AKUANI RIVER LODGE - COLOMBIA
The Travel: Guests fly into Bogota where they spend the night. The next day we take a short domestic flight of about two hours and then travel by boat another four hours to the lodge. This is repeated after our fishing week. Most guests choose to overnight again in Bogota.
The Lodge: Akuani River Lodge sits above the banks of the Vichada River, and is built in traditional jungle style. The cabins are open air, have fans and mosquito netting, as well as a bathroom and river-water shower. The staff is exceptionally accommodating with meals served under a thatch roofed common area.
The Fishing: Clients have a six day fishing week. Four of the days are spent on the Vichada River and its lagoons for Peacock Bass. We then travel downstream to the Orinoco for two days of fishing in the rapids for Payara (Vampire Fish). Both are high quality fisheries where we can expect good catch rates.
Video of Akuani River Lodge
Colombia as a country has seen an influx in tourism from all over the world these last 15 years or so. Thankfully it no longer carries the terrible stigma it did for so long referenced only by coffee and cartels.
We are really thankful to have stumbled on to the nice folks at Colombia Afloat. They now have three lodges in Colombia and another in Venezuela. Through years of working together we have transitioned from business partners to friends. They work hard, do all that they can to please their guests, and are an honest and easy partner.
Akuani ticks a lot of boxes for us. We really do like the sense of adventure involved in this trip, combined with casual but comfortable lodging. It is a really nice mix of amenities and the sense that you are somewhere, doing something, that few people have done before you.
The most important of the attributes to this trip, however, is the diversity it provides for anglers. Not in how many species you might catch, but in the kind of fishing we do during our week. The first and last two days are
uniquely on the waters near the lodge. We fish the main river itself, but concentrate heavily on the lagoons which separate from the river as the water recedes during the dry season. Catch rates of Peacocks can be excellent, and there is a great mixture in the size of the fish. We expect anglers to catch several double digit fish during their week, and hopefully the group will have landed a few fish pushing twenty pounds.
During the middle two days we leave the lodge. This is almost like yet another adventure as we speed down the Orinoco to meet our wall tent camp based near the Maipures Rapids. The camp is lovely, and we spend one night here, under the jungle canopy. Guests marvel at this place; it seems almost other-worldly with the crazy rock islands we traverse in getting to our fishing spots. We fish what seems impossibly fast water, and the moment a Payara takes hold is unlike almost any other experience in our sport
