El Cocuy National Park, Colombia

El Cocuy is one of the least known destinations in Colombia but boasts some of the most beautiful scenery. It is very different than most of the other regions in Colombia as it is high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The park itself is over 12,000 feet elevation, with areas reaching close to 17,000 feet. The highest peaks are covered in snow year-round and there are beautiful glaciers and lakes accessible by day hikes.

I was unable to find a lot of information on the park before traveling there and much of it was outdated. As such, this is going to be a rather long post as I hope to give other travelers more up to date information. Policies have changed a lot in recent years and in fact the park was closed completely for over a year. I visited in May of 2018 and at that time the park was open but only for day hikes. It is no longer permitted to camp in the park and the famous 6-day trek is no longer an option.

The national park is accessible from the villages of El Cocuy and Guican. Which village you start from depends on what trek you want to do and how you want to get to the trailhead. Nearly every guide will try to tell you that the only transportation option is to hire a car, which they have locked down to 80,000 COP each way (a ridiculous sum compared to most transportation in Colombia). However, there is also the option of taking the lechero, the truck that collects the milk from all the farms in the area. It makes a counterclockwise loop every morning starting in Guican, passing through El Cocuy, then heading up into the mountains past the cabanas near the park entrance and looping back to Guican. It is not a fast or comfortable option – you will probably be standing the whole way and stopping often to pick up milk, but I actually really enjoyed it. There are great views of the mountains from the truck and it was a fun part of the experience. At 10,000 COP per person, it is also a much more economical option than taking a car. Be aware there is no transportation option in the afternoons, so after hiking you’ll need to either stay at one of the cabanas or take a car back to Cocuy.

There are three main hikes to choose from which leave from different points in the park. I chose the hike to Laguna Grande, which is the medium difficulty hike (a little less distance and slightly lower elevation than the hike to El Pulpito) but still passes through beautiful scenery up to a glacier and lake high in the mountains. The tourism rules are very strict now. You are required to hire a guide even for the day treks. There are plenty of guides to be found in the villages of Cocuy or Guican where you will start your trek. There is very little room to negotiate with the guides, who set their fees around 130,000 COP per day. This can be shared by a group of up to four people, but as a solo traveler it can be difficult to find anyone else to split the fees with, particularly in low season. I only found one other traveler passing through at the time I went. It was a little strange to me that there’s not really an official way to arrange the guide – you’ll have several just approach you in town. Apparently they do have to be registered with the National Park as a guide but you can’t get your registration permit from the park office until you have a guide. I visited the insurance office first. It is required for all travelers to purchase insurance for every day they plan to hike in the park for themselves and for their guide (7,000 COP per day per person when I went). It is now mandatory for all travelers regardless of whether you have your own travel insurance. The woman in the insurance office was quite helpful and offered to call a guide for us, which was nice but turned out to be her husband so I guess they get to take advantage of an inside connection there. Still, he was a decent enough guide and charged the same as the guide I’d originally talked to so it worked out. After committing to the guide service, I was able to purchase my park pass (61,000 COP at the time).

I was coming to El Cocuy after spending two weeks on the coast, so I was not at all accustomed to the high elevation. I spent one night in the village of Cocuy then took the lechero up to one of the cabanas – La Hacienda de Esperanza – in the morning. I found out there are actually a couple of different lecheros that take similar but different routes and I ended up on one that only went as far as El Pulpito Cabana (make sure you ask for the one that passes La Esperanza, not the one for Lagunitas). I had to walk the next 6 km to La Esperanza but this was actually good as I’d planned to take a day just doing some light hiking outside of the park in order to give myself time to acclimatize. The scenery just from the road was gorgeous, passing by farms with herds of cattle and sheep, with snow capped mountains as the backdrop. La Esperanza turned out to be a nice place to stay. The owner was very nice and cooked me some tasty vegetarian food for dinner. I did a small hike through the farm and just took some time to adjust to the elevation, which was definitely noticeable.

In the morning, my guide met me at La Esperanza and we started the hike for La Laguna Grande. It is 5.3 miles each way but with around 2,800 feet of elevation change. The first part of the hike winds through green farmland past sheep pastures up to a waterfall. In the second part, the terrain begins to change to rocks and frailejones, characteristic of the páramo region, which are a special type of plant which grow only a handful of centimeters per year. The tallest ones in the park are close to 3 meters high, very impressive when you think about their age.

The third part of the hike is the climb. The trail climbs steadily up for several kilometers. The climb itself was less difficult than I thought it would be, though the rocky footing is very slippery. As I climbed higher, I was rewarded with beautiful vistas of the valley below, the distinct formation of El Pulpito rock and the surrounding snow-covered peaks. It was gorgeous. I didn’t really start feeling the elevation until I got near the top – around 14,000 feet, at which point it hit me strongly. I started feeling dizzy and faint and had some difficulty getting enough air. At this point, I was literally 10 minutes from the view of the Laguna Grande, so I took some time to sit and adjust some, then walked very very slowly to the overlook. It was a beautiful view with the blue lake and the glacier behind it. I enjoyed the view from the top for about 15 minutes, but I was still feeling dizzy from the elevation, so I decided not to hike the final 30 minutes to the snowline, the furthest point of the trek. I headed back down the trail and was rewarded with feeling better almost immediately after descending a couple of hundred meters in elevation.

In hindsight, I should have taken more than one day to acclimatize to the elevation, especially after spending so much time on the coast. It would be a smarter route to go to Bogota before El Cocuy since Bogota is at a high elevation as well, but it is possible to go from the other direction as long as you allow yourself some time to acclimatize and listen to your body and descend if you start to feel ill from the altitude. I had originally planned to do the El Pulpito trek the next day, but decided it would be smarter to skip it since it is nearly 1,500 feet higher in elevation than Laguna Grande.

As far as beautiful scenery and great hiking go, El Cocuy was perfect. The experience was slightly tainted by all the regulations and steep fees, but I still enjoyed my time there and loved getting to see a completely different part of Colombia than most travelers see.