Travel deep dive
The Colombian Amazon: Leticia and Upriver
Colombia's share of the Amazon is large, remote and almost entirely without roads, and the way in is a flight to Leticia — a small city on the riverbank in the far south, closer to Brazil and Peru than to anywhere Colombian. From there everything moves by boat. What most determines a visit here is not which lodge you choose but which half of the year you arrive in, because the river rises and falls far enough to change the geography.
Updated 2026-08-15
A city you cannot drive to
Leticia has no road link to the rest of Colombia. It is reached by air from Bogotá, or along the river, and the same is true of everywhere beyond it — the region's roads are the waterways, and boats do the work that buses do elsewhere. That isolation is the first thing to plan around: flights are the only realistic way in and out, they are not frequent, and there is no overland alternative if something goes wrong with them.
The city itself sits at a point where three countries meet along the river. Leticia runs straight into a Brazilian town on the same street grid — the border is a line you cross on foot or by moto-taxi without much ceremony — and a short boat ride across the water reaches a Peruvian settlement. For a visitor this mostly means the practical texture of the place is trilingual and three currencies circulate, and that a day can easily involve two countries without planning to. Formalities apply if you are actually travelling onward rather than looking around, and they are worth sorting in advance rather than at the riverbank.
High water and low water
The river's level swings enormously between seasons — on the order of ten metres between its high and low points, driven by rainfall far upstream in the Andes rather than by whatever the weather is doing where you are standing. From roughly December to May the river is high, and the forest floor along its margins is underwater to a depth of several metres. From roughly June to November it drops, and land reappears.
That changes the trip completely. In high water you travel by canoe THROUGH the forest rather than along the river's edge, paddling between trunks with the canopy overhead and the ground somewhere below you — which is the version most people picture and is genuinely extraordinary. Fish move into the flooded forest to feed, and so do the animals that eat them. In low water, wide beaches of pale sand appear along the channel, walking trails open up, and you can hike into forest that was navigable by boat six months earlier. Neither season is better; they are different visits, and the mistake is arriving with expectations formed by photographs taken in the other one.
Upriver: Puerto Nariño and the communities
A couple of hours upstream, Puerto Nariño is a small town with a rule that shapes everything about it: no private cars. Transport is on foot or by boat, waste is separated and composted, and the streets are paved walkways between wooden houses — it is often held up as an example of how a small Amazon settlement can work, and the quiet is the first thing you notice after Leticia. It is the usual base for time on the water rather than in a city, and there is a lake system nearby that is among the better places in the region to look for river dolphins.
The region's indigenous communities — Ticuna, Yagua, Cocama and others — live throughout this stretch of river, and a good deal of visiting is done in their territory. The distinction that matters is between visits arranged with a community, where people have agreed to receive guests and are paid properly, and the performance version, where a group is delivered for photographs. The first is worth doing and worth asking about specifically when choosing a guide; the second is worth declining. Ask who the operator works with, and what the community gets.
What you will actually see, and what to sort first
The wildlife here is real but it is forest wildlife, which means patience rather than spectacle: pink and grey river dolphins, which are common and reliably seen; caimans at night by torchlight; sloths, monkeys and an enormous number of birds; and, if you are lucky and quiet, a great deal else. The giant water lilies with leaves you could stand on grow in the backwaters. Fishing for piranha is a standard afternoon and is more interesting than it sounds. What you will not get is the density of large mammals people arrive expecting from African savannah documentaries — the forest hides its animals, and a good guide is the difference between seeing plenty and seeing very little.
Two things to settle before you go. Yellow fever vaccination is a requirement for this region and can be checked on arrival — confirm the current position and carry your certificate; the health and safety guide covers what applies where. And choose the guide rather than the lodge: accommodation ranges from basic to comfortable and matters far less than who takes you out, how early they are willing to start, and whether they know the community whose water you are on.