Pink river dolphins bring peace and tourists

Rare Amazon boto is a focus for job creation, conservation and reconciliation after the country's 50-year civil war

- Dimitri Selibas

"The dolphins are more playful than us,” says Diego Cifuentes, a co-founder of Villa Lilia Agroecoturistico, a community dolphin-watching project on Colombia’s Lake Nare. “If you give off-good energy, they may even touch you.”

Cifuentes is sitting on a boat in the middle of a lake surrounded by thick forest, a two-hour boat ride from San José del Guaviare. In the water, a dozen tourists bob in fluorescent lifejackets, waiting for the chance to meet a boto, the local name for the pink Amazon River dolphin (Inia geoffrensis). Soon enough, a plume of steam bursts from the water and the humped backs of three botos break the surface. The tourists giggle and squeal at the momentary encounter.

Rural communities, former guerrillas of the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and endangered dolphins are unlikely allies in this near-forgotten corner of Colombia’s Amazon basin, where tourism is providing opportunities for reconciliation as well as creating jobs and promoting conservation.