Colombia

Colombia is the only South American country with coasts on both the Pacific and the Caribbean. Three ranges of the Andes fan out across its west, divided by the valleys of the Magdalena and the Cauca, and most Colombians live in the cool highland basins between them. East of the Andes the llanos, tropical grasslands, run towards the Orinoco, and the Amazon covers the south-east. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta climbs from Caribbean beaches to snow peaks, while the Pacific lowlands of the Chocó are among the wettest places on earth.

Muisca and Tairona peoples lived in the highlands and on the coast; the Muisca custom of offering gold to sacred lakes gave rise to the legend of El Dorado. Spain founded Cartagena in 1533 and Bogotá in 1538, and the region became the core of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Simón Bolívar’s campaign won independence in 1819, and Panama broke away in 1903. A long armed conflict began in the 1960s, and a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas was signed in 2016.

Gabriel García Márquez set One Hundred Years of Solitude in a town modelled on his Caribbean childhood, cumbia and vallenato carry that coast’s rhythms, and Cali dances to salsa. Coffee from the hilly Eje Cafetero is the best-known export, alongside cut flowers grown around Bogotá, bananas, oil, coal from La Guajira and emeralds from Boyacá.