September 11, 2026
The Colombian Amazon has one door and it is Leticia, a town of 48,000 people on the river itself, at the point where Colombia, Brazil and Peru meet, with no road to anywhere: you arrive by air from Bogotá or by boat along the river, and everything you came to see, the flooded forest, the pink dolphins, the Tikuna communities, the giant lilies, the national park, is upstream or across the water from it. We run eight programs out of Leticia, from a city tour of the twin towns to five days upriver, and this page, which describes four of them, is what we tell our own guests before they book: what the town and the region are, by the authorities that run them, the two things you pay and show at the airport before you leave the terminal, the two seasons of the river and which one you want, what there actually is to do and what each thing costs at the gate, the vaccine and the mosquitoes, whether it is safe, and the rules of the people whose forest it is.
If the Amazon is one leg of a longer trip, our Colombia itinerary shows where it fits, and our guide to the best time to visit Colombia puts its seasons beside the rest of the country’s.
The short version
Fly to Leticia from Bogotá, vaccinated against yellow fever at least fifteen days before by the department’s own advice, with the certificate in your hand and cash for the municipal tourism tax that every arriving passenger pays at the airport. Sleep in Leticia the first night. Then go upriver: the Amacayacu national park and the Tikuna communities that run its ecotourism, Puerto Nariño, the town without a road eighty-seven kilometers up the river, and the Tarapoto lakes behind it, a Ramsar wetland where two species of river dolphin live. Choose your season by the water, not the calendar: from roughly January to June the river is high and you move through the forest by canoe, from July to November it is low and you walk to places that were underwater in May. The heat is the same all year, 31 degrees by day and 23 at night by IDEAM’s airport station, with rain on more than two hundred days a year. Three nights is the minimum that makes the flight worth it; four days is our standard program, from 824 US dollars per person with everything but the flight and the tax.
What Leticia is
Leticia is the capital of the Amazonas department and, by the 2018 census, a municipality of 48,144 people, 33,503 of them in the town. It sits on the left bank of the Amazon at Colombia’s southernmost point, at 84 meters above sea level by IDEAM’s airport station, and it shares a street with Tabatinga, the Brazilian town that continues it without a fence, while Santa Rosa, the Peruvian island town, sits across the river. There is no road to the rest of Colombia; the Alcaldía of Puerto Nariño, the only other municipality on this stretch, describes the river as the sole link between the two towns, and Leticia’s own link to the country is the Alfredo Vásquez Cobo airport, with flights from Bogotá of about two hours. The town is hot, flat, loud with motorbikes, and worth a walk for the market, the waterfront and the parakeets that come to roost in the Parque Santander at dusk; but it is a base, not the destination, and the people who spend their whole trip in it are the ones who go home saying the Amazon was disappointing.
Two things at the airport before you leave the terminal
The first is the yellow fever certificate. The Gobernación del Amazonas says plainly that the vaccine is indispensable for travel to Leticia and that it must be applied at least fifteen days before the trip; the Ministry of Health, which has had a national yellow fever emergency in force since April 2025, requires vaccination at least ten days before travel to the municipalities it classes as high or very high risk, and the Amazon region has been on its risk list for years. Get the shot at home or in Bogotá, where it is free at public vaccination points, and carry the international certificate with your passport; every one of our Amazon tours states it as a requirement. The second is money: the municipality of Leticia charges every arriving air passenger a tourism tax, collected in the terminal before you leave it, which our tours do not include. The municipality does not publish the figure on its own site; the Colombian press reported 35,000 pesos per person in 2024, which is a press figure and not an official one, and the amount changes, so bring cash in pesos and ask us for the current number the week you fly.
The river’s two seasons, by IDEAM’s numbers
The Amazon at Leticia has no dry season in the sense the rest of Colombia uses the word; it has a wetter half and a less wet half, and a river that rises and falls by meters between them. IDEAM’s 1991 to 2020 normal for the Vásquez Cobo airport station is 3,359 millimeters of rain a year on 206 days, a daily high of 31 degrees and a low of 23 in every month, and relative humidity between 84 and 88 percent. The table is that normal, month by month: rain in millimeters, the average number of days with rain, and the average hours of sunshine per day.
| Month | Rain | Days | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 386 | 22 | 4.2 |
| February | 336 | 19 | 4.0 |
| March | 386 | 21 | 4.0 |
| April | 348 | 19 | 4.7 |
| May | 298 | 19 | 4.8 |
| June | 212 | 15 | 5.2 |
| July | 163 | 13 | 6.0 |
| August | 140 | 12 | 6.5 |
| September | 208 | 14 | 6.0 |
| October | 246 | 16 | 5.5 |
| November | 300 | 17 | 5.3 |
| December | 336 | 21 | 4.5 |
What the table does not show is the river, which lags the rain by months. The water rises through the first half of the year and the forest floods, so that from about January to June you move through it by canoe, over what was a trail, with the fish among the tree trunks and the dolphins in the flooded lakes; from about July to November the river drops, the beaches appear, and you walk to the same places on foot, with more sun, more mosquitoes on the exposed banks and longer boat times, which the national park itself warns vary from July to November because of the low water. Neither season is better; they are two different places. High water is for the canoe and the dolphins, low water is for the walking, the birds on the beaches and the fishing. If you want the flooded forest, come between February and May; if you want to walk and see the river’s beaches, come between August and October; and if you hate mosquitoes, know that our guides find more of them on the exposed banks of the low-water months, not fewer.
What there is to do, and what each thing costs at the gate
Amacayacu. The national park, 267,241 hectares declared in 1975 and expanded in 1987, covers the forest north of the river between Leticia and Puerto Nariño, and its ecotourism, closed to visitors for years, reopened gradually from 2022 through the Tikuna communities of Mocagua and San Martín de Amacayacu, which run the trails, the boats and the lodging. Parques Nacionales puts Mocagua at 57.5 kilometers from Leticia, about an hour and a half by fast boat, and San Martín at an hour and forty minutes to the mouth of the Amacayacu river and thirty minutes more up it. The entrance is 73,000 pesos for a foreign visitor, 27,500 for a Colombian adult and 15,000 for a Colombian aged six to twenty-five, the park is open from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, and the figures the park gives for what lives in it are the ones to remember: more than 5,000 plant species, 468 birds, 150 mammals, and the highest primate diversity in Colombia. What you do there is what the communities offer, walks by day and night, canoe trips, dolphin and monkey watching, the workshops in basketry, ceramics and body painting, the medicinal plant baths, and meals in the community.
Puerto Nariño and the Tarapoto lakes. Eighty-seven kilometers upriver, a town founded in 1961 and made a municipality in 1984, reached only by the river, with a lookout tower over the meeting of the Loretoyacu and the Amazon; behind it, the Lagos de Tarapoto, a complex of black-water lakes that Colombia designated in January 2018 as the first Ramsar wetland of its Amazon, 45,464 hectares in the municipalities of Puerto Nariño and Leticia, home to both river dolphins, the pink Inia and the grey Sotalia, to the pirarucú, one of the largest freshwater fish on earth, to giant otters and manatees, and to twenty-two communities of the Ticuna, Cocama and Yagua reserve that share it. This is where the dolphin trips go, and the rule is that you watch them from the canoe and do not swim after them.
The reserves near town. Within an hour of Leticia there are private and community reserves where the classic Amazon day happens: the trail through the forest with a guide who names the trees, the swim in a black-water stream, the lunch in a maloca, the night walk for frogs and tarantulas, and, in the season when the ponds are full, the Victoria regia, the giant water lily whose leaves reach a meter or more across. Our seven-hour day at the Flor de Loto reserve is built around the lilies and the birds; our eight-hour day is the trail, the river swim and the community lunch; and our overnight sleeps in a maloca at the kilometer 7 reserve, with the flooded forest by canoe the next morning in high water.
The three countries. Tabatinga is the same street as Leticia and Santa Rosa is ten minutes by boat, and people cross between the three all day. The rule that matters is the one for going further: if you intend to travel on into Brazil or Peru beyond the twin towns, your passport must be stamped out at Migración Colombia in Leticia and stamped in on the other side, and Brazil asks for the yellow fever certificate at its border too. For an afternoon in Tabatinga, take your passport and come back the same day.
How our four days go
Day one: we meet you at the airport, cross into Tabatinga for the first look at the river from the Brazilian side, walk into the forest in the afternoon and sleep in a traditional maloca, under a mosquito net. Day two: the boat upriver to Puerto Nariño, the town, its lookout tower and its craft shops, dinner with a Tikuna family in their maloca and a night walk in the forest. Day three: the boat across to the Peruvian bank, the San Antonio community on Cacao island and its ecological trail for wildlife, lunch, then the Correo lakes to look for the pink and grey dolphins and to swim in the black water, with a night safari by canoe if you want it. Day four: the Natutama foundation’s visit on the river’s fauna, the boat back to Leticia and the airport. Everything is included except the flights and the airport tax: a private English-speaking guide for the four days, hotel pickup and drop-off, all the boats and vehicles, every meal, the lodging, the entrances, rubber boots and all-risk insurance, from 824 US dollars per person for two travelers. It is a moderate program, not a trek: the walks are two or three hours on flat forest floor, the days are long because the river is, and the nights are in malocas and simple lodges, not hotels.
Health: the vaccine, the malaria question, the water
Yellow fever is settled above: vaccinate, fifteen days ahead by the department’s advice, and carry the certificate. Malaria is the question people forget to ask. The Ministry of Health names the Amazon region among the country’s malaria-endemic areas and says the prevention is repellent, bed nets, long sleeves and long trousers; whether you also take prophylaxis is a decision for your own travel doctor, made with your itinerary in hand; everyone sleeps under a net and wears repellent from dusk. Dengue is present, with the same defense. Drink bottled or treated water only, and know that the department’s own advice for visitors is written in the same key: the vaccine fifteen days before, repellent that is not a spray, light long-sleeved clothing, waterproof boots or shoes, a change of clothes, a flashlight and constant hydration with bottled water. Leticia has a hospital and clinics for ordinary problems; for anything serious you fly to Bogotá, which is why the travel insurance you carry should cover a medical flight.
Is the Colombian Amazon safe?
By the two advisories we read for every page, yes for the places we take you. The British Foreign Office’s Colombia advice, updated on September 3, 2026, and the United States’ advisory, at Level 3 for the whole country since April 2025, both list the regions they warn against, and neither names the Amazonas department, Leticia or the river between Leticia and Puerto Nariño. The risks that reach visitors here are the river and the forest, not people: a boat in low water, a walk without a guide, a mosquito, a swim where you were not told to swim, the sun on the water. The rules the park publishes are the rules that keep you out of trouble on the whole river: register on entry, walk only with an authorized guide, no single-use plastics, do not feed the animals, no drinking or drugs on the trails, and do not eat pirarucú between October 1 and March 15, when it is protected. Leticia at night is an ordinary small Colombian town, walkable in the center, with the usual care about the phone and the taxi; the border streets toward Tabatinga are for daylight.
The people whose forest it is
You are a guest of the Tikuna, the Cocama, the Yagua and the other peoples of the resguardos that the park and the lakes overlap; Parques Nacionales itself says the Amacayacu territory is 57 percent the Momaveza reserve and 14 percent the Ticoya reserve, and that the communities govern it through their elected curacas and cabildos. The ecotourism you buy in the park is theirs, the guides on the trails are theirs, and the maloca you sleep in belongs to a family. The rules we hold our guests to are the park’s and the communities’: ask before you photograph a person or a house, buy the craft from the person who made it, do not bring alcohol into a community, do not touch or feed an animal, take your rubbish back to Leticia, and listen when a guide explains why a place is not for swimming or a plant is not for touching. The forest is the largest one on earth and it is somebody’s home first.
What to pack
The department’s list, and ours: light, long-sleeved shirts and long trousers in pale colors, waterproof boots or shoes you do not mind soaking (our multi-day programs provide rubber boots), sandals for the boat, a rain jacket or poncho, a hat and sunscreen for the open river, repellent with DEET or picaridin and not in a spray, a headlamp, a dry bag for the phone and the passport, a light sleeping sheet for the hammock, cash in small pesos for the communities and the tax, the yellow fever certificate, and insurance that covers a flight to Bogotá. Leave the drone at home, and bring less than you think.
What we do differently, and what we cannot promise
The programs on this page are private, with an English-speaking guide who works this river, hotel or airport pickup, every boat and meal included, and all-risk insurance, and we tell you the tax, the vaccine and the season before you pay rather than after. What we cannot promise is a dolphin, a monkey or a dry trail: the river decides where you can go on a given week, the animals decide whether you see them, and a guide who guarantees you a pink dolphin is guessing. What we can promise is that you will be with a guide who knows which lake they were in yesterday.
Questions travelers ask
How do you get to the Colombian Amazon?
Fly to Leticia from Bogotá, about two hours; there is no road. Boats connect Leticia with Puerto Nariño and the communities upriver, and with Tabatinga and Santa Rosa across the border.
Do I need a yellow fever vaccine for Leticia?
Yes. The Gobernación del Amazonas calls it indispensable and asks for it at least fifteen days before travel; carry the certificate with your passport.
How much is the Leticia airport tax?
The municipality charges every arriving passenger a tourism tax at the airport, which our tours do not include; the press reported 35,000 pesos in 2024 and the figure changes, so carry cash and ask us for the current amount.
When is the best time to visit the Amazon in Colombia?
High water, roughly January to June, for the flooded forest by canoe and the dolphins in the lakes; low water, roughly July to November, for walking, beaches and fishing. August is the least rainy month by IDEAM’s normal; January and March are the wettest.
Can you visit Amacayacu National Park?
Yes, through the communities of Mocagua and San Martín de Amacayacu, from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon; the entrance is 73,000 pesos for foreign visitors by the park’s 2026 tariff.
Are there pink dolphins near Leticia?
Yes, in the Tarapoto lakes behind Puerto Nariño, a Ramsar wetland where both the pink and the grey river dolphin live; you watch them from a canoe, and no one can promise a sighting.
How many days do you need in the Colombian Amazon?
Three nights is the minimum that justifies the flight; four days is our standard program, and a week lets you add the park and a second lake without moving every day.
Plan it with us
Write to us on WhatsApp with your dates and we will tell you where the river is that month and which program fits, or start with our Amazon tours page.
Sources
The facts on this page were checked on September 11, 2026 against the following sources: Parques Nacionales Naturales, PNN Amacayacu; the Gobernación del Amazonas, recommendations for travelling to Leticia; the Alcaldía de Puerto Nariño, Nuestro municipio; the Ministry of Environment on the Lagos de Tarapoto Ramsar designation and the Ramsar information sheet; IDEAM’s climatological normals on datos.gov.co, Aeropuerto Vásquez Cobo station; the DANE’s 2018 census profile of Leticia; the Ministry of Health on yellow fever and on malaria; the British Foreign Office’s Colombia travel advice; and the United States’ Colombia travel advisory. The airport tourism tax figure comes from Colombian press reports of 2024 and is marked as such in the text. Our own programs’ inclusions and prices are those on our tour pages on the same date.
