Bogota’s newly discovered ecotourism

Bogota authorities have been “rediscovering” Colombia’s capital to find ecotourism possibilities in the metropolis’ poor south that so far has been virtually unknown to tourists, the city’s top tourism official said Thursday.

At the moment, most tourists visit the city’s wealthy north and the colonial center of the city, but the tourism board wants to expand the city’s tourism spots to the south of Colombia’s capital.

“We are making an inventory of these tourist sites, especially focusing on ecotourism,” Luis Fernando Rosas, director of Bogota’s District Tourism Institute (IDT) told Colombia Reports.

“For example, in Usme, a very poor neighborhood in Bogota .. there are several lakes, several unknown places where we can do a lot when it comes to its ecosystems,” the IDT director said.

Rosas admitted that the southern neighborhoods of Bogota are widely considered unsafe, but stressed that organized tours and the cooperation of the army battalion located in the south of the city will guarantee the tourist safety.

Additionally, “we want to connect the inhabitants of these areas to the tourist who wants to do something different than the traditional,” while improving the living conditions of the locals and the general security situation in the area.

Bogota plans to first finish its inventory of tourism sites after which it will construct the necessary infrastructure to provide tours to the south.