Two events have consolidated Guainía in the minds of travelers, the first, the signing of the peace agreement and the second, the launch of the Ciro Guerra’s film The Embrace of the Serpent (El Abrazo de la Serpiente), winner of multiple awards around the world.
Guainía
Guainía in the Yuri language means “Land of many waters”. Its capital is Inírida, and it is located in the east of the country. The temperature of the region oscillates between 25 and 30 degrees centigrade.
Most of its territory is made up of flat extensions, although there are some elevations, mainly the so-called tepuis, which are remnants of the Guiana shield, the oldest mountainous formation on the planet.
The most famous hills are the Mavecure, but there are others hills and mountains like the so-called Aracuari, Canapiari, Guasacavi, Mavicure, Pajarito, Rana, Salvaje, Sáquiras, Sardinas, and the mountains of Caranacoa and Naquén, with heights slightly above 500 meters above sea level.
In the past this was a region afflicted by armed conflict and violence, but this situation is now in the past and the community has found in tourism an opportunity for life.
Communication Routes and Transportation in Guainía
In the department of Guainía, the main communication route is the rivers, which are the road axes of access. Roads are scarce and only passable in the dry months.
It is also important the air transport. There are two airports located in Inírida and in the town of Barranco Minas.
Tourism in Guainía
In Guainía one of the main attractions is its people, whose population is mostly composed of indigenous people (65%), who come from almost 30 different communities and belong to ethnic groups such as the puinave, curripaco, tukano, wanano, desano, piratapuyo, piapoco and yeral.
Other attractions are the Cerros de Mavecure, the Las Brujas lagoon, the Sapuara stream and the fluvial star. You can also find the Puinawai National Natural Reserve; the Pavón, Payara and Matevení Lakes, which together with the Inírida River, are destinations where you can practice water sports and sport fishing.
How to get to Guainía
You have to arrive by plane from Bogota to Puerto Inirida. The distance in straight line from Bogota is 720 Km, and it translates into 1 hour 10 min of flight.
It is recommended that you stay at least 4 days in the region to enjoy this majestic and sacred place.
In Inirida you can find several hotel offers, and all trips are made to and from the city by boat on the Inirida River and its tributary streams.
Below you will find the best destinations in Guainía.
Guainía Destinations
The Mavecure or Mavicure Hills
The Mavecure Hills are part of what we know today as deep Colombia. Embedded in the Amazon, they have become one of the most emblematic tourist destinations in Colombia.
In a study published about Ciro Guerra’s El Abrazo de la Serpiente, the Hills of Mavecure and surrounds are described as a landscape of enormousness, limitlessness, extraordinariness, and grandeur.
The hills of Mavicure are three hours away from Puerto Inírida, the capital of Guainía. There are three tepuis called Mavicure, Mono and Pajarito that serve as an impressive viewpoint to the Guainía’s jungles.
From the top of the hills you can appreciate large extensions of jungle inhabited by indigenous communities such as the Puinaves and Curripacos.
According to Puinave Tomás Corda Medina, a native of the Barranco Tigre community, in an interview for a national newspaper:
“in the curripaco language, Mavecure comes from the words ‘mavi’, which is a palm used to make different utensils, and from ‘cure’, a poison that the ancestors took from a tree and put on the tips of their arrows for hunting with blowpipes.”
It is said that the hills were considered a magical space where humans could communicate with their gods.
The hills of Mavecure are 55 kilometers west of this city. To reach them you must take a speedboat that takes about 2 hours to travel the 55 kilometers through the Inírida River.
References
- Mavicure: Tras el rastro de los cerros enigmáticos. Mundo Destinos. By: Fidel Cano Correa. © El Espectador.
- Guainía: intercambio cultural en un tesoro escondido. Mundo Destinos. By: Redacción Buen Viaje VIP. ©El Espectador.
- En busca de las montañas de los dioses. By: Nicolás Bustamante Hernández. Enviado Especial De Viajar. © 2016 EL TIEMPO Casa Editorial.
- Decolonial Encounters in Ciro Guerra’s El abrazo de la serpiente: Indigeneity, Coevalness and Intercultural Dialogue. By: Maria Chiara D’Argenio. University College London.
- Notas sobre la historia de la región de Chiribiquete. Revista Colombiana Amazonica Nº 10. 2017. ©SINCHI Institute.
- Estrella Fluvial del Inírida, declarada sitio Ramsar. MinAmbiente
Sara Colmenares holds a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in Ecology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master’s degree in Botany from the same institution. Her doctoral research focused on palm ecology in the Atlantic Forest, supported by the Rufford Foundation conservation grant.
A published researcher in the Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology and a member of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), Sara has presented her work at international conferences across Latin America and beyond. She was awarded the COLCIENCIAS “Virginia Gutiérrez de Pineda” fellowship, one of Colombia’s most competitive academic distinctions for young researchers.
Sara founded the Sula nature tourism brand in 2018, applying her scientific expertise to develop birding and wildlife experiences across Colombia’s six natural regions. Her fieldwork took her from the cloud forests of the Andes to the Amazon basin, the Pacific coast, and the plains of the Orinoquía. She combined deep ecological knowledge with firsthand experience to create content that is both scientifically accurate and practically useful for nature travelers.
She holds a B.Sc. in Biology from the National University of Colombia, where she also taught plant ecophysiology. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and English.