Often times when I have been traveling, I've been curious about the means in which people get around! While in most of the places I have visited people tend to use cars or buses, there are a few cities or towns that stick out in my memory for their impressive marine transportation system. In Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, one can find amazing places where people use the bodies of water to their mobile advantage!
Let's start with Camarones, Colombia: a lovely, rural, marshy town right on the Caribbean coast. In Camarones, the Wayuu people, an old indigenous community found in this area of Colombia, live off of the "la fruta del mar," or fruit of the sea. In the marshy waters and large bay near the ocean, fisherman collect shrimp and white fish on their canoes. In fact, there's so much shrimp in the nearby waters, they decided to name the place after the animal! I spent a lovely afternoon there with an older, Wayuu man who took me out on his rowboat to see the flamingos. I was impressed with his sail! Can you tell what it was made of?
If you head way downstream from Camarones, you will eventually reach the southern tip of Colombia in the Amazonas Department where lays a fascinating, tri-border city! Ringing any bells? You guessed it: Leticia.
