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Destination : COLUMBIA

Colombia was one of the three countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others being Ecuador and Venezuela). A 40-year insurgent campaign to overthrow the Colombian Government escalated during the 1990s, undergirded in part by funds from the drug trade. Although the violence is deadly and large swaths of the countryside are under guerrilla influence, the movement lacks the military strength or popular support necessary to overthrow the government. While Bogota continues to try to negotiate a settlement, neighboring countries worry about the violence spilling over their borders. Colombia is located in Northern South America, bordering the Caribbean Sea, between Panama and Venezuela, and bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between Ecuador and Panama
Colombia lies at the gateway to South America and must have been a transit point for the first inhabitants who migrated from North and Central America. The pre-columbian cultures of Colombia have been little investigated as almost none of them left behind spectacular monuments. However, their art reveals a high degree of craftsmanship and their goldwork is the best in the whole continent, both for the techniques used and for the artistic design. Among, the most outstanding cultures were the Tayrona, Sinú, Muisca, Quimbaya, Tolima, Calima,Tierradentro, San Agustín, Nariño, and Tumaco. Three important archeological sites were built by some of these cultures: San Agustín, Tierradentro and Ciudad Perdida.
Spaniards founded Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien in 1510, the first permanent European settlement on the American mainland. In 1538 the Spaniards established the colony of New Granada, the area's name until 1861. After a 14-year struggle, in which Simón Bolívar's troops won the battle of Boyacá in Colombia on Aug. 7, 1819, independence was attained in 1824. Bolívar united Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador in the Republic of Greater Colombia (1810-1830), but lost Venezuela and Ecuador to separatists.
Bolívar's Vice President, Francisco de Paula Santander, founded the Liberal Party as the Federalists while Bolívar established the Conservatives as the Centralists. Santander's presidency (1832-1936) re-established order, but later periods of Liberal dominance (1849-1857 and 1861-1880), when the Liberals sought to disestablish the Roman Catholic Church, were marked by insurrection and even civil war. Rafael Nuñez, in a 15-year-presidency, restored the power of the central government and the church, which led in 1899 to a bloody civil war and the loss in 1903 of Panama over ratification of a lease to the U.S of the canal zone.
Colombia stretches over approximately 1,140,000 sq. km, roughly equal to the area of Portugal, Spain, and France put together. Colombia occupies the northwestern end of South America, and is the only country there with coasts on both the Pacific (1350 km long), and the Atlantic (over 1600 km.) Three Andean ranges run north and south through the western half of the country (about 45% of the total territory.) The eastern part is a vast lowland which can be generally divided into two regions: a huge open savannah on the north, and the amazon in the south (400,000 sq. km aprox.)

Colombia is a country of geographical contrasts and extremes. As well as the features mentioned, it has such curiosities as the desert of La Guajira, the peninsula in the most norh-eastern tip of the country; the jungle of the pacific coast which holds one of the world's rainfall records; and finally the Serranía de la Macarena, an isolated mountain formation about 120 km. long, rising abruptly from the eastern plains to some 2500 meters. Colombia also has several small islands. The major ones are the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia in the Caribbean Sea, the Islas del Rosario and San Bernardo along the Caribeean coast, and Gorgona and Malpelo in the Pacific Ocean.