LA SIERRA

This touristic cultural route, filled with acestrality and the ethnic cosmogony of the indigenous peoples who live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Natural Park, the Arhuacos, Wiwa, and Kogui, will submerge you in a profound experience that will make your visit to the department of Magdalena unique. It is designed for those who are seeking a spiritual immersion in a landscape that is considered by its inhabitants as sacred. You must enter, climb the Sierra, and let yourself be guided by the land’s protectors. Depending on the time you want to spend on this trip, we offer you various intense and beautiful alternatives.

On the one hand, we suggest you visit the Busingueka reservation, one of the places where the Arhuaco siblings live. Here await majestic mountains and lagoons, as well as a community that will allow you to see and understand other ways of conceiving the world that are completely connected to nature. Getting to these landscapes will be without a doubt a reward because getting to this beautiful place will take you around six hours and several means of transportation. Quite an adventure!
With them, you will witness life among artisanal trades. You will see how, through mochila bags and baskets, their women weave thought. Also, you will discover other hierarchies and how they leave their big decisions in lives to their authorities. Without question, this will be an unforgettable and transformative experience.

But if you can’t make it up the Sierra and still want to discover the magic of the older siblings, you have another two incredible options at your disposal. In the foothills of the Sierra and just bordering the Caribbean Sea (via Palomino,) you will likewise be able to find the Kutunsama Arhuaco reservation. And if your route is along the El Rodadero road, you will find the Naara Kajmanta reservation of the Ette Enaka people. Both reservations will be splendid visits. You will have the opportunity to witness firsthand their rituals and the crafting of mochila bags by a group of empowered and marvelous craftswomen who have a lot to tell about their ancestors and their ideas of the future.

LA CIÉNAGA

This route also includes another look at the exhuberant Magdalena department: discovering its Ciénaga Grande.

Understanding this ecosystem, declared as a Natural Reserve of the Biosphere by the Unesco in the year 2000 due to its immense biodiversity, is becoming aware of a clear water rich in fauna and flora, harbor of migratory birds, postcard of sunsets. We want you to, aside from become dazzled with so much beauty, meet the neighbors of the Ciénaga and Pueblo Viejo towns: men and women who earn their livings mainly from fishing and whose craftspeople have traditionally focused on woodwork and the fruit of the totumo.

This will be an opportunity for you to stop along a road across which people normally travel so quickly and, with your sights already put on its landscape, learn about the cycles of water, as well as witness the increase of flow of many of the rivers that cross here. You will also have the chance to get on a boat and discover aquatic and lake-dwelling towns like Nueva Venecia. It is without a doubt another one of our country’s many gifts.