Capurganá is a tourist destination of the municipality of Acandí on the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Urabá in the Colombian department of Choco and adjacent to the border between Colombia and Panama. This region of Colombia was inhabited by the Cuna Indians and the name Capurgana translates to the "land of chili" in their language. The Cuna inhabited the area until the early twentieth century when they were displaced by mostly mulatto settlers from Cartagena. The natives migrated to the archipelago of San Blas (Region Kuna Yala) in the neighboring country of Panama. The Cuna maintain a semiautonomous region where they exercise a degree of self governance.
Capurganá remained unnoticed on the map until the 1970s when Mrs. Narcisa Navas, a community leader, convinced her neighbours to donate land and help to build a small airstrip. Narcisa Navas and the pilot, Jorge Mario Uribe, took the first tourists to Capurganá in a small Cessna aircraft. Today the Capurganá Airport remains.
Initially families from neighbouring Antioquia state arrived to build small summer houses. The Mora, Uribe, Arango and Isaza families as well as Samuel Isaacs, a relative of the Colombian writer Don Jorge Isaacs. The Palacio family established the first hotel in 1975, small log cabins and an iraca palm roof (Carludovica palmata). After the cabins (now the renewed Tacarcuna Lodge) were established, similar hotels followed such as the Almar and Calypso. Tourist infrastructure had grown to more than 20 hotels, inns and hostels by 1990. The small town gradually became a destination for the emerging Colombian eco-tourists.
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