroa Adventures website.

I’d also encourage you to check out the other tours they offer, including the Jaguar’s Footprint we did before.

More Photos from this Cartagena, Colombia Hiking Tour

To close, I’ll leave you a few more photos I couldn’t fit anywhere above: