Visiting The Tatacoa Desert On A 3-Day Weekend

On one of the many long weekend holidays in Colombia, we finally mustered up the courage to drive all the way and visit the lovely and much spoken about Tatacoa desert. It was a 5 to 6 hours driving to go there. Pretty much an average drive if you want to go anywhere by car from Bogota. On the positive side, a few friends decided to tag along, making the trip just that much better.

Accommodation in the Tatacoa desert

When people go to the Tatacoa desert, they usually want to stay in the desert and under a starry sky.

I had heard of the one and only nice hotel in the desert itself, called Bethel Bio Luxury Hotel. Unfortunately, people book months in advance. And you know, we’re last minute kind of people.

But it just so happened that on the long weekend we chose to travel to the Tatacoa desert, the huge Baum electronic music festival was happening in Tatacoa. As a result, everything was booked.

So if we wanted to stay in the desert, we would have to find hostel-like accommodation. Our group wasn’t much of the backpacker type, so we booked at GHL Hotel Neiva through Booking.com. We stayed in the town of Neiva, the main town to stay in for those who want to travel to Tatacoa for the day.

We were also contemplating the idea of the BAUM electronic music festival. For some reason, we were sold the idea that it would be the Colombian version of Burning Man. Sounds tempting, doesn’t it?

So I’m not going to lie to you and tell you everything there is to do in Tatacoa because I was there for only three days and pretty much half-assed it. However, I am going to share with you a few tips.

Is the BAUM electronic music festival worth it?

The Tatacoa music festival was definitely not our jam. To a sober person that doesn’t do drugs, it looked like about 20%- 30% of the people were popping pills, many of them passed out on the floor. Festival staff were flashing lights at people laying down to make sure they were still alive. Or so it looked like.

It definitely did not have the Burning Man feel we expected. I know this is Colombia, but still …

I was imagining chill electronic vibes and beautiful desert views.

What we got were a few cheap-looking statues and house and techno that could only be listened to with the help of drugs. Honestly, I couldn’t recommend it less.

Not to mention, it wasn’t even in the desert. Although in the Tatacoa area, it festival was setup on a farm….

What about the Tatacoa desert itself?

By car, it that was an hour away from the town of Neiva where we were staying. Putting ‘Tatacoa desert” in Waze, we arrived to a small town and went into the first tourism office we saw.

We booked a guide for 4pm, to beat the hot afternoon sun and enjoy the desert in the sunset. As we had a few hours to kill, we hung out in the town, had lunch and had a couple beers in the plaza. Well…I had sparkling water if you want to get into details.

Our tour guide didn’t have so much to say about the desert and was more there to tell us in which direction to drive. That was fine by us. There wasn’t much to say anyways.

The Tatacoa desert is not really a desert. It doesn’t have desert heat. It’s landscape is basically compact sand that gets its beautiful shape every time it rains. You can scratch away the ‘sand dunes’ with your finger. Nonetheless beautiful.

We took a small 1-2 hike in the desert by sunset and got some great shots.

Walking around, we noticed people had stacked stones as a sign of thank you to mother nature and good luck. So we did the same.

I’m glad we decided to see the Tatacoa desert in the late afternoon. The sky turned a beautiful color and illuminated the sand dunes.

We are able to walk around and hang out in the desert without feeling suffocated. It was a lovely and light hike through the sand formations.

On our way back to Bogota, we took 7 hours to get back home. It was operación retorno which means everyone was coming back to Bogota from their long weekend holiday, creating insane traffic back into the city. What a nightmare. So in our 3-day weekend, we spent about 14 hours in the car.

But is the Tatacoa desert worth a visit? Well it’s definitely not the Grand Canyon, but it’s definitely worth checking out 😉