In Colombia, going up the Río Atrato in a dugout, there is a moment when the vegetation closes over you, the water is tobacco-colored, and the noise of the engine contrasts with the birdsong. At that moment you realize that you are not on any tourist map, but in Colombia unknown to mass tourism.
The country covers about 1.1 million km², almost 4 times the size of Italy, and is traversed by three Andean ranges, two oceans, Amazon, Orinoco, and Chocó, one of the richest bioregions on the planet. Most importantly, it is inhabited by more than 80 indigenous peoples who hold knowledge and practices you won’t find anywhere else.
In the Cauca, Andean highlands, the Nasa (or Páez) govern their territories through a system of community self-management that is among the most robust on the continent. Their mingas (collective gatherings) are not folklore, but politics, economics and identity. By visiting a Nasa community, one can understand how to defend a territory without the use of weapons but with collective organization alone.
Further north, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a mountain massif rising from the sea to 5,700 meters, live the Kogui, the Arhuaco and the Wiwa. They call themselves hermanos mayores, elder brothers of humanity. They believe that thought precedes action, that any intervention in the land must first be imagined and discussed at length. They receive visitors selectively, with precise protocols. Thus, this is not community tourism but a real encounter that requires preparation and respect and leaves something difficult to explain upon return.
The Serranía de la Macarena looks like a place straight out of a biodiversity documentary: the Caño Cristales, called “the river of five colors,” owes its reds and yellows to the algae Macarenia clavigera, visible only a few months a year. Get there by flight from Bogotá, then jeep, then on foot. No resorts.
In the Colombian Pacífico, the Chocó region is one of the rainiest areas on Earth and among the least visited. Palenques communities, descendants of escaped slaves who founded the first free villages in the Americas, still live in a very close relationship with the forest and the river. Their cuisine, music, traditional fishing practices, and general daily life bear traces of a history of resistance.
After decades of conflict, the 2016 peace accords have slowly opened up previously closed corridors that can now be visited safely, letting a local guide accompany you to discover community projects that transform tourism into a tool for development and land protection.
Colombia, then, is unspoiled nature, ancient cultures, rivers whose names do not appear on maps–as long as it is, it is worth visiting. Now and in the right way.
