I recently visited Caño Cristales, along with some other sites near the town of La Macarena, on a trip with some other agents that was sponsored by Procolombia.

Of course everyone wanted to see Caño Cristales because it is a wonder of nature, famous for a unique aquatic plant which lives in this river that spans 100kms, and changes its color into red only once a year between July and November.  But the purpose of the trip was also to highlight some of the other newly-developed attractions in the area that can be visited all year round.

For many years, if travelers wanted to do an Amazon tour in Colombia, they needed to fly to Leticia, at the Tres Fronteras border with Peru and Brazil. From there, they could either do a lodge-based stay in the area, catch a cruise boat or a speedboat to Iquitos, Peru, or catch a cargo or transport boat towards Manaus, Brazil.

But when the vast majority of the FARC guerillas quit fighting in 2017,  other areas of the country became safe to travel to and it opened up fascinating areas in the Amazon made famous by the famous ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, during his explorations in the early 1940's, as are mentioned at