Exploring the Colombian Amazon: Leticia, Puerto Nariño & Lago Tarapoto
The Colombian Amazon around Leticia and Puerto Nariño offers one of South America’s most extraordinary travel experiences, with tropical rainforest, pink river dolphins, sloths, monkeys, caiman and enormous Amazon waterways. I spent several days traveling from Leticia to Puerto Nariño and Lago Tarapoto, photographing the wildlife, landscapes and communities along the way.
Wow.
I have always wanted to go to the Amazon. Major bucket-list item. I had no idea how much the experience would impact me.
A few words of warning: there are a lot of things in the Amazon that can hurt you. A lot. There are also a bunch of things that can kill you. I would likely survive, literally, twenty minutes on my own in the jungle before dying.
Just saying.
I can’t wait to return.
My plane touched down around 5 p.m., and I rushed downtown to Parque Santander to see the thousands of parakeets and other birds converge on the park at sunset. You can hear them from blocks away.
It’s a fantastic experience—and only a tiny preview of what I was going to see over the next few days. I’m not a National Geographic photographer. I knew I wasn’t going to get print-worthy photographs of tiny birds flying everywhere in fading light. Sometimes the experience is enough. I was perfectly content to stand there, watch, and record a few videos.
One note of caution: Parque Santander is beautiful and nicely laid out. But the entire place is covered in bird waste.
Literally.
I wouldn’t sit there very long because whatever drips onto your shirt probably isn’t…
…rain.
After a beautiful sunset, I enjoyed a pirarucu fish dinner at my hotel a few blocks away.
Day 1 — Leticia to Puerto Nariño & the Amazon
I was picked up from my hotel by Wanda, a wonderful Indigenous woman whose village was five hours upriver. We waited near the riverside market and were eventually joined by two English blokes for the tour. Our goal was to catch the 9 a.m. boat to Puerto Nariño.
Unfortunately, there was some confusion with the reservations because our names never made it onto the boat. If there had been empty seats, no problem. There weren’t.
The boat left without us.
I’ve traveled a bit.
Okay, a lot.
My first piece of advice to anyone traveling is simple: relax. Things happen. Especially in South America. Or Central America. Or pretty much anywhere outside the United States and Europe. Our guide was getting a little flustered, so I told her in Spanish that everything would be okay. My Spanish had been coming back quickly after years of neglecting it while learning German.
My ex-wife used to tell me to relax.
In hindsight, I wasn’t the one who had that problem… :)
The English blokes were getting upset too. The next boat wasn’t until 3 p.m., which meant we’d lose most of the day waiting around. Leticia is a pleasant town, but you don’t travel all the way there for the city life.
You go there for the Amazon.
So we made a decision: instead of getting upset, we’d hire a private boat to take us to Puerto Nariño.
Good choice.
An hour later, we were cruising upriver, and I quickly discovered something:
Wildlife. Is. Everywhere.
Seriously.
Puerto Nariño is a breath of fresh air. There are only a handful of vehicles in the entire town, with tree-lined streets and just enough civilization to keep you alive. We ate lunch and then visited a wildlife preserve, where macaws landed on our arms and monkeys jumped on us.
That was fun, but I came to see wildlife in the woods.
After descending a muddy embankment—and nearly wiping out because I had failed to check the soles of my shoes—we crossed the Amazon to a large exposed riverbank.
We caught glimpses of pink and gray river dolphins. They are really hard to photograph because you basically see a fin for half a second before they’re gone. There is no SeaWorld moment where they leap dramatically out of the water and eat a sardine from your hand.
Eventually, I wandered off on my own, looking under logs for nasty bugs—one of my favorite pastimes—and watching birds dive into the water for fish.
We returned to Puerto Nariño for dinner before preparing for our night excursion.
I caught up with the Brits at a local restaurant. They were nice guys.
Really picky eaters.
Like, really picky.
Like, so picky they wouldn’t eat what our host group served.
I ordered a beer.
Somehow, they ended up with hamburgers without hamburgers. I’m still not entirely sure what happened. One of the brothers didn’t want anything on his hamburger. Just hamburger, bun, and ketchup.
Eventually, they received food.
I received another beer.
Thinking back on the brothers, years ago I probably would have made fun of them for having such a limited palette. Hell, I have a brother who’s almost 50 years old and still orders Caesar salad with the dressing on the side.
But I’ve learned something: you can’t make people eat what they don’t want to eat. You can’t make people travel who don’t want to travel—my father being Exhibit A.
And that’s okay.
Travel is already really, really scary for a lot of people. It removes you from your comfort zone. That’s part of what makes it such a wonderful experience.
Who cares if you don’t want anything on your hamburger?
Of course, it’s nice if the hamburger actually has some meat…
What we did next probably wasn’t so good for us.
We loaded up on beer for the night walk!
Why not?
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Our night walk began when we met Norman—not his real name—who told us he was a payaso, a clown.
He was funny. So funny that when I asked where his rubber boots were, he realized he’d forgotten them and had to run home to get them.
That’s pretty funny.
The Tres Fronteras region sits where Colombia, Peru, and Brazil meet, and the borders here are unlike almost anywhere else. In some places, you can move between communities without the kind of border infrastructure you’d expect elsewhere.
Why?
Because you can’t go anywhere!
Literally.
Roads extend only a short distance from the towns. After that, you’re left with the Amazon.
Ever tried walking through a massive jungle wearing boots that are the wrong size?
Mine were actually two different sizes.
One was way too big.
Even during the dry season, progress was slow. The “trail” ahead of us was basically wet mud. Be prepared to sink a foot into it. You’d never survive in normal shoes.
Remember how I mentioned that everything in the Amazon can kill you?
Poison dart frog? Paralysis.
Tarantula? Can bite. Will hurt.
Tree covered with enormous thorns that I almost grabbed for balance?
Bad idea.
Even if you gave me a compass, better boots, and a canteen, I don’t think I’d last one day here.
Especially because we kept drinking beers.
At this point, our guide and the guy leading the expedition were drinking beers too.
What a great memory.
Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done… :)
I don’t remember ever being as tired as I was when I finally returned to my hotel. It was a simple room with screens to keep the bugs out.
Hot water?
No.
But hot water was the last thing I wanted.
I think I stood in the shower with all my clothes on. They’d be dry by morning.
Day 2 — Puerto Nariño to Lago Tarapoto
The Brits were leaving at noon, having almost survived their short experience in the Amazon.
We had a simple breakfast—some of the most delicious fruit and eggs I’ve ever eaten—and then headed over for a walk on the Peruvian side of the Amazon. Wanda returned to join us.
Led by a local Peruvian woman, we tramped through more muddy terrain. It was considerably easier during daylight than trying to illuminate everything with my cell phone.
She introduced us to plants used for medicine, bug repellent, exotic fruits, and more.
I was looking for sloths.
Perezosos.
Look, I can’t even find my keys half the time.
Of course I couldn’t spot a sloth.
But Wanda and our guide could.
Again, getting good photographs was difficult. Sloths don’t move much and blend almost perfectly into the trees.
Butterflies? Check.
Insects? Check.
Spiders? Check.
Sloths?
Tons of them. Check.
At the end of the walk, while waiting for the boat, I discovered that the dock sold Cristal beer—my favorite beer from Peru.
Of course I indulged.
We returned to Puerto Nariño for a nice lunch involving some type of fish, and then I took a short nap in a hammock at the tour headquarters while it rained.
The brothers departed, and I was excited to learn that the people joining us for the second half of the tour were German.
Heck, I’ve been studying German for four years!
Was für eine großartige Gelegenheit, Deutsch zu sprechen.
I’ve developed a much deeper respect for people who can speak multiple languages. I know a lot of it is practice, but I’m not accustomed to switching from Spanish to German and then back to English within seconds.
So I absolutely sucked in German.
I’d been speaking Spanish for almost ten days. My brain apparently had room for only one foreign language at a time.
I couldn’t do it.
Epic fail.
That afternoon, we departed for Lago Tarapoto, where we’d spend the night.
This provided even more opportunities to NOT get photographs of dolphins.
I quit trying.
Seriously.
We watched a beautiful sunset over the lake and then headed out after dark to look for caiman.
The Germans and Wanda went swimming.
I did not.
I don’t like swimming anywhere I can’t see the bottom. In my defense, I stepped on a piece of glass in a lake when I was a kid.
I’ll use that as my traumatizing excuse.
I joked around with the boat driver’s daughter, Sofia. When I asked her name—in Spanish—she looked at me and simply replied, “No.”
I told her that No was a very interesting name.
A few minutes later, she’d warmed up and I was chasing her around pretending to be a piranha, snapping my arms like giant jaws and yelling, “¡Voy a comerte! ¡Voy a comerte!” (I’m going to eat you!).
Kids are pretty much the same everywhere. Sometimes it just takes them a few minutes to decide whether the strange gringo is entertaining or completely nuts.
That night we headed out on the water to find caiman & alligators. It was crazy how clearly you could see the animals’ eyes reflecting when the guide swept his flashlight across the water.
The only problem?
Full moon.
Yes, we could see everything.
But the caiman could see us too.
We caught glimpses of them as we approached as quietly and stealthily as possible. But they ducked into the water when we got too close.
Still really fun.
Day 3 — Fishing, Piranhas & Eight Remaining Fingers
I woke early the next morning to watch the sunrise and was treated to the full moon setting at the same time.
There was a large tree beside the viewing porch where I found a tarantula, snails, and another giant caterpillar. I also spent some time wandering through the nearby jungle until I realized I was becoming slightly disoriented.
Another reminder not to wander too far.
Because everything will kill you.
I returned to camp just in time for another epic language failure. The German woman asked whether I’d been hiking in the woods.
I understood her perfectly.
I then responded in some combination of German, English, Spanish, and possibly Yiddish.
After a simple breakfast at another camp—and another opportunity to slip and slide through the mud getting on and off the boat, while our driver Miguel probably enjoyed a thousand laughs at my expense—we went fishing.
Now, you need to understand a few things about the cosmos.
The universe is constantly expanding.
The Earth rotates.
And Fox men do NOT catch fish.
Period.
Got it?
And this wasn’t fancy fishing with an expensive rod and artificial lure.
We had a stick.
Fishing line was attached to the stick.
The bait was chopped-up fish.
I was positive this was going to be an epic failure.
But I caught a fish!
A piranha!
Then I caught another one.
Another piranha!
Then another.
Three fish.
Wanda—and the internet—had told me that piranhas aren’t nearly as dangerous as the movies make them look. They aren’t going to reduce you to a skeleton in eight seconds while dramatic music plays in the background.
If you’re dead or massively bleeding?
Okay, you might have a problem.
But these little bastards definitely have teeth, and they absolutely will bite while you’re removing the hook.
Miguel warned us.
I let him remove the first piranha.
I removed the next two myself.
I still have eight fingers.
Totally worth it!
We returned to Puerto Nariño for the afternoon and another Amazonian lunch of fruit and fish.
Before catching the 3 p.m. boat, I had a beer with Wanda near the dock. Miguel, our driver, was there too.
He’d had more than a beer.
A lot more.
When he left, he said goodbye to Wanda with the customary kiss on the cheek. When he turned to me, we shook hands.
I told him:
“Pero no me besa.”
Wanda cracked up.
He wasn’t going to kiss my cheek anyway.
But humor is what keeps me going.
We eventually returned to Leticia. The next morning, I photographed more of the market, had a hamburger (with something on it) for dinner, and decided not to visit the Brazilian side as I’d originally planned because I didn’t want that to count as “going to Brazil.”
And I really, really enjoyed air conditioning for the first time in several days.
Wow.
What a trip.
I’ll remember this one for the rest of my life.
Absolutely amazing.
Plan Your Trip to Leticia & the Colombian Amazon:
Hotels
BioHotel Arara River– for travelers who want to stay closer to the natural environment of the Amazon, Biohotel Arara River offers a nature-oriented base for exploring the rainforest and waterways surrounding Leticia.
Buru Nature Hotel– Looking for a nature-focused stay in Leticia? Buru Nature Hotel provides a convenient base for exploring Leticia and the surrounding Colombian Amazon.
Hotel Tatuane– provides a convenient base for experiencing the wildlife, waterways, and rainforest landscapes of the Colombian Amazon. Located in Puerto Narino
Maloka Napu– is a convenient base for exploring the rainforest, Amazon waterways, wildlife, and surrounding communities.
Coffee
I found empanada places and small restaurants open around 7:30-8:00 am. Plenty of coffee to drink. Cheap prices. Head towards the Amazon river and you will find places.
Since I was taking a tour in Puerto Narino, we had coffee with our breakfast each morning.
Tours
Find things to do in – day trips (museums and public transport), and more:
Travel Guides
Here is the recently published Lonely Planet Guide. This is what I used to plan the trip (in conjunction with the all-beloved internet):
Another travel guide available for :
Flights:
There are no practical overland routes into Leticia from the rest of Colombia, so most travelers arrive by air. Once there, boats become the primary way to explore Puerto Nariño, Lago Tarapoto and the surrounding Amazon communities. I traveled as part of a tour, so most of my boat transportation was arranged in advance.
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