The Andes Mountains Dominate Colombia's Geography But There Is So Much More.

Colombia is a country of extremes with the Andes Mountains consisting of three cordillera that run north and south, the Occidental (west), Central and Oriental or eastern range. the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the north, and shares borders with Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela and has a separate mountain range called the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta located about 30 miles from the Caribbean Sea. Where else can you be on a tropical beach and in 20 minutes you could be dropped off in the snow, Colombia has deserts and plains and if you like the rain you can go to Chocó province on the Pacific coast and experience a rain forest that gets somewhere in the area of 20+feet (6 meters) of rain a year.

Colombia has

• Birds 1821 species
• Amphibians 623 species
• Mammals 467 species
• Reptiles 518 species
• Fish 3200 species with 18% endemic
• Plants 51,220 species with 30% endemic

Credit for the above numbers go to MONGABAY.COMhttp://rainforests.mongabay.com/20colombia.htm
Written by Rhett A. Butler

Colombia has large reserves of freshwater and is the fourth country in the world by magnitude of total freshwater supply

The Major cities of Colombia are

• Bogota with over 8,000,000 people located at 8,500 feet in the Andes Mountains. Person from Bogota is called a Bogatano.
• Medellin Nickname (City of Eternal Spring) with 3,500,000 people, if your from Medellin your a Paisa.
• Cali Nickname (Branch of Heaven) with 2,200,000 people, this city is hot and so are the Caleña's
• Barranquilla Nickname (Curramba the Beautiful) 1,800,000 If your from here your a Barranquillero or a Barranquillera if your a female, Shakira's from here. (Two ll's together make a ya or a ja sound).
• Cartagena at 1,200,000 people Cartagenero's are okay, Cartagenera's are much better.

What's happening around Colombia

In Jericó, Antioquia province, population 12,000 there is an Andy Warhol exhibition displaying 13 of his original silkscreens, this small mountain community is about 3 hours from Colombia's second largest city Medellin. Colombia is a happy country although you may have thought otherwise, when your shoveling snow there's a beach party in progress here, when your experiencing the best summer weather ever, sorry, that's just normal weather in these parts, for the west coasters, when your tired of walking around in soggy rubber boots there's a dry place that's hot all year with cheap beer and drinks and a non stop party atmosphere.

The climate varies throughout the country with elevation and you can experience all the seasons at any time of year. Colombia's scenery is spectacular, the Andes Mountains, the Guajira Desert, Choco province on the west coast, it truly is among the top spots in the world.

What I have found about Colombia is that once you travel here it is hard to return to your own country, the climate is great, the attitude of the people is easy, there's time to talk, horses and donkeys pulling carts can share the road, jungles, warm oceans, tall mountains, lots of individual stores like it used to be, at least for me coming from Canada, not the same franchises making every place look like the one you left or the one your are going to.

So whether it's exploring the higher elevations of the Andes Mountains or discovering new Salsa steps in Cali there are good times and good memories waiting for you, so don't miss out, the new you is waiting to be discovered in Colombia.

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