Puerto Nariño is a tranquil experiment in sustainable living where motor vehicles are banned and the streets are as clean as Copenhagen’s.
The boat dock in the Colombian town of Leticia was a hive of market-traders, tuk-tuks and bobbing water taxis. I bought a ticket from a small office on the Malecón promenade and navigated my way past a cluster of wooden houses on stilts to a row of floating platforms beside the Amazon River. There were no proper steps down to the water. Instead, I clambered down a slippery bank and showed my ticket to a busy attendant handing out life jackets.
“Puerto Nariño?” I asked, checking that I wasn’t mistakenly getting on a boat to Brazil or Peru. “Sí,” he nodded, ushering me towards a covered motor launch. I sank thankfully into a plastic seat near the bows and enjoyed my first uninterrupted view of the world’s most voluminous river.
Located 75km apart on the banks of the Amazon, Leticia and Puerto Nariño, Colombia, are jungle municipalities with radically different personalities. The former is a hot, frenetic border town full of swarming motorbikes and hustling vendors. The latter is a tranquil experiment in sustainable living where motor vehicles are banned and the streets are as clean as Copenhagen’s. In a world accustomed to pessimistic climate predictions, Puerto Nariño offers a positive news story about a municipality that’s on the right track compared to many large cities around the globe – and the measures are mostly Indigenous led.
Boat is the only way to get to Puerto Nariño from the outside world, a captivating two-hour journey along the Amazon from Leticia with Peru on one side and Colombia on the other. Pulling into the community’s diminutive boat dock at the confluence of the Amazon and Loretoyaco rivers, it quickly became apparent that I’d arrived in one of the jungle’s more unusual outposts.
Known locally as “the natural cradle of Colombia”, Puerto Nariño is an encouraging example of a community living in relative harmony with nature. In 2012, it was the first town in the country to be certified a “sustainable tourist destination” by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism. It’s surrounded by the kind of endangered rainforest that dominates discussions about climate change, and attracts a growing trickle of curious visitors keen to examine the health of the planet’s “lungs” from the inside.
Recent news from the Colombian Amazon has been mixed. While deforestation rates reputedly fell 70% in 2023, the region also suffered a record-breaking drought that endangered wildlife and led to unpredictable harvests.
Notwithstanding, my first impressions of Puerto Nariño were encouraging. Neat terracotta walkways lined with shapely trees and bushes fanned out in a well-ordered grid from the riverbank, and attractive wooden houses decorated with extravagant murals and eye-catching handicrafts reflected a strong Indigenous presence: around 80% of the settlement’s 6,000 inhabitants are from the Ticuna, Cocama and Yagua ethnic groups.
In contrast to other congested Colombian cities, cars and motorbikes are banned. In fact, the town has no roads and only two registered vehicles: a tractor for collecting rubbish and an ambulance in case of emergencies. Shiny silver litter bins stood at almost every street corner and, serenaded by birdsong, the place exuded an air of peace, tidiness and order.
