Cartagena de Indias Airport (CTG) — Local services in Cartagena

Small but functional airport.

How to get out of it safely and most hassle-free? See below —

Look for the Yellow taxi sign (official, and cash only). There’s a machine right after you head out to select your destination area (there’s a friendly staff member in official yellow vest offering help when they’re free), and it generates your price. You pay to the taxi driver after the journey, no hassle, tip as you wish. The taxi driver I met was friendly and efficient.

However, it’s annoying that there’re lots of scammers after you go out. Such as this guy wearing a grey t-shirt (sign Turismo rent a car something) trying to help with luggage and speak loads of English to you. Ignore them and don’t engage with them, coz he’s not part of the official taxi crew and just trying to ask for $$. Once I refused his help and request, he slammed the taxi door trying to jam my leg and turned away rudely.

And just like you’re in other Thai or Indonesian resort towns, you’d encounter tonnes of people trying to urge you to go onto their vehicles.

So, my tip for you is to hold onto the white ticket you got from the taxi machine. (See the picture) Once ppl found you have that, they typically tried to move on to target other passengers coming out of the airport with luggage.

The price is somewhat more economical than booking via ride share apps (even for taxi booking on Cabify), as long as you have...

Horrible. Upon arrival it took over two hours to get through passport control. There were very few agents processing travelers. You needed to have a form completed (which we had) but others did not which slowed down the process even more and it was not clear until you reached the end that it was needed. The sign should be throughout so people are ready. The outbound experience was even worse with several departure flights. There was only one person designated to check through non Colombian travelers and the other person would help when possible. We were at the airport several hours early and nearly missed our flight had someone not allowed Jet Blue passengers to move to the front. Which was shocking given there were not a considerable amount of people in line.

Also as of this post 12.7.22- you still need a mask to enter and exit despite workers not actually wearing one or wearing it improperly. So have it ready so you don't get slowed down. You also need your paper copy of the vax card. They asked for it even though it says a digital copy is excepted. Save yourself the headache and bring your original.

A friend left yesterday (Tuesday) and had no issues at all. Point of this is just, leave plenty of time. You could breeze through but you could also miss...

Come early for departures and expect to stay long on your arrivals for international flights. Don't book layovers through this airport. They have a very underwhelming international terminal and no food or drink options other than the pharmacy/shops or lounge. Line for lounge would have been the 5th line we waited in on our way to our plane and decided to forego that extra line.

Plan on up 2-3 hours of waiting in line when you arrive at passport control especially if it's in the middle of the day.

Airport staff are sort of rude to you if they think you can't speak Spanish. That's sort of the same all around Cartagena. So better learn some Spanish if you want to come here.

Beware of scams at the taxi ranks, just book an Uber if you have cell signal. It is worth changing $50 USD to pesos at the airport so you can pay the $5-10 equivalent in pesos to your Uber. Otherwise change USD out somewhere in the city. The conversion rate at the airport is borderline robbery. $1USD this week for 3700pesos at the airport exchange and it's close to 4350 pesos when I swipe my credit card around town. Competitive money exchanges were offering close to 4250...