Calanoa — Hotel in Leticia

We’ve found it tricky to fully review our time at Calanoa. We’re going for being fully honest - even though the staff really were friendly and were clearly putting effort into ensuring all guests had a great time. ||We were met by our guide at the airport and transferred from there to our boat. Note you do need to pay a tourism arrival fee of COP45k pp.||Our room was double story with an upstairs area for the kids. The rooms are basic and rustic. The bathroom is ok; there is only cold water and it is in limited supply - washing your hair if it is long is not easy. ||We found food decent - some meals were really interesting and featured Tikuna recipes, others not quite so good. ||Our excursions were also mixed. Our guide was good - though if you want technical knowledge best come prepared. But his ability to spot wildlife - snakes, scorpions and so on was brilliant. We were surprised the lodge didn’t have guide books, for instance if you wanted more than ‘squirrel’ or ‘three toed sloth’ as identifications. You get two activities a day included with some extra charges for some activities. We did a mixture of both. ||As many have said before, Manuela is lovely and super helpful - and was helpful in translating to English for us (and most other guests - English was the common language spoken and used at the communal meal table. ||A lot of the experience you’ll have will depend on the time of the year - and the subsequent level of the river (and rain / mosquitoes). We went in the dry season (August). ||Overall the experience is very curated. This is not ‘wild Amazon’. If you pop out the lodge and walk along the river or past Tigre room you’re at the village (100m away) which has various homes, backpacker hostels, local restaurants and so on. It has electricity for instance, and places to get WiFi (Calanoa doesn’t have either of these). Yes you’ll hear frogs and birds and insects, also dogs parking and village roosters crowing. ||The excursions are in a similar vein - for instance a 1hr boat ride to another village where there are a number of sloths in the trees and a giant water lilly pond, or a walk just off the path at night to find spiders etc. We did a macaw trip (COP350k) which was really not worth it - a 5am start, 40 min boat ride to spot some macaws high up in the trees - a number of species, but still, and back again. You do see wildlife on the inclusive trips - tarantulas, snakes, spider monkeys, dolphins in the river etc. But compared to top lodges around the world - especially in many African countries or in SE Asia the whole experience is too rustic and not really all that ‘wild’ at all. And it’s far from cheap. Calanoa clearly is very good at marketing - and while the awards may reflect its resort status in Colombia (I have no comparisons in country) on a global level it is definitely not ‘gold standard’ by any means. ||A few easy fixes - guide books in the main lodge area, binoculars to loan or use, more variety of fruit at breakfast (and let guests experience the amazing diversity of fruit in the area), some sort of branded clothing for guides, more chairs in the rooms and perhaps a good fan or too, provide water to guests on arrival and on long excursions… I don’t think for global travellers charging extra for English speaking guides is really appropriate. ||You also will need COP cash - to pay for drinks (though these had run out when we ordered), excursions, buying stuff at some of the villages. ||We enjoyed our time overall, but would not necessarily recommend it to others as it is; and for the price it costs. For our family of four with English guide and private transfers cost USD3,000 (excluding extras we...

It is a great place to visit the Amazon. However this hotel is very far from Glamping/luxury jungle experience. The hotel has a lot to improve upon. We stayed as a couple for 4 days and thought this was the perfect amount of time to do all of the activities.

Cabins: Cabins are well designed but are in need of maintenance. There are holes all around allowing very large insects to enter. Tiles in the bathroom were broken. we went at the beginning of the wet season, and I think because of this absolutely EVERYTHING was damp. Our bed/ sheets felt permanently wet, the decorative pillows STUNK of damp and all our clothes got damp and never dried. We brought rucksacks and by the end of the trip both of our rucksacks had grown mould. bathroom has no hot water, this is fine to be honest because it’s so warm that you probably wouldn’t want a hot shower anyway.

Food: Food was good and all prepared from the scratch in the kitchen. However portion sizes were small and ungenerous (especially the chicken for the lunch) and there wasn’t much variety so the meals became repetitive and boring. For lunch a chicken dish was made always with rice and plantain, and for dinner it was always dorado (one type of fish) with again mostly rice and plantain. The small portion of fruit served at breakfast was also the same everyday: watermelon and papaya. This was such a shame because the Amazon has such a massive variety of fruits and fish. Even just walking around the hotel you can find many different trees growing many different exotic fruits.

Activities: The activities are good and very well organised. All the guides are extremely friendly and knowledgeable.

Service: very friendly and good.

Price: the price of the hotel is definitely a price targeted to western foreigners, so is massively overpriced for the local area. Nevertheless, if you are a western tourist and you are looking for somewhere where the manager speaks English and everything is organised for you, then it is worth it.

Also note there is absolutely no signal and the hotel does not offer wifi for guests. The staff has wifi in their cabins that they let you use for...

The Amazon forest will stay in our hearts forever. Calanoa is built really nicely directly in the forest and it’s just amazing the feeling of being out there. The kind of experiences you get to do with the guides are amazing since they are very well prepared about animals and plants that you get to see. The food was okay and it was very nice to have dinner and lunch altogether with the other guests.||However, our experience was completely ruined by the quality of the cabins we were staying. When you book a hotel that is on the Condè Nast Traveller list of best hotels of the world, you do not expect to find different kind of animals in the cabins. We ourselves found more than 20 cockroaches within just a couple of hours even under the mattress, and it was impossible to go to the toilet at night without having to face cockroaches as big as my hand standing on the wall. We were lucky. Other people found snakes, spiders, rats and even a poisonous scorpion directly in the bed. It’s simply unbelievable since on the website they say that cabins “are fully covered with mosquito screen and each bed has its own mosquito net for extra protection.” This is completely not true, there are huge holes everywhere in the houses and in the nets and animals can just get in as they like. We were so excited to try the Amazon experience for the first time, but the fact that we were literally scared to sleep in our bed completely ruined the experience. |I sincerely hope they can make some renovation and isolate the cabins so that the guests can enjoy the stay. We understand that we are in the middle of the forest, however for the amount of money you pay and the advertisement on internet, this is just unacceptable. ||I’d also like to mention that when you arrive you are not exactly welcomed. Except for Manuela that was nice, the other manager was actually quite rude and it was like he was making us a favour for everything. When we left, he literally didn’t even look at us in the eyes since he was typing on his phone. ||Summary: huge potential, amazing place, but won’t recommend to anyone until they...