Discover the unique wildlife and scenery of Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert, the country’s second largest arid zone, during this private two-days trip from Bogotá. Observe the area’s birds, snakes, spiders and ocelots, get the chance to swim in a natural swimming pool in the middle of the desert and discover the starlit sky during the vist of the astronomical observatory.
You have the option to change the natural swimming pool or the tour along the River Magdalena to the Villavieja Paleontological Museum.
Posted By : saolson27
First let me say, the Tatacoa Desert is really cool and worth visiting. We really enjoyed our tour of the red desert, grey desert, valley of the ghosts, and visit to the natural pool.
However, I would strongly recommend traveling by plane to visit Tatacoa. The drive from Bogota was simply too long, especially in only two days. The tour description says "approximately five hours." This is a blatant falsehood. The drive took NINE hours. I understand it was a holiday weekend, and the traffic was denser than usual, and the guide can't control that. But to be off by four hours is to mislead customers about the true length of the journey. Neither the guide nor driver gave any warning that the trip would take longer than expected, and grew very defensive when we asked about the route.
What's worse than a nine hour drive when you were expecting five? A nine hour drive crammed into a middle seat in a tiny van while holding your backpack on your lap. The van was really too small to comfortably hold that many people for more than a few hours. Really unfortunate, considering we spent the majority of the two days in the van.
We had several miscommunications with our guide, mostly because she didn't seem to know what the agenda was and kept telling us contradictory things. We approached her about this on the second morning and asked for her to clearly lay out the schedule so we knew the plan. Yet despite this, we had another miscommunication that day when she tried to cut a key part of the visit (the valley of the ghosts) from the itinerary without telling us. It was re-added to the agenda after fierce protesting from us.
She also did not translate what the local guide said into English. Most of us speak Spanish, so it was okay, but the tour was supposed to be in English and she did not even check that all of the group could understand.
Altogether, we were pretty disappointed with this tour.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-06-28 14:30:35 
Posted By : HVwriter
Such an amazing journey....my son-in-law and I had two incredible days with Lorena, our guide and Emilio, our driver. Trekking through the gray desert and enjoying the red one...staying over at the colorful Oasis hotel....eating local foods outside on the porch at the Sal Si Puede restaurant in Villavieja...it was "all good!" We will never forget our ferry crossing of the flood-swollen Magdalena River!! Even though cloudy skies curtailed the "dark sky" experience for us, we highly recommend this adventure!
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-03-17 13:38:32
Posted By : MariaMoller_L
Considering the price (even if it’s a private tour) it was very disappointing. The girl who was our “guide” and translator had such a lazy and indifferent attitude. It all seemed like she didn’t want to do the tour. She spent a lot of time on her phone taking selfies and doing her own videos and photographs. In the desert with a local guide (who seemed eager to teach us a lot about everything) she didn’t bother to translate half of what the local guide said and also she fell behind several times and couldn’t even hear the local guide speaking but didn’t seem to care unless we specifically asked her to translate (which we had to do several times). The desert is very unique and our hotel was reasonable but our whole trip was very much affected by the bad guidance.
Rating :
Posted On : 2022-07-11 01:22:41 
Posted By : Rick
The trip to the Tatacoa Desert was a beautiful experience. The trip was made absolutely amazing by my wonderful guide named Cindy. She is a super nice person to be with and she tries to explain everything to you as best as possible. In one word. Awesome!
Rating :
Posted On : 2021-10-21 18:24:27
Posted By : Laura W
We had a great experience just the three of us going to the Tatacoa Desert. The guide was very nice, informative and very helpful with all questions/problems concerning our Colombia trip. We booked the trip in English - and her English was very good. Since we had to get back earlier to Bogotá on the second day, they were more than willing to accommodate that wish! Altogether a nice trip!
Rating :
Posted On : 2018-08-21 04:06:52
