Float the jungle river to the Caribbean
Palomino is a small village on Colombia's Caribbean coast where the Palomino River slides through a corridor of jungle before opening onto a beach that runs for miles with no resort development. The signature activity is renting an inflatable inner tube and drifting the final kilometre of river — palms overhead, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rising behind you, the warm sea ahead. It sits at the edge of the Tayrona National Park zone and the Kogui indigenous territory.
This stretch of coast was home to the Tayrona civilization before Spanish contact — their city of Chengue and terraced settlements in the Sierra Nevada remain partially visible. The Kogui, Wiwa, Arhuaco, and Kankuamo peoples who still inhabit the Sierra Nevada regard the entire coast and its river mouths as sacred sites governed by indigenous law. The village of Palomino itself is a settler community that grew through the 20th century, remaining small because the surrounding land is protected or communally held.