Andean Scapes team · Updated
The Gachalá emerald and the Guavio valley
The most famous emerald of the eastern belt is not in Colombia. It sits in a display case at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. It came out of a Gachalá mine in 1967, in the same Guavio valley where we operate today.
The Gachalá emerald: 858 carats
The Gachalá emerald was found in 1967 at the La Vega de San Juan mine, in the municipality of Gachalá (Cundinamarca). It is an 858-carat crystal, about 172 grams and roughly 5 centimeters long, of an intense green.
New York jeweler Harry Winston donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1969, and it is now part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. It is named after the municipality where it was found; by tradition, Gachalá means "place of Gacha" in the Chibcha language.
Emerald mines in Cundinamarca: Gachalá and the eastern belt
Gachalá belongs to Colombia's eastern emerald belt, together with Chivor, Somondoco, Macanal, Guateque and Ubalá. It is a different belt from western Boyacá, home to Muzo and Coscuez.
In this belt, emeralds occur in veins within Cretaceous sedimentary rocks, and its mining history goes back to the Chibcha peoples who already worked the Somondoco area, now Chivor.
The Guavio valley
Below the Chivor mines, the Rucio and Sinaí rivers join to form the Guavio river. A hanging bridge over the Rucio marks the border between Cundinamarca and Boyacá, and on the valley slopes, about 15 km from Chivor, lie the ruins of Las Cascadas, the tea plantation Peter and Margaret Rainier founded in the 1930s. Downstream, the Guavio fills the reservoir of Colombia's largest operating hydropower plant, which also receives the Chivor river through a 2.2 km tunnel.
In 2015 a GIA team spent six days traveling from Gachalá to Chivor, first by 4x4 and then on foot and by mule, by way of Las Cascadas and the hamlet of Montecristo. They described a landscape of waterfalls hundreds of meters high, bromeliads and birds of prey.
Hacienda El Recuerdo: our base in the Guavio
Hacienda El Recuerdo is in Mundo Nuevo, in the municipality of Ubalá (Cundinamarca), within the Guavio region and very close to Chivor. It is a cattle and beekeeping farm with private rooms and WiFi, where guests on our two-day tours stay.
Tours start and end in Chivor town. From Ubalá it is about 35 km of rural road to the hacienda, a route suitable only for a motorbike or a 4x4; with a regular car, it is best to arrive via Chivor.
How to visit the region
To experience the eastern belt without planning an expedition, start in Chivor: one mine, a night at Hacienda El Recuerdo and the drive back to Bogotá through the Tenza Valley, about 5 to 6 hours.
If you also want to explore Gachalá and the Guavio valley, check road conditions first, as the roads are rural and change with the rains, and plan at least one extra day.
