The Tatacoa desert 🏜️

The Tatacoa Red Desert 🏜️

Hola todos! This one is all about the Tatacoa desert trip – my last side quest in Colombia!

I had did this trip as part of an organised full day tour run by the hostel I stayed at – Backpackers and Travelers Hostal, Neiva. This tour is organised by the hostel for the price of £32 per person, it is a smaller, more personalised group tour for 4 people at a time. Our guide, Juan was a very cool and helpful lad would highly recommend him. For info here is the link to their website HOSTELWORLD – Backpackers & Travelers Hostel Neiva

So it was an early start for some light breakfast at 0730 and by 0800 we were in the minivan and on the road headed to a small town by the name of Villavieja. Once there we had a brief stop at this swampy lake where Juan first shows us this Ant colony which is pretty impressive, they carry leaves from up to 2 miles away on that path. We also manage to spot a croc in that little lake. It has a specific name which I forget – both the croc and the lake!

We briefly stop at the Magdalena river to do a boat trip but the boat has an issue with the engine so that was bailed on and we moved on to the main attraction – the Tatacoa Desert!

Pulling up into this place you are greeted by a landscape that looks like the Grand Canyon, it personally reminded me of Mount Zion from that Fallout New Vegas DLC. Out we got and we started hiking down into the Red Desert of Tatacoa; there’s another Grey desert but we go there later.

Going down into the valley you can see all sorts of cactus plants including the prickly pears and barrel cactus plants we saw back in Mexico. Juan explains how this place became what it was. About 30-40 million years ago this valley was a lake but tectonic plates shifting caused some event which slowly drained out the lake, as the area is rich in iron ore and clay you get this red hue on the rocks and mud there. It is important to note this is not a true desert as it is about 80% dry rainforest 20% sand. The result of this is the dry mud surface that can grow desert plants and some trees similar to those found in the African Savannah plains.

After about 2 hours hiking round here it is time to head back to the bus, Juan tells me the boat is still broken down so we go for an early lunch at this local restaurant and have traditional Colombian lunch with soup, fruit juice and a massive bit of chicken and rice with salad.

After lunch the next activity was a swim in this pool full of natural hot spring water – didn’t get any pictures but it was just a normal swimming pool in this place but the water feeding it was being pumped from an underground spring. After 2 hours here we were all refreshed ready for the next hike, the Grey Desert of Tatacoa.

Gallery of the red desert and other places. Grey desert below

The Grey Desert is vastly different from the Red Desert. The Grey desert is larger and formed this way more due to Salt deposits? I think he said. Unlike the red desert there are lots more fossils to be found here and as we hike down into it’s many canyons, Juan shows us several including fossilsed snakes, turtles and fossilised wood from ancient forests. As we descend the canyon further we see remnants of ancient rivers which do still occasionally fill if it rains heavily as can be seen in places.

These canyons wind on until eventually we come to a clearing where we ascend a small mountain and visit a farm real quick before walking further uphill onto a wide plain overlooking the entire place before descending down the narrowest and deepest canyon – La Entrada Señora – apparently the local folklore said women would pass through this canyon to go party way back in indigenous times. I don’t know but it was a mad place. Once through there and a few more uphills and downhills we get to the end of the trail and Juan tells us there is a nice cold beer waiting for everyone at the end and turn out yes there was. There was a little stall at the end and we all had a well earned post hike beer on the company.

This was not quite the end as there was the additional optional extra activity of going to an observatory and looking at some stars, however when we got there lots of clouds came in and it was very hard to see them so the decision was made to head back to town early. By the time we got back it was around 20:30 pm. It had been a very busy and very good day.

As for what’s next I am heading back to Bogotá for a few days to rest up and get some admin done with the intent to fly to Lima mid week. As I have done wrapping up previous acts of this trip will be looking to get a post mortem blog done of Colombia out just before or just after I reach Lima.

I may try to get one more excursion in before I leave Colombia, if I do it I will drop that one before post mortem time.

Stay tuned for the next leg of this journey – Inca country 🇵🇪🦙🇧🇴

Gallery of the grey desert: