After Hostal Pacifico, we headed to La Macarena for Caño Cristales, the rainbow river. To get to Caño Cristales, most people take an hour flight from Bogota. We opted for the off the beaten track route by land and what a journey it was!! In total, we spent 32hrs on buses from Buenaventura to La Macarena.
This post covers how we took the road less travelled and got the bus to Caño Cristales.
Note: For those considering a land route, embrace your adventurous spirit, be patient, go with the flow, have the time, and prepare for laughs!
Firstly, there are several bus routes you can take to reach La Macarena (the closest town to Caño Cristales). None are direct and multiple bus changeovers are required. They’re long journeys driven on unpaved roads and why most people take a flight.
In our case, we hadn’t booked flights, wanted flexibility and were inspired to take the bus after speaking about the Caño Cristales to Sasha, a French volunteer at Hostal Pacifico. He made it sound totally doable!
We had no fixed plan, only a vague idea of a potential route and options. I guess our plan was to make it up as we went along.
Once we got from Buenaventura to Bogota, our route to La Macarena was as follows: Bogotá – Villavicencio – Vista Hermosa – La Macarena.
Part 1 – Getting to Bogota
Hours driving: 9hrs
Cost: 50,000COP (£12 approx)
Our first step to visiting Caño Cristales was to get to Bogota, which seemed the best place to start from. From Buenaventura, where we’d spent three great days at Hostal Pacifico, we got a night bus to Bogota (50,000COP). It was quicker than anticipated, taking around 9hrs and arriving to Bogotá’s Saltire terminal at 5.30am.
Part 2 – Bogota to Villavicencio
Hours driving: 12hrs (usually 3hrs!)
Cost: 60,000COP (£15 approx) (usually 25,000COP)
From Bogotá’s Saltire terminal, we got a bus to Villavicencio. We’d decided to go to Villavicencio as from there we had bus and plane options. What was meant to be a simple and fast journey, 3hrs and costing 25,000COP, became a 12hr one and a whole travel day!
Walking through the bus terminal to book a bus, our journey quickly hit a hitch when we found out the main road to Villavicencio was closed (we found out later for would you believe it 3 months!) and a 12hr detour route was in place.
Deciding that Villavicencio was still our best option, we went for the 12hr drive and paid 60,000COP (£15 approx). It was a long drive passing through some really pretty landscapes!
Part 3 – Villavicencio – Vista Hermosa
Hours driving: 3hrs
Cost: 28,000COP (£7 approx)
We arrived to Villavicencio around 8.30pm and decided to continue our journey by bus rather than stay a night and attempt to figure out a flight.
Getting to Vista Hermosa got us one step closer to La Macarena so we booked a 12.30am bus for 28,000COP (£7 approx). We arrived to Vista Hermosa just over 3hrs later in heavy rain, at 3.45am.
In hindsight going Villavicencio to San Jose del Guaviare and then La Macarena potentially might have been quicker, although I can’t comment on prices or bus times and connections.
Part 4 – Vista Hermosa – La Macarena
Hours driving: 8hrs
Cost: 80,000COP (£20 approx)
Arriving at 3.45am, we quickly realised we weren’t going to be hopping on our next connection any time soon. Small town life and all!
Once again no one seemed to know what time the 4×4 left to La Macarena, between 6am and 8am seemed to be the general consensus. Sat on our bags at the side of the road, we had a while to wait!
Later on, we found out the 4×4 left at 8am. The ticket office opened at 7am and we bought our tickets for 80,000COP (£20 approx).
Note: the 4×4 to La Macarena leaves at 8am every day apart from Tuesdays! Counting our lucky stars that we arrived on a Monday!
In the meantime we bought some yummy oat raisin cookies and I debated about buying wellies. I really couldn’t figure out how bad the road would be – wellies made it sound super muddy and boggy and lots of locals were telling me I needed them! The lady at the ticket office settled my dilema by saying my walking boots were fine.
We set off at 8.30am and arrived to La Macarena 8hrs later, around 4.30pm. What a journey!!
At one point, the guy in the back shouted “maleta”; a bag had fallen off the roof. Confident that it wasn’t mine, we waited for the driver to collect it.
Low and behold, he rounded the bend a few minutes later with my rucksack on his back! Only slightly muddy from its fall, I was so happy it hadn’t landed in a muddy puddle of which there were many! Thank goodness there’d been someone in the back to spot falling bags, otherwise I would have had a bad surprise in La Macarena!
We spent a large portion of the journey bumping around in the back. There was one part where every time I righted myself I was tossed to the other side of the car into Phoebe. A bag of laughs for sure!
Over the course of the journey, we also crossed two rivers. The car went across the first river on a small wooden barge and we were pulled across in a wooden boat.
For the second larger river, River Guaviare, we went on a larger wooden barge (called planchon in Spanish) powered by a small boat with a motor. The water was high and current strong, we quickly ended up floating downstream after the motor cut out and I thought we were going to end up at another town further down the river.
Thankfully they sped into action and got another boat with a motor to help. We made it to the other side! It was an amazing crossing, especially as the parents left their children to handle everything. One was a teenager but the rest were pretty small and young – very impressive!
So there you have it, our 32 hr journey by bus to La Macarena and Caño Cristales from Buenaventura and going via Villavicencio and Vista Hermosa. With an open main road from Bogota to Villavicencio, the journey would be a lot quicker. You’d be looking at 14hrs on buses from Bogota to La Macarena with good open roads.
Alternative land routes
The above route is not the only way to reach Caño Cristales by land.
A slight variation to the our route would have been to go to San Jose del Guaviare from Villavicencio (instead of Vista Hermosa) and then on to La Macarena.
There is also a completely different route: Neiva – Florencia – San Vicente del Caguan – La Macarena. It’s the route recommended by Cormacarena (official body) in their information video and seems to have better roads and is more reliable.
Whilst the route we took was fine, I can easily imagine the final leg, Vista Hermosa – La Macarena, being a nightmare after really heavy rain. For that reason, the Neiva to La Macarena route might be the way to go. Neiva to Florencia is roughly 5hrs, 4hrs for Florencia to San Vicente del Caguan and 5hrs from San Vicente del Caguan to La Macarena.
How to get there by plane
The easiest and quickest way to get to La Macarena is by plane.
Satena have one hour flights from Bogota to La Macarena on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Finding flights can be difficult because of this and also I found their website to be pretty useless.
Another option is to get a chartered plane from Villavicencio (or potentially Bogota). We weren’t sure how easy it would be to turn up to the airport and get a flight the same day which is another reason why we opted for the bus route from Villavicencio. If you’re booking a multi day Caño Cristales tour, flights to and from La Macarena will usually be included in the package price.
It was extremely easy to book a flight from La Macarena back to Bogota. We flew for 295,000COP (£75 approx). Considering how long it took us to get to La Macarena, it was crazy how fast we got back to Bogota! Under an hour!
Final thoughts
Getting to Caño Cristales by land was a mission! A fun and memorable one at that!
When doing this route, we quickly realised that nobody could give us an overview of the whole route. No one seemed to know how the journey all connected up and only knew their own section (if that!). We’d only find out the details of the next leg of the journey when we arrived at the next town. Patience and optimism is required as is time!!
We picked the land route that hardly anyone does and were the only foreigners. It was an adventure and part of the reason I loved Caño Cristales; our visit felt extremely well earned! We also got to see so much more of Colombia’s landscapes which were beautiful!
I’d almost ruled out visiting Caño Cristales completely because the land routes seemed so complicated and long.
Having now done it, the journey is a lot more straightforward than it seems. It’ll still always be a long one, but it’s all part of the adventure!
If you’re reading this, and have been put off from visiting Caño Cristales for similar reasons, don’t let it stop you! I hope this post reassures and reminds that getting there by bus is totally doable. It takes you off the beaten track and is one to remember!
