2-Day Private Tour to the Tatacoa Desert from Bogotá

First let me say, the Tatacoa Desert is really cool and worth visiting. We really enjoyed our tour of the red desert, grey desert, valley of the ghosts, and visit to the natural pool. However, I would strongly recommend traveling by plane to visit Tatacoa. The drive from Bogota was simply too long, especially in only two days. The tour description says "approximately five hours." This is a blatant falsehood. The drive took NINE hours. I understand it was a holiday weekend, and the traffic was denser than usual, and the guide can't control that. But to be off by four hours is to mislead customers about the true length of the journey. Neither the guide nor driver gave any warning that the trip would take longer than expected, and grew very defensive when we asked about the route. What's worse than a nine hour drive when you were expecting five? A nine hour drive crammed into a middle seat in a tiny van while holding your backpack on your lap. The van was really too small to comfortably hold that many people for more than a few hours. Really unfortunate, considering we spent the majority of the two days in the van. We had several miscommunications with our guide, mostly because she didn't seem to know what the agenda was and kept telling us contradictory things. We approached her about this on the second morning and asked for her to clearly lay out the schedule so we knew the plan. Yet despite this, we had another miscommunication that day when she tried to cut a key part of the visit (the valley of the ghosts) from the itinerary without telling us. It was re-added to the agenda after fierce protesting from us. She also did not translate what the local guide said into English. Most of us speak Spanish, so it was okay, but the tour was supposed to be in English and she did not even check that all of the group could understand. Altogether, we were pretty disappointed with this tour.

非常好的旅行，导游也很热情，还买了当地的小吃发给我们，值得推荐给所有喜欢hiking的人，唯一遗憾的就是天气太热了。

Such an amazing journey....my son-in-law and I had two incredible days with Lorena, our guide and Emilio, our driver. Trekking through the gray desert and enjoying the red one...staying over at the colorful Oasis hotel....eating local foods outside on the porch at the Sal Si Puede restaurant in Villavieja...it was "all good!" We will never forget our ferry crossing of the flood-swollen Magdalena River!! Even though cloudy skies curtailed the "dark sky" experience for us, we highly recommend this adventure!