The short version
December in Cartagena is dry, hot and the most expensive month of the year to be here, and we'd still tell you to come. The Colombian Christmas season is not a shopping season, it's a street season: candles on the 7th, nine nights of novenas from the 16th, and a city that stays outside until very late. If you're the sort of traveller who wants an empty plaza and a bargain, come in March instead. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
It starts on 7 December, with candles
The Colombian Christmas season officially begins on the night of 7 December, Noche de las Velitas. It falls on the eve of the Immaculate Conception, and people set out candles and paper lanterns along doorways, balconies, windowsills and pavements. It is a genuinely national thing, not a tourist event laid on for anyone: households do it, whole streets do it, and in the walled city that means colonial facades lit by candle rather than floodlight for one night.
What to do with it: walk. Go out after dark, take the residential streets in San Diego rather than the main tourist drag, and don't book a table for 8pm. It's one of the few nights here where the plan is simply being outside.
Then nine nights of novenas, 16 to 24 December
From 16 December to Christmas Eve, Colombian families hold a novena every night. It's prayers, then villancicos (Christmas carols), then traditional Christmas food, and it's fundamentally a house-and-family event rather than a public one. You'll hear it more than you'll see it: music out of open doorways, groups of people walking between houses, and it goes late.
If you get invited to one, go. If you don't, the closest a visitor gets is the plazas in the evenings, which fill up with the same music and the same food.
The weather: dry season, and still hot
December sits at the start of the dry season, which runs roughly December to April. Humidity is a touch lower than the rest of the year and rain is much less of a factor than it is in September and October. What does not change is the sun. Daytime temperatures stay high, the middle of the day is unpleasant on foot, and every good plan here is built around getting your walking done before 11am and after 4pm.
That's the honest case for a pool in December rather than an afternoon of sightseeing you'll resent. Ours is on the roof and it's where you should be between noon and three.
The part nobody warns you about: the price jump
Mid-December to mid-January is peak season in Cartagena and hotel rates across the city are at their highest of the year. This is not a Townhouse thing, it's the whole coast. The practical consequences:
- Book early. Weeks, not days. We have ten rooms, which is not many when a city fills up.
- Rooms need a deposit to hold. We refund 50% of the reservation value if you cancel in writing at hola@townhousecartagena.com at least 30 days before check-in.
- If you find a lower rate for us on an OTA like Agoda, show us and we'll match it when you book direct. Direct also gets you breakfast included, which over a week of very early mornings adds up.
Where we fit into your December
We're at Carrera 7 #36-88, in San Diego, inside the walls, next to Plaza de San Diego. Eleven rooms, hand painted by local artists rather than decorated by a supplier, which is a different thing to explain in a photo. An art hotel, but not the stuffy, silent, white-walls kind.
The roof is the reason people come up. It's open till midnight, adults only after 8pm, and Members Only kicks off around 9 on Friday and Saturday. Locals get 15% off up here too, so on a December weekend you're drinking with people who live here rather than a room of holiday arrivals. It gets loud. In peak season it gets louder. If you want quiet and colonial hush, we're probably not your spot, and December is the month that's most true.
Downstairs, ask for whatever Chef Pedro is doing with the catch that day. Weekend mornings the boozy brunch runs 11am to 2pm, bottomless, $45 for adults and $20 for children up to 12, booked through the brunch link on our site.
Should you come in December?
Come if you want the city at full volume and you've booked far enough ahead not to be angry about the rate. Skip December if your holiday depends on quiet restaurants, easy last-minute tables, or an empty stretch of city wall at sunset. Those exist here. They exist in March.