“El Hombre Caimán” is a historic legend about a man whose passion for spying on women having a bath in the Rio Magdalena sentenced him to be turned into a being with alligator body and human head. After his mother has died no one was feeding him anymore, so he drifted down the Rio Magdalena to Bocas de Ceniza, where fisherman still try to chase him down these days, according to the legend.
It takes place in the coastal town of Plato, Magdalena, on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. Plato holds anually the Festival of “El Man Cayman”. The legend was also immortalized in the song of the Barranquillero Jose Maria Peñaranda “Se va el Caiman“: