Leticia · Nightlife

Every evening before dark, thousands of parakeets pour into the trees of the main square to roost and the noise is loud enough to stop conversation. It runs for around half an hour either side of sunset, costs nothing, and the town treats it as the start of the evening rather than a tourist attraction.

The riverfront walkway and the muelle below it are where people come out once the heat drops — a handful of open-air bars and food stalls, cold beer, and the Amazon moving past in the dark. It is somewhere to sit rather than a strip of venues: expect three or four options, not thirty.

The Brazilian town Leticia merges into is bigger, and its bars and forró clubs run later than anything on the Colombian side. There is no border post on the road between them and a mototaxi across costs a few thousand pesos; carry some reais or accept a poor exchange rate at the bar.

The most interesting thing to do here after dark is not a bar. The reserves around Leticia run guided night walks looking for frogs, spiders, snakes and insects, leaving in the early evening and lasting a couple of hours — book during the day, and go with a guide, boots and a decent torch.

Leticia has around 33,000 people and no road to the rest of the country, and it shows after dark: a few bars, a couple of discotecas that only fill at weekends, and most of the town shut by midnight midweek. If you want a big night out this is the wrong Amazon town — eat well, start early, and be up for the 5am boats.