Colombia - Where is that actually? Do they have seasons there?

There are have been some confusions about the country I am living in now. Are there seasons in Colombia? Why isn't it warm in Bogotá? Do they sell liquid milk there? Isn’t it super dangerous living in Colombia?

So to clear up at least some questions for now I'd like to give you a brief overview over the wonderful country I can call home for the next few months.

The Colombian flag

One first thing – many people tend to confuse the country ColOmbia with the state in the US that is called ColUmbia. Hereby you could offend Colombians so you’re welcome ;)

Key facts

Population:

48.278 mio (in 2015)

Size:

2.129.748 m2  - numbers are often hard to imagine therefore a map of how big Colombia is in comparison to Central Europe.

Location:

Colombia is located in the northern east of South America. Colombia has shared boarders with Ecuador, Peru, Brazil Venezuela and Panama. Here I have to mention that the border to Panama is actually not crossable due to the rain forest. The border to Venezuela currently is a place not to be close to, due to complications in Venezuela. In the South of Colombia there is a huge part dominated by the rainforest. Besides Land borders Colombia is also gifted with two big coasts. One being the Pacific Ocean where the sea is rather rough and cold. And on the other hand the Caribbean Sea with nice warm climate and water as I could already experience during our trip to Cartagena. 

As Colombia is located very close to the Equator, the climate as well as the day and night times do not change a lot throughout the year. These facts make it a very special climate for someone like me, coming from Central Europe.

Capital:

Bogotá (also my current home), with currently 8,081mio inhabitants, which makes it about 2.6 times bigger as Berlin

Climate:

Therefore we can dig right into Colombian climate. For all of you who love heat and humidity Colombia is the paradise (like for me). As mentioned Colombia is dominated by equatorial climate. So to mean that over the year there is not such defined seasons as we are used to in Central Europe.

Anyhow different climates can be found through out Colombia. 

To understand this a better I found two nice graphs in Wikipedia:

(by clicking on the pic. you can enlarge it)

In the right figure you can see that almost all of Colombia is dominated by rainforest- and tropical climate (blue). Only in the Mountain area (also to be found in the physical map above) has rather "cold climate".

Bogotá

lies on around 2600m above sea level and is therefore situated in one of the green parts in both graphs. Here we are situated in a so called “Cold climate altitudinal zone”. For now the weather varied pretty much between 10°-20°. Twenty degrees can easily feel like 25° due to the strength of the sun. On other days (or hours) when it rains, the 16° degrees can feel rather like 8°.

The first rule in Bogotá is to dress in layers (alias the onion look – “Zwiebellook”), wear sunscreen (UV waves here in South Amerika are a lot stronger than my European skin is used to) and always have an umbrella in your pocket. And yes it is really like that - The one day I didn’t carry my umbrella with me of course it rained.

For Bogotanos (how they call themselves) it is very common to go to the “tierra caliente” (hot lands) for long weekends or holidays. Just around one hour from Bogotá you can find nice places to stay in more tropical areas with for example 1400m above sea level and steady 25 degrees during the day and high humidity.  (Last weekend we did such a trip – more about that in my next post)

Time zone 

Colombia is situated in the UTC -5 time zone. Therefore for all my friends in Central Europe I’m 7 hours behind you. Therefore when you get up it’s the middle of the night for me and when I get up you already lived half of your day.

Language
The official language is Spanish, though there are more than 80 other languages and dialects recognized in the country, belonging to various indigenous peoples. In the San Andrés and Providence Islands, English is also an official language. Anyhow when coming here I'd strongly advise to speak at least basic Spanish as most people do not speak English. This can come in handy for all who want to come here to learn Spanish. Here they say "o aprendes o aprendes" - either you learn or your learn :D

Further Colombian Spanish is considered one of the best in the world due to their "singing" tonation as well as (more or less) clear pronounciation. From my own experiece I can tell that Colombians are a lot easier to understand than Chileans but still Spanish has such a variety of synonimes that there is still a lot to learn for me.

Currency

At the moment the Euro is a bit stronger than it was in January and therefore at the moment 1€ is worth ~3400 Colombian Pesos (COP; symbol Col$). Notes are in denominations of Col$50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,000 and 1,000 – therefore the highest bill (50,000COP) here in Colombia is worth around 14€.

Life here in Colombia is especially cheap when it comes to (local) food like vegetables, fruits, bread, rice etc. Also most of the services (beauty treatments, tailoring etc.) have a a lot lower in price than in central Europe. On the other hand drugstore items are only available from the big brands which makes these goods a lot more expensive. 

Electricity

Mostly 110 volts AC, 60Hz and American-style two-pin plugs are used here in Colombia, which makes it rather difficult to charge my computer fast or to make my blender go fast. I know there are plugs that do not only convert the plug form but also convert the voltage upwards, but until now I haven’t found one yet. Anyways, switching to lower volts is not as bad as the other way around. Luckily, I bought a hair dryer in Germany that is especially for travel usage and therefore has a nice small switch to work as well with lower and higher voltages.

For those of you who would like to know even a bit more about Colombia here is a very nice video that explains the country in a fast but fun manner: 
https://www.facebook.com/aboutcolombia/videos/1666239953643733/

Muchos Besos,

Leonie