Amacayacu

Declared in 1975, it sits beside the Colombian reach of the river Amazon, near the triple border with Peru and Brazil, and is one of the country's main gateways for both tourism and science into the Amazon rainforest. Its name means hammock of the river in the local indigenous language, and its waters hold the Amazon river dolphin, or boto, a freshwater species that has evolved independently of its marine relatives and around which many Amazonian indigenous legends have grown, crediting it with the power to turn into a man and seduce the women of the riverside villages.