Serrania de Chiribiquete
Caqueta and Guaviare departments, Colombia
Colombia's largest national park: a forested table-mountain wilderness carrying more than 75,000 rock paintings, protected for uncontacted peoples as a sacred place that cannot be visited.
The table mountains of Chiribiquete rise from the Amazonian rainforest of Caqueta and Guaviare, and in the rock shelters of their walls are more than 75,000 paintings, dated from 20,000 BCE onward and, per UNESCO, still being made today. The paintings show hunting, battles, dances and ceremonies, and a jaguar cult whose animal is the symbol of power and fertility. The park is Colombia's largest protected area at 4.27 million hectares, declared in 1989 and expanded in 2018, UNESCO-listed in 2018 as The Maloca of the Jaguar.
UNESCO's own sentence is the reason this entry has no coordinates to visit: the indigenous communities, which are not directly present on the site, consider Chiribiquete as a sacred place that cannot be visited and that should be preserved unaltered. The peoples in voluntary isolation who live inside the park and paint its walls are protected by decree, the national parks authority lists the park's status as closed, and no permit exists because none is granted. Some sacred places are not for visitors; this is the library's clearest example, published as a record and a respect, not a destination.
Visiting
Closed. The park's official page states its status; the UNESCO listing carries the description. Nearby sites around San Jose del Guaviare are outside the park and are not access to it.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parque_Nacional_Natural_Serran%C3%ADa_de_Chiribiquete.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Ministerio de Ambiente de Colombia.
Visitor stories