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Creative Colombians, a visit to San Cipriano

  • Writer: Laura B
    Laura B
  • Mar 20, 2023
  • 3 min read

San Cipriano is a small village near the Pacific Coast of Colombia. It's famous for it's rivers with stunningly clear blue waters. It also has a very unique way of reaching the village which was almost as fun as visiting the river itself! I had to share a bit more about this fun day trip!

San Cipriano, located approximately 100km from Cali where I am staying

I was invited on this day trip by Roger, the host of my guest house. His girlfriend (from Denmark) is in town with a friend and they planned the day trip. I was so grateful for the invitation!


Getting there

Roger has a family member who is an uber driver so for the same price as the bus, we got driven directly there (I'll summarise the costs later)! Roads were windy and I had to concentrate on not getting sick. Roger's girlfriend was also feeling the windy roads and asked to stop for some travel sickness tablets. I bought two tablets, just in case. Two tablets cost 1000 pesos, approximately AUD $0.30.


We were dropped on the main highway at one of the two entrance points to get to San Cipriano. This is where the fun begins! There's only two ways to reach San Cipiano, via inventive carts which I'll show you in a moment, or boat on the river. So we bought our tickets for the carts and headed over this wibbly bridge to catch one!


Wobbly bridge from the main road to the carts

This is the most interesting part... Some time ago there used to be a railway between Cali (large city) and Buenadventura (a port at the coast). After it had sat unused for a long time, locals came up with a creative way to use the tracks to boltser tourism in the area. They made carts to fit the tracks and strapped motorbikes to them to power them! The carts are called "brujita's" and it translates to "little witches".


The brujita has the rear wheel on the track to power the cart
Many carts waiting on the side to be used
Posing for a photo but actually, we had 6 passengers on our cart!

It really was so fun zooming along on the cart. It goes through the rainforest and lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. The funniest part is when you meet another cart on the tracks coming towards you. Whoever has the lighter load has to give way which means getting everyone off and pulling their cart of the tracks!



One of the tunnels along the way but you can also see the pretty rainforest
San Cipriano itself

Given how remote this village is, it's very basic. Houses are basically concrete boxes and restaurants have simple plastic tables and chairs. Many shops hire tyres for tubing down the river. We had a little snack (brought with us), left most our belongings with the shop lady and headed off on a walk to some waterfalls.


Stop to cool off!

We only strolled about an hour including some swimming breaks before we made it to the meeting point for tubing (they brought our tubes there on motorbike so we didn't have to carry them). The river must really wind because we were floating down the river for hours!!


I don't have many pictures from tubing because obviously I didn't want to have my phone out. But it was extremely picturesque and relaxing. There was only one point where I was a little stressed because the current was pushing me away from the direction I needed to go and I couldn't swim against it!


The girls getting in their tubes and Roger assisting. Look at the water!

Me at the end of several hours tubing. Very pleased I managed not to get burnt!

Picnic lunch. Yummy cheese, bread, potato omelete and chorizo. Can you tell we are knackered?!

Of course we returned to the main road via the same brujitas but not without stopping for ice cream :). It was a lot busier on the tracks this time!


Returning to Cali via bus

Getting back to Cali involved flagging down a bus (thanks Roger!). Roger and the girls were going a different direction so I was on my own. I didn't feel scared for my safety but as soon as I saw that the only seat on the bus was the very back row, I felt scared for my travel sickness!! At one point I could feel the awful feeling like I was going to vomit. I managed to say the words "estoy enferma" to the person next to me who gave the vomit signal with his hands and I nodded. He asked for a bag which was passed from the front of the bus. Fortunately I didn't end up using it but it was reassuring to have in my hand! I had been wondering if I would need to lean across him to throw up out the window before i got the bag hahaha.


An absolutely top day that I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Cali!


Day trip summary

Travel time from Cali - approximately 2 hours

Time spent tubing - approx 2 hours

Time in natural reserve - approx 1 hour+

Costs - approx total COP 124,000 / $38.50

  • Bus COP 35,000/ AUD $10 (each way)

  • Brujitas COP 16,000 / AUD $5 return

  • Entrance to natural reserve COP 5,000 / AUD $1.50

  • Tubing (including storing belongings) COP 10,000 / AUD $3

  • Snacks, drinks COP 23,000 / AUD $7



1 Comment


Michael Lloyd-Green
Michael Lloyd-Green
Mar 26, 2023

Wow, that is sooo cheap! Sounds amazing, would love to do it all minus the travel seasickness! Haha. Can't wait for your next post

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