El Cocuy · CO

Laguna Grande, Palchacual

Laguna Grande (Palchacual) is a calm, glass-clear high-mountain lake sitting around 3,700 metres above sea level on the páramo fringe of El Cocuy, in the Colombian department of Boyacá. Unlike the famous glacier-bound lagoon that hikers spend a whole exhausting day climbing to reach deep inside El Cocuy National Park, this one keeps a gentler secret: it sits right beside the road, so a few easy steps are enough to trade the bus or car for an open sheet of water, pale moorland grasses and big Andean sky. It is one of those places that gives you the cold, thin air and wide silence of the high páramo with almost no effort at all. With a near-perfect visitor rating and a loyal following of travellers and locals, the lagoon is best known for its tranquility and for the way its water catches the wind until little waves ripple across the surface. Ducks drift over the mirror-clear shallows, the moor stretches out on every side, and the weather can turn bright, then blustery, then golden within an hour. It is a favourite first stop for people staying in El Cocuy who want to feel how their body responds to altitude before taking on any of the much harder treks up into the Sierra Nevada.