After zooming in and looking closely, it appears to me that there is a structure of some kind, perhaps a walkway, back there. The color that appeared comes from it, so it is real.
I come late to this 
Besides my Nikons I also have an Oly (EM5 II) and I am shocked, how much the noise has been improved. For me, I need to denoise already beginning with 200ISO and here I literally see nothing at 640.
This is my take with darktable 3.3.0+1707~g696fc5c4a
P9120141.orf.xmp (11,1 KB)
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With two month’s more experience with dt 3.2.1, I think I have improved since my earlier post. I have learned to deal with the highlights reconstruction since then, and I am more comfortable with the exposure. I think I have a better balanced interpretation, now.
P9120141.orf.xmp (5.4 KB)
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Yes you did, noticeably. I like how you consistently edit to keep it as real as possible and I do not think that that is a lack of knowledge. Many, including myself, tend to over saturate or emphasize certain parts at times. This is also true for sharpening, although I do have to say that the above image seems to lack some in that respect 
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Thank you.
Yes, I do not really have any grasp on sharpening in dt, as of yet. I get completely lost trying to read the current/recent thread on sharpening. I guess I should start it again, from the top.
PS - When I used to do a lot of editing with the GIMP, a few years ago, I was even to the point of building my own overlay masks for contrast and sharpening. But, I have forgotten 85% of all that.
Sorry I keep bumping, I didn’t used darktable in a long time and I’m practicing filmic
dt 3.2.1
P9120141.orf.xmp (13.0 KB)
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honestly you can usually get great results just by opening up the contrast equalizer and making a little kick like this with a large “brush” size:
sometimes its worth using the parametric mask to keep the effect out of the highlights and shadows a bit, but this alone gets you 95% of the way there most of the time.
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@Eduardo_Battaglia That is a lot of food colouring there! 
I didn’t really notice the upwards arrow until now. Now I can’t avoid seeing it. 
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LOL thanks, now I see it too. 
Goig for a sunny, late afternoon look, with more yellowish greens
DT 3.5
P9120141.orf.xmp (13.2 KB)
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Nice location!
Testing @jandren’s sigmoid and @anon41087856’s rebooted colour balance.
Tried not to overdo it.
dt 3.5.0
P9120141_02.orf.xmp (12.3 KB)
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the colors are realistic, the water is this green
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Oh, cool, was just a guess, peeking to the other results. My starting point was here:
Some tweaking in sigmoid and colour calibration shifted it into the right direction. Lifting brilliance and saturation / chroma was done with the colour balance modules.
I think you are right and the lack of the intense colour is caused by the shadow in the canyon rsp. the absence of direct sunlight on the river.
I’m using darktable-3.5.0+1953. When I load P9120141_02.orf.xmp, this is the history that shows up:
and the image appears much closer to P9120141_01.jpg.
Are you using a newer version of dt?
Hi Bill, the correct history should look like this:
The sigmoid module is missing in your version because up to now it isn’t merged in master. You have to do this manually. See [WIP] sigmoid tone mapping module by jandren · Pull Request #7820 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub
Thanks for the tip. I’m running Windows and am not familiar with what I am seeing at that link. It looks like I would have to be running Linux, but that’s a guess. I may have to wait. I rebuilt my Windows package today, and sigmoid is not in it.
Edit: I think now the commands are issued when running MINGW64, but I haven’t figured out how to use them yet.