Colombia’s Tayrona Park: From Drug Battlefield to Tourist Paradise?

Travel Blog • Joanna Kakissis • 11.13.07 | 1:39 PM ET

Not long ago, Colombia’s Tayrona National Park was the bloody haunt of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as right-wing paramilitary organizations, which battled over turf for the cocaine trade. But since Colombian President Álvaro Uribe began a military crackdown on death squads and drove the FARC out to the southern jungles, the park has apparently been reborn. According to Joshua Hammer’s New York Times story, in fact, Tayrona is now being touted by Colombian authoritites as a tourist paradise that’s “among the most biologically diverse of any coastal zone in the Americas.”

What’s more, he writes, the park boasts $245-a-night cabins at the Ecohabs resort “built into the side of a jungled cliff overlooking the sea.”

For those seeking an appealingly underdeveloped swathe of beauty, Tayrona delivers. “Jungle-covered hills rose precipitously over cream-colored strips of sand lined by 70-foot coconut palms - like something from the set of ‘Lost,’” Hammer writes. “We lazed on the beach and splashed in the aquamarine water until distant rumbles of thunder roused us from our reverie.”

Illustrating the park’s beauty is an accompanying slideshow.

Is this further evidence that Colombia is on the verge of becoming the new New Zealand?

Photo by MarkG6 via Flickr (Creative Commons).