We were incredibly lucky with our timing in Mompox, arriving right in the middle of their annual jazz festival. Mompox is a beautiful historic town on the Magdalena River, known for its beautiful old, spanish colonial buildings, churches and traditional filigree jewellery.
We headed off in little tuk-tuks, two people to each one, which took us around the town looking at the different houses, churches and architecture.
As I’ve mentioned before, architecture isn’t really my passion, but you couldn’t miss how lovely and different some of these old, spanish colonial buildings were.
We then went to a filigree workshop. Filigree, or filigrana in Spanish, is something Mompox is particularly famous for. They take incredibly fine strands of gold or silver and twist them into these very intricate designs.
To me, it looked like metal lace.
The workshop was really well done. It didn’t go on forever — always a bonus! — but gave us enough time to see how they make it and understand why it is such an important part of Mompox. And another bonus – mine was better than Simon’s.
But the real surprise of our visit was the jazz festival.
We went into one of the churches where musicians were performing, and it was just fabulous. You had all these statues and this beautiful old church, and amongst it all were guys playing saxophone and electric guitar. Then a choir was starting up as well.
It shouldn’t necessarily have worked, but it really did.
We hadn’t planned to be in Mompox for the festival. It was just complete luck, which made it even better.
And the jazz continued that evening. AMA waterways brought a couple of the musicians onboard to play during Sip & Sail, which was great. We’d spent the day listening to jazz around Mompox and then there they were playing on the ship that evening. It was a great evening.
One thing I really noticed about Mompox was how safe I felt.
There were quite a lot of police around, probably because of the festival, but I have to say the Colombian police have been some of the friendliest police we’ve ever encountered.
They’d smile and say hello as we walked past.
The locals were the same. People were calling out “Welcome!” and “Thank you for coming!”
There wasn’t a moment when I felt uncomfortable wandering around.
After we’d finished the organised touring, we were given the option of going back to the ship or staying in Mompox and having a wander around ourselves.
We stayed.
We found this fabulous local restaurant completely by accident.
From the street, it was basically just a doorway. We walked through it and suddenly there was this enormous covered courtyard with trees everywhere, vintage bits and pieces hanging on the walls and fans going full blast.
Perfect.
We had a lovely local lunch, including some of the cheese Mompox is famous for, and it was just a really nice place to sit.
And, most importantly by then, it was cool!
After lunch, we wandered through a few souvenir shops, but I’m going to be honest — by then, the heat had really kicked in.
And I mean hot.
I have no idea what the actual temperature was, but to me it felt like it was pushing 40 degrees.
We’d planned to spend a bit more time wandering around Mompox, but eventually the heat had defeated us. We found ourselves a lovely shady spot beside the river, ordered a very large G&T and decided sightseeing could wait.
Some people headed back to the AmaWaterways office, which suddenly seemed like the best place in Mompox. It had air-conditioning, cold water, toilets and somewhere comfortable to sit while waiting for the boat back to the ship.
On a day like that, believe me, an air-conditioned office can absolutely become a tourist attraction!
One of the really interesting things about getting to Mompox was that our main ship couldn’t actually get there.
The Magdalena was too low.
And apparently at this time of year, it shouldn’t have been.
So for the last part of the journey we had to transfer onto AMA’s smaller explorer boats.
I actually thought this was fascinating because we’d been hearing so much about how important the Magdalena has always been to the people living along it.
For hundreds of years, people have had to adapt to what the river is doing. And here we were doing exactly the same thing.
The river still dictates how people travel and live along it.
Mompox wasn’t somewhere I’d really thought about before this trip, but it turned out to be one of those lovely surprises.
The jazz, the filigree, the beautiful old town and, most of all, the warmth of the people made it a really memorable stop along the Magdalena.
Jenny & Simon.
Jenny and Simon travelled as guests of AMA Waterways.
I’m an expert in small ship cruising in the Kimberley and have completed four cruises on different vessels along this spectacular coastline. Cruises in the Kimberley are not one size fits all. There are different ships and itineraries, each offering their own special elements.
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