Discover Chiribiquete National Park, a true 'Lost World' hidden deep within the Colombian Amazon. As one of the most unexplored regions on the planet, this UNESCO World Heritage site offers a glimpse into ancient history, unparalleled biodiversity, and the mystery of uncontacted indigenous tribes.
Spanning over 4 million hectares, this remote wilderness is a sanctuary for rare wildlife and thousands of ancient pictograms. Explore the geography, history, and ecological significance of Colombia's largest and most protected national park.
Geography
The Chiribiquete Mountains are a group of isolated table mountains in the heart of the Colombian Amazon. These giant rocky outcrops are part of the Guiana Shield, thought to be some of the oldest rocks on the planet. The rivers Cuñare and Mesay both flow through the heart of the National Park, forming huge waterfalls and rapids along the way, and the Apaporis, Yari, and Tunia rivers all flow around the edges of Chiribiquete National Park. Along with these giant rock formations and rivers, the park is primarily made up of tropical humid forests and savannahs.
Biodiversity
The Serranía del Chiribiquete was first declared a protected area in 1989 when it covered 1.3 million hectares. The government has since expanded the park to its current 4.2 million hectares, roughly the size of Denmark. As Colombia’s largest national park, Chiribiquete National Park is regarded as a vital hotspot of biodiversity in the northern Amazon, sheltering jaguar, tapir, manatee, the brown woolly monkey, and giant anteater. The world’s largest protected tropical rainforest, this national park is home to hundreds of birds and butterfly species and plays a key role in global conservation.
Uncontacted Tribes
Chiribiquete National Park (Parque Nacional Natural Serranía de Chiribiquete) is also home to uncontacted indigenous tribes. It was also one of four sites added to UNESCO's World Heritage List. Access has been highly restricted up until now because five indigenous tribes who don’t have any contact with the outside world live there, and the National Natural Parks System takes great care to look after these indigenous groups. It’s also a highly biodiverse sanctuary, an unexplored corner not just in Colombia but in the whole world and still holds a lot of secrets for humanity.
Chiribiquete Pictograms
The park also bears traces of ancient human populations, perhaps the oldest inhabitants of the Americas, who lived in this territory long before the arrival of Europeans. In Chiribiquete, more than 75,000 pictograms depicting animals and humans have been discovered; some of these paintings are believed to be 20,000 years old. Today, the forest is still home to a sparse population of Indigenous Peoples, some of whom remain uncontacted and live in voluntary isolation.
History
Remote, and almost impossible to access by land, Chiribiquete’s airspace has been tightly controlled for many years by the AeroCivil, only approved flyovers are given the opportunity to see a sliver of this unexplored and unique landscape. The site is in remarkably pristine condition overall due to its geographical isolation and the history of conflict near the buffer zone that prevented most forms of development and minimized anthropogenic threats. This forgotten wilderness has been isolated for years due to an armed conflict that had kept tourists and Colombian settlers away from the park’s buffer zone. Getting there is not an easy endeavor, and only a small part of the park has been surveyed. In the wake of Colombia’s 2016 peace accord, biologists, botanists, and archaeologists began visiting the rainforest mountain range with more frequency, and today, scientists believe the park could shelter even more biodiversity than is currently estimated.
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