First time going to Colombia to bird! Questions about how much preplanning to do (1 Viewer)

[Nifer]

Hi there,

I'm planning to go to Colombia in mid November solo, and would like to hire guides as I go. I'm wondering if most the lodges or places that I stay at will be able to easily hook me up with a guide or if I need to plan that well in advance.

Anyone have experience with this? Basically I don't want to have my entire itinerary set in stone. I plan to be there for at least one to two months and can take my time.

Thank you!

 

[temmie]

so again: where are you going?

There are places that are not (always) safe and there are places that are generally very safe and have been for a long(er) time like Jardin, Otun, Nevado del Ruiz, etcetera etcetera.

There are places where you bird out of town and aren't staying in lodges, and sometimes no guides around, and there are places where you a guide is pretty much mandatory or included in the lodging (if only for antpitta feeders).

There are places where the lodge / accomodation can quickly contact someone locally for guiding you around, and there are places where you're on your own unless you brought someone along.

Generic questions result in generic answers...

 

[Nifer]

Hi Temmie,

I didn’t mean to be so vague earlier; I just hadn’t mapped out an itinerary yet. Since posting here, I’ve done more research and I’ll likely start in Minca, staying at Jungle Joe’s, where it seems easy to hire a guide or join a tour once you’re there. I’m also interested in exploring more remote areas near the Amazon, like Inírida. It seems like it might be harder to organize a guide there, so I’ll definitely do some preplanning for that part.

I was mainly trying to get a sense of how far in advance I need to hire guides. I’ve heard different things from different people, but I guess it depends on the location. If I knew which areas were easier to find guides, I could plan my itinerary around that. I don’t want to have a rigid 4–8 week itinerary—more like starting in Minca for 5 days, then figuring out the next two locations, and playing it by ear after that.

 

[temmie]

Thanks for elaborating a bit more.

Colombia (and most of S-America, except maybe Ecuador) doesn't have resident guides in most lodges (there aren't many Ecuador-style lodges in the Andes / Amazon with resident guides, catering to the more upmarket audience of casual wildlife fans, that are ofcourse great for dedicated birders that want a high-level guide to search for target birds). If you are preferring guides in every places you go, the good news is that there are guides in virtually every place you'd bird in Colombia. It really depends on the location, but, given your ample time, you could consider investing in your birding skills and thus go out on your own, without a guide, in some places.

The complexity in Colombia is that this doesn't work all the time because of either safety issues or communal reserves / private property not freely accessible. In other places this is no problem, e.g. when birding is done on a (dirt) road etc. So that's why knowing exactly where you should go is a requirement to recommend either guides, or to suggest birding on your own or, in some cases, to avoid visiting as some areas in Colombia are still shady.

Now for the areas you mentioned:

Minca / Cuchilla San Lorenzo is one of the areas that I would personally bird without any guiding but you'll have to do some homework on the altitudes and target bird locations, and it can be a bit overwhelming if this is the first place you're visiting (so I suspect the learning curve will be quite steep arriving there). Some guides I know of the top of my hat in the Minca / Santa Marta area are Breiner Tarazona, William Alzate. Both are e.g. on facebook.

In Inirida, contacting a guide is more or less a no-brainer as you won't go solo to most of the trails that are part of a community, and they often (like in a lot of places in the world) are wary of total strangers and it's kind of not-done to walk around without permission. So you can e.g. contact Daniel Orjuela: Daniel Camilo Orjuela Ducuara or Josue Pena: Sign in or Brian Barrera: Sign in.
If you have enough time on the ground and are willing to do some effort, you could always ask your current (local) guide if he can suggest contacts in the next place you're going (or the next next place). The Colombian guides are (mostly) a thight-knit community and they usually know each other.

 

[AveryBartels]

Having spent close to two years, over the course of ~10 trips, birding Colombia I would suggest that it is wise to plan out your itinerary, at least loosely ahead of time. While way safer than it used to be, as alluded to by Temmie, it still has areas that are not safe and getting opinions from people here on Birdforum or other platforms as to where you need to be cautious/where you definitely need a guide is something I would strongly recommend. Reading up on trip reports on Cloudbirders by independent birders is also very helpful. Security is also not always as simple as just "avoid such and such town", often places where birding groups go can be as close as a couple KM from unsafe areas so it is important to know which roads/trails not to go down.

That all being said, the vast majority of birding areas are safe.

The other practical aspect of the planning out your route is that it is helpful for the guides to have some advanced notice so they can book time of their regular work or work you in around other guiding they may be doing. Some areas, such as Inirida and Mitu are essentially unbirdable without local guides to arrange access to the indigenous communities for you. And even if you only give them rough dates, at least they will have some advanced notice of your arrival.

A word of advice, don't be afraid to use local flights. Distances in Colombia may be short on a map but it is easy to waste a whole day getting between the different regions you may be birding and internal flights are not particularly expensive.

Lastly, don't forget the south of the country! My recent trips have all focused on the southern departments (Nariño, Putumayo, Huila, Caqueta etc.) and while there are less endemics there are a host of regional specialties and super nice birding sites so I would urge you to make that a part of your plans.

Fee free to shoot me a DM if you want more information about anything (local guides, birding sites, logistics etc.).

 

[Nifer]

Hi Temmie and Avery,

Thank you so very much for these thoughtful and helpful responses. This is starting to make a lot more sense to me. I might check out some guides on eBird and contact them individually as well. I really appreciate the time you spend responding to me!