Colombia

Best of Colombia

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Adios Colombia! We used every day of the 180 days Colombia allows on a tourist visa and we would have happily stayed another month, or perhaps the rest of our lives, in this marvelous country. We sadly left huge parts of the country unvisited – we only made it to one Amazonian destination, we completely missed the Llanos, we barely birded Cauca [...]

Birding Putumayo – Colombia’s birding frontier

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16 – 21 September 2015. We really ran short of time in southern Colombia, unfortunately. We had hoped to visit PNN Cueva de los Guacharos, the Mocoa area, the Sibundoy area, and the Junin area (RNA Pangan and Rio Ñambi) but we only had a few days left on our Colombian visas so we decided to check out the Mocoa and Sibundoy areas as there [...]

Birding the southern Central Andes: PNN Puracé, Finca Meremberg, and San Agustín

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12 – 15 September 2015. After finishing up in the Anchicayá Valley and San Cipriano, in the amazing Chocó lowlands, we enjoyed a minor miracle – a flat, paved highway with passing lanes and made it to Popayan at 80-90 km/h instead of 30 km/h, which frankly blew our minds after the past 6 months of sinuous mountain roads that are [...]

Birding Colombia’s Western Andes Part II: Montezuma Road, Laguna de Sonsa, Anchicayá Valley, and San Cipriano

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29 August – 9 September 2015. Montezuma Road winds sinuously up into Tatamá National Park, located in the foothills and subtropics of the Chocó and is the only practical way to access the park. Montezuma Road is also famous among birding circles as THE place to see the endemic Gold-ringed Tanager as well as 10 other endemic species. In other [...]

Colombia’s Central Andes – Rio Blanco, Paramo del Ruiz, Termales del Ruiz, Termales de San Vicente, Otun Quimbaya, and Cañon de Combeima

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August 2015. While the Chocó and the Western Andes host a wealth of exotic endemics, the area surrounding Los Nevados National Park (near the towns of Manizales and Pereira) cannot be underestimated. Diversity is through the roof here, the sites are very easy to access and comfortable, the birding is excellent, and there are hot springs all over [...]