Come breathe the fresh air at 8,000 feet in Santa Elena’s Enchanted Forest (El Bosque Encantado de Santa Elena). A mountain community rooted in nature, creativity, and quiet transformation. Located just a 40-minute metro-cable ride outside of Medellín and 30 minutes from the airport.
We are a community of 7 cabañas and 2 large Finca Style homes nestled in the cloud forest of Santa Elena, Colombia…
Our space offers both short-term and long-term stays for those seeking to reconnect, reset, or simply live more closely with the land. We also host retreats, ceremonies, and special gatherings, providing a setting that naturally invites presence, connection, and inspiration.
Located just a 40-minute metro-cable ride outside of Medellín and 30 minutes from the airport.
Life here moves between worlds—rooted in the stillness of the land, yet held within a place known for its creative, spiritual, and artisanal rhythm. The surrounding community carries a subtle energy of making, reflection, and exchange.
Whether you come to stay, create, or celebrate, this is a place to land, to breathe, and to belong.
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El Encanto
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Tierra Bonita
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El Duende
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Casa De Sueños
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El Principe
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Capueracita Roja
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Guarda Bosque
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La Abuela
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El Hobbit
Retreat, Rewild, Reconnect
Nestled among ancient trees and mist-veiled trails, this eco village retreat offers a rare chance to reconnect with nature, community, and sustainable living. Whether you're seeking a peaceful escape or a deeper connection to the land, Enchanted Forest welcomes you home to the forest.
Enchanted Forest (Bosque Encantado) draws people who come to this mountain for a reason — musicians looking for a quiet place to create, healers and medicine circles seeking sacred ground, yoga practitioners and retreat leaders wanting fresh air and open sky, and individuals simply looking to slow down and reconnect — with themselves, with each other, and with the land itself.
We host both groups and solo travelers. Whether you're bringing a full retreat, leading a healing circle, or arriving on your own to breathe cloud-forest air and listen to something quieter than daily life, this land holds space for the work you're here to do.
A word from the founder…Melissa Black
"This project is my heart's work — a place where the land, spirit, and community come together in harmony. My mission is to help people reconnect with what’s essential — to create space for healing, growth, and joy. "
Our Mission
Our mission is to emphasize the balance and harmony of body, mind, and spirit — explored through health, ecological studies, yoga, meditation, and organic, non-toxic ways of living. We believe that through community, we grow these resources not just for ourselves, but for society at large.
We endeavor to create an environment of harmonious balance between body, mind, and spirit. Reconnecting to the essential elements opens the spirit, the mind, and the heart — and in that opening, there is room for personal and spiritual growth, healing, joy, peace, strength, and happiness. From that place, we carry ourselves forward, in a good way, into daily life.
What we offer
Educational Programs
Native studies · arts and crafts · local plant and wildlife studies · green medicine and herbalism · gardening · permaculture
Ceremonies & Retreats
Medicine circles · sound healing · guided ceremony · group and individual retreats · seasonal gatherings
Rentals and Cabañas
A reimagining of communal living — primary residences, secondary residences, retreat rentals, and long-term investment opportunities
Healing Arts
Massage · yoga · meditation · dance and music
The Land
Santa Elena sits at nearly 2,700 meters (about 8,850 feet) in Colombia's Central Andes, within a protected cloud forest reserve just outside Medellín. The mist that gives the forest its name settles in most days of the year, cooling the air to a near-constant 12–18°C (54–64°F) and coating the canopy in moss, lichen, and orchids. Inside the surrounding reserve, more than 500 species of trees, shrubs, and flowering plants have been documented, alongside frogs, butterflies, and birdlife drawn to the forest's year-round moisture.
As dusk falls, the forest comes alive. Toucans move through the high branches, hummingbirds flicker between the last flowers of the day, and Andean motmots and mountain jays call out as the light fades — part of nearly 70 bird species found in this watershed.
Santa Elena’s Feria de las Flores
Since the colonial era, farmers from Santa Elena have carried flowers and produce down into Medellín on foot, to sell in the city's markets — a tradition that grew, over generations, into the silleteros: growers who build towering, elaborate flower displays and carry them strapped to wooden frames on their backs, a craft passed down through families in this exact township.
That tradition now anchors Medellín's Feria de las Flores, held every August, when hundreds of silleteros parade their creations through the city — some displays exceeding two meters across, built entirely from flowers grown on hillsides like this one. It's one of Colombia's largest annual festivals, and its roots trace back not to the city, but to this soil, and the families who have worked it for generations.
This is a forest still actively shaped by the people who live in it — farmed, walked, and tended for generations — and still wild enough to surprise you.
Partner With Us
Bosque Encantado is more than a retreat — it's a living project, still growing. We're looking for partners who share our vision: people who want to help shape what this land becomes, whether that's expanding our residences, deepening our programs, or building out a model of communal living rooted in permaculture, healing, and connection to place.
If this vision speaks to you, and you're interested in exploring a partnership — as a co-creator, a contributor, or an investor in the land itself — we'd love to hear from you.