I imagine that many of you have heard about that river because it got quite famous in social media over the past few month with videos like that:
Caño Cristales (The Rainbow River) is located in the state of Meta, at the Macarena National park in Colombia.
As you already know from my last article, Maxi and me went to here by plane to see it.
People have given it many names like "The gods river", "The river of 5 colors", "Rainbow river" or also "The most beautiful river on earth".
It is special because of it´s colors, which are produced by different coloful water plants. In total you can observe 6: red, yellow, green, black, blue and rosa.
Before you go visit the National Park you get a short briefing from the agency at the Macarena National Park, about how to behave entering this protected area.
It is forbitten to bring plastic bottles, (not natural) sunscreen, food or other liquids. You have to put on tracking shoes, long pants and a long arm shirt if you want to get in the park though ;)
Until december 2016 this area was still part of the Guerilla territory. After the piece agreement with the government it was opened for tourism, but the military is still very present and every person has to get a permit getting to the park being registered in the system.
As you can imagine we where really exited to see the rainbow river!!! - And hoped for good weather, as the colors are seen much better with sun.
The day started really cloudy, when we had our tipical colombian breakfast: Scrumbled Eggs, Arepa (Mais Tortilla) and a Soup.
From there we went to the local port to take a boat and see a bit of the wildlife before we go by Jeep to the actual park entrance, from where we had to trek.
The Jeep was driving us to a little jungle part to the official entrance of the park.
From there we started trekking, passing by some interesting Flora and Fauna.
It was very hot and humid, but still cloudy, which was nice because we didn´t get sunburned. But when we finally got to the first part of the river it wasn´t really colorful yet...
I didn´t know that the river needs good sunlight to show his colors. Later we would see the difference. I enjoyed the nature anyways on our way up to the biggest waterfall, passing by others.
Getting to the top it even started to rain. The waterfalls there where quite impressive though.
After a little while it stopped raining and the sun came out so we could enjoy the colors of the river in all its beauty!! The pink algaes are really incredible!
From there we went on to have a little lunch break at a hidden waterfall that our guide was leading us to. After that we would see the best part of the river ;)
The people of the village had prepared us a traditional Colombian Tamal as lunch. It is basically rice with banana and chicken inside of a banana tree leaf.
Of course we also went inside the waterfall and took a well deserved bath after this 2 hr hike.
We even did a bit of sport and stretching ;)
From there we went back walking to the actual colofrul rainbow river, which looked awesome now that the sun came out.
Crossing the jungle we got to the most beautiful part of the river. It was also really fun to cross this really random treks, seeing all kinds of birds and plants.
Crossing that paths we got to the most beautiful part of the river. Here they just call it "el tapete" (the wallpaper), because its the part, where the river is covered all over with pink algaes and you can see the colors the best.
From here on the track and also the river gets more rocky with every step.
At one point you really can see how the river made his way through the rocks. This is where the tour almost ends. We followed the river climbing the rocks until we got to the big waterfalls on the end.
The waterfalls are just amazing. Nobody knows why the rock is formed that way. But the big wholes in this gigantic stone create a view like from another planet. Especially with this colorful river passing by.
Just behind this big waterfalls we had a last oportunity to swim before we went back. - Really refreshing, but not really clear water ;)
Our guide told us on the way back that there is a lot of petroleum in this area. Lots of companies try to buy the rights of remove it, which would mean the end of this beautiful river!!!
The people of this village seemed so happy to have tourism instead of drug cartels around them... I hope it stays that way!
For me it was worth every cent to see this beauty of nature! I hope you enjoyed this blog.
Cheers, Liz