How I Moved to Colombia in Layers: My 6-Month Relocation Timeline

6 days ago
8 min read

Nothing prepares you for the day you start having a panic attack when you're about to go home. Anybody else would say: "You have the perfect life. You work from home, you live on an island, you have a lot of friends."

But when you're a 39-year-old woman like I was then, and you've always lived under a system where you feel unsafe as a woman walking down the street, when every time you plan something, it doesn't really come out the way you want, something is always late, something is always incomplete, something always costs more, it can be very difficult to plan for the future. Even at 39, the future still matters to you.

And after a month as a digital nomad, the possibility of having a different life just expands, and you start questioning yourself:

"Am I in the right place?"

moved to colombia — How I Moved to Colombia in Layers: My 6-Month Relocation Timeline

This is what happened to me in October 2024, after a month traveling through Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. This being my fourth trip to Colombia, I already had hobbies, had friends, and more places that I wanted to see. Medellín wasn't completely new to me anymore. I had enough of a life here to start wondering what it would look like if I stopped visiting and actually lived here.

I already knew what it felt like to wake up somewhere else and not immediately feel irritated by the mechanics of daily life. I knew what it felt like to walk around by myself and feel okay. To make plans and have them mostly work. To meet people I would have never met if I had stayed in the same circles forever. And maybe but most importantly, I had started to see myself differently.

So I Moved to Colombia at 39 years old

Traveling alone does something very strange to your sense of possibility. You stop thinking of your life as one fixed thing. You start noticing that there are entire versions of you that only show up in certain environments. The version of you that talks to strangers, the one who tries a new hobby because nobody around you already has an opinion about it (like zouk classes), the one who gets lost and figures it out, the one who realizes she can build a routine anywhere.

By the time I got home, I knew I needed to seriously consider another option. I didn't need to know whether Colombia was going to be my forever home. I needed to know whether moving there was realistic, how much it would cost, what paperwork I needed, and whether I could organize the move without turning my entire life upside down in one week.

The questions I asked myself before deciding to leave

Before I started organizing paperwork, I spent some time figuring out what I was actually trying to change. Moving countries is expensive and annoying enough that I DID NOT want to do it just because I had one good trip. These were some of the questions I kept coming back to:

If I stay exactly where I am, what does my life look like in five years?
What parts of my current life do I genuinely want to keep?
What am I tolerating because I am used to it?
What kind of environment makes it easier for me to work, create and meet people?
Do I need to know where I want to live forever, or do I only need to know where I want to live next?
How far away from my family am I actually comfortable living?
Can I afford the move without creating a financial emergency for myself?
What happens with my dog, my furniture and everything I own?
If Colombia doesn't work out, what would my way back look like? (This deserves whoooole new article)

The useful question for me ended up being whether I wanted to give myself the chance to try this. I did, and from there I treated the move like a ✨project✨

My whole moving timeline:

October 2024:

I started researching where I could actually live

The first thing I needed was a realistic idea of rent. I had already stayed in different parts of Medellín, but living somewhere changes what you look for. I work from home, so internet mattered. I wanted a furnished apartment because I had no interest in shipping an entire household internationally. I needed groceries, restaurants, cafes and transportation nearby, and I wanted to understand what different neighborhoods would actually feel like as a resident. Keeping my routine around my new place was crucial, or my brain would've disconfigured itself.

I created a document called Possible Apt Choices and started saving anything that looked remotely viable. I wasn't just looking at apartment photos. I was comparing how each sector would work for the kind of everyday life I wanted to have.

The sectors I researched

Villa Carlota
Simesa
Belén
Laureles
Manila
Provenza
Centro
Other areas of El Poblado

I was looking at very different versions of Medellín. Some were more local, some had more foreigners, some were better connected, some were cheaper, and some made absolutely no sense once I compared the rent to the way I actually live.

The apartment websites I used

One of the Airbnbs I had stayed in was managed by a local rental company, so I asked whether they also had long-term options. They did, and that ended up being much easier than trying to arrange a random apartment from another country because I already knew the management company and had stayed in one of their properties (3 times).

November 2024:

I applied for the Colombian Digital Nomad Visa

Once I knew housing was possible, I moved on to the visa. I remember approximately when I did it because Donald Trump won the U.S. election on November 5, 2024, and I submitted my Colombian Digital Nomad Visa application right around the following day. I didn't want to miss out on the best apartment location for me as I knew americans would come running to Medellin.

The process was much easier than I had expected. I downloaded the requirements from Cancillería de Colombia, gathered all of the paperwork in one day and submitted the application online. The following day, I made the payment at the Colombian Embassy in Santo Domingo. I wasn't expecting a fast answer, so I went back to my regular life, and about eleven days later the visa was approved.

I'm writing a separate article about digital nomad visas because that process deserves its own breakdown: what I looked for, what I submitted, how I chose Colombia, and what I would check now before applying for one in another country. This article is about the move itself, so for now the important part is that the visa approval gave me permission to stop planning 💭hypothetically💭 and start putting dates on everything.

I gave myself six months to move

I didn't want one giant moving day. I still needed to figure out whether Colombia was going to work for me, so getting rid of everything I owned in the Dominican Republic would have been unnecessarily risky. Instead, I divided the move into stages and used several trips to bring things gradually.

That gave me time to sell what I didn't need, decide which furniture I wanted someone to keep for me, organize paperwork, save money, prepare the apartment and deal with Dino's travel separately. It also made packing easier because before every trip I could ask one very practical question: what makes sense to move now?

January 2025:

I tested the neighborhood before committing

In January, I returned to Medellín for around two weeks specifically to test the neighborhood where I was considering living. I wanted to know what a normal week there looked like:

where I would buy groceries, how easy transportation was,
whether I could work comfortably,
what was around the apartment,
and whether I still liked the area once I was doing completely boring everyday things.

I did like it, and there was another person interested in renting the apartment, so I made the decision. The contract was prepared in January, with the actual lease starting at the end of April. Good thing to notice is that in Colombia: You do not pay deposits, just the month in advance.

I also used that trip to move a few things ahead of me. I had already bought some furniture, which the management company stored until I moved, and I left luggage in Medellín before flying back to Santo Domingo: I made sure every trip was slowly transferring another part of my life.

What I did between January and April

Those months were mostly logistics. I went through my apartment in the Dominican Republic and started deciding what actually deserved to come with me. Some things I sold, some things I gave away, and some furniture stayed with people I trusted because I still wanted the option of returning if Colombia didn't work out.

I started thinking about everything in categories because it made the process much easier:

Bring on the next trip
Bring once I officially move
Keep in the Dominican Republic
Sell
Give away
Decide later

The last category saved me from making stupid emotional decisions about random objects at 11 p.m. I also separated my move from Dino's move from the beginning, because I knew his paperwork and flight would require their own timeline. My plan was to get myself settled first and return for him once the apartment was ready.

April 2025:

I officially moved to Medellín

In April, I came back with more luggage and started treating the apartment like my actual home. Because I had rented a furnished place, I didn't need to buy everything from scratch. Most of what I brought was personal: clothes, work equipment, things I used regularly, and whatever I wanted around me to make the apartment feel familiar.

By then, the previous trips had already done some of the work for me. I had luggage in Colombia, some furniture was waiting for me, I knew the neighborhood and I had already dealt with the management company several times. The move felt much less harsh because I had spent months slowly setting it up.

May 2025:

I went back for Dino

The final part was bringing my dog. That process deserves its own article because traveling internationally with a dog means checking two sets of rules, not one.

In my case, I had to deal with the Dominican Republic's export process through DIGEGA and Colombia's entry requirements through ICA.

I'm writing a full article about traveling internationally with a dog, including how to compare the requirements on both sides, vaccine timing, medical certificates, government endorsements, airline rules, and what changes when you're traveling with a reactive dog.

For this move, Dino needed his vaccines, veterinary certificate, Dominican export paperwork, airport validation, Colombia's ICA requirements, airline documentation and his emotional support paperwork. Because Dino had a heart murmur and was reactive, his veterinarian prescribed gabapentin for the trip. I traveled with the letter from my psychiatrist explaining that Dino was my emotional support dog, plus her business card in case anyone needed verification. I packed his snacks, his documentation and the calming spray I had bought from Chewy, which helped him sleep through a good portion of the trip.

Once Dino was in Medellín, the six-month move was complete. I had made the decision in October, gotten the visa in November, tested the apartment in January, moved myself in April and returned for him in May. Breaking it into stages meant I could test things before committing, spread out the expenses and deal with one layer at a time instead of trying to become an immigrant, mover, furniture reseller and dog travel agent in the same week.

The timeline that made the move manageable

If I were organizing the same move again, I would probably do it in almost the same order:

October: Decide whether moving is something I genuinely want to explore. Research neighborhoods and rental costs.
November: Apply for the visa and start collecting official paperwork.
November to January: Start selling, storing and sorting belongings.
January: Return to Colombia and test the neighborhood before committing.
January to April: Move belongings gradually and prepare the apartment.
April: Move myself.
May: Return for Dino and complete the pet travel process.

If you're thinking about moving to Colombia, this is the part I would start with: figure out what kind of life you're trying to build, research the neighborhoods based on how you actually live, understand the visa before making financial commitments, and give yourself more time than you think you need.

The next two articles in this series will go deeper into the pieces that need their own space: traveling internationally with a dog and digital nomad visas. I'll link both here once they're live so you can move from the big-picture timeline into the paperwork without having to piece everything together from ten different tabs.