El viaje

So being up early means you can go for walks around before the rest of the people get up. I was hunting for tucan, who are quite common here. No such luck. I did find a jungle woodpecker though

And two green parrots in the distance

and this dude building his nest

And a lot of ants

Lu found a nice fat toad

But that is all beside the point. We had to go and see the alge!

So after we got ditched by our original guide, we hitched a ride to the next settlement, where a local and his daughter immediately hopped on their motorcycle with us to get to our destination which was : 7 Machos.

Off the bike, we again had to trek a little.

and got joined by a local and very friendly dog , who immediately joined our quest.

And as we got to the river , we immediately got reminded which quest that was :

La macarena is the alge , the alge that in its beginning stages is bright, almost neon, green. The more mature it becomes, the darker its color gets, switching to a pinkish taint , to then become dark purple. It is not unique to this region but here it grows exceptionally well, and in abundance. The right amount and type of minerals in these waters and so you get an intricate combination of variables that produce this exceptionally beautiful outcome.

Depending on the temperature of the water or the amount of sunlight it gets , it ranges in the most wonderful colors. The water is crystal clear, so you get to see its variations pretty well.

Amazed by the first sights , we ventured on. As you can imagine there is a lot more to see on the way.

Like world record tree climbers with a little extra weight.

All sorts of new mushrooms for my collection

But at the upper part of the river you get a special type of orchid, which , as our guide explained, is unique to this little river valley. And it only blooms for around a week or so. We were lucky enough to witness a full bloom. Hundreds of them, they were everywhere and strangely enough, always facing the river. Quite the spectacle.

By now we were fully entranced but it got better.

This is when we lost our minds. And so did the guide and his daughter, and the dog… The guide explained to us that it rarely happens to get the orchids all in bloom, with the light and the alge all at the same time. He was just as excited as we were. All of us needed to cool down. So we did. Surrounded by orchids, colors and jungle sounds.

What a place. Pure magic to my mind. An Elven place.

Refreshed and fully enchanted we continued.

We did not feel the hours we had to walk back, nor the hours we had to wait for our ride, that took us hours back to La Macarena.

( thats when we realized why the town has its name)

And it was back in town when we realized what we had just witnessed. It can even knockout the strongest heavyweights.

There is lots of other rivers like Caño Crystales etc that we could have visited in the area. We thought we could not top this. And went to bed early again.

Enchanted campers.