Hiking in Piojó, the Colombian Caribbean: mixed perspectives on rural areas

voces híbridas sobre los territorios rurales

Abstract

Walking a territory is not a trivial act. For a decade, the Explora Atlántico Seedbed, the Explora Hiking Group, and the Explora Atlántico S.A.S. Tourism Operating Agency have systematically explored the Department of Atlántico in the Colombian Caribbean, building a corpus of routes that this article transforms into an object of reflection. Based on this accumulated empirical data, it is argued that the experience of walking condenses five simultaneous and inseparable potentialities: it is a research practice, an indicator of emerging tourism, a political action, an action of territorial configuration, and an expression of the contemporary trend of wandering. Far from being reduced to a physical displacement, walking the Atlántico emerges, in this analysis, as a complex social practice that simultaneously addresses knowledge production, the struggle for space, and the transformations of tourism in the Global South.

The methodological approach mobilizes two avenues of participatory documentation: first, the georeferencing of the routes and their subsequent on-site overlap; and second, the narration of the routes using storytelling techniques and the recording of local narratives as tools for argumentative co-production. The application of this methodology led to the consolidation of five interpretive routes co-constructed with actors involved in the territory, such as farmers and residents, walkers and casual visitors, and modeled with the assistance of generative AI.