![]() ![]() While considered virtually a natural wonder, the Macarena municipality is also full of oil, Colombia’s most important export products and one of the country’s primary recipients of foreign investment. “We in the Macarena have been preparing for 15 years to become a tourist and ecological zone,” Mayor Ismael Medellin told Caracol Radio. ![]() The area was virtually inaccessible for years because of the country’s armed conflict, but was reopened up for the public in 2009 after which locals slowly began receiving visitors. With increased security over the years, tourism to the area has grown and La Macarena village has developed it’s own tourism industry which is an invaluable source of income for the local guides and hotels that we work with,” tourism operator Mark Genney told Colombia Reports. “Caño Cristales is a world famous destination of outstanding natural beauty. While one of the country’s most beautiful rivers, the Caño Cristales is also unique because it lies on the frontier of the Andes mountain range, the Amazon forest and Colombia’s eastern plains. The Caño Cristales is known as the “river of five colors” due to the combination of the vivid red and green flora and the deep gold, black, and olive green of the riverbed. It’s in this park where three rivers come together to form the Caño Cristales river. ![]() The controversy broke after the mayor of La Macarena, a municipality in the center of Colombia, said that the country’s environmental authority allowed oil company Hupecol to carry out exploratory fracking activities near the Serrania de la Macarena National Park. Locals and Colombia tourism operators are furious after finding out the subsidiary of a US oil company is allowed to explore fracking possibilities near the springs of the Caño Cristales river, one of the country’s most unique ecosystems. ![]()
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