Saw a commercial a few days ago on CNN advertising tourism in Colombia.
Colombia is a place that I’d love to visit, but Colombia’s got a ways to go in sprucing up their reputation for prospective tourists. Every time I mention to one of my friends that I want to visit Colombia, I always get the “look”. The “are you crazy, aren’t you afraid to be kidnapped” look. Well, Colombia’s aware of the fear, playing off of it with the tag line on their website reading “Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay.”
visitcolombia.com
4 Comments
Hey… you just should forget about what your friends, who I´m pretty sure hasn´t traveled to Colombia, and take the risk to spend at least a week in any city of Colombia… just to mention some… Bogota (the capital), Cartagena, MedellÃn, Cali, Santa Marta, the coffe region…. I bet you will shut your friends mouth once you show them the pictures and tell your story in Colombia. Ask anyone who has traveled to Colombia, they will tell you about the nice things in Colombia, and also, of course the bad things, that might happen also in Washington DC, Miami, London, Madrid or Amsterdam…
Thanks for writing. I’m definitely planning on going soon!
Gentlemen,
I am an American citizen who lived in Cali, Colombia for 2 years doing research on narcoterrorism. This are part of the results of my investigation:
There are 145,000 persons kidnapped in Colombia each year, for as little as ten to as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom, including many foreigners. I would not be mistaken saying that 50 per cent of the kidnapped are killed.
During the time I was there, all people I met had at least one relative or close friend killed. Thousands of legislators, policemen and soldiers have been assassinated. That dead count includes one candidate for president of Colombia killed and one kidnapped and fortunately released after 10 years living in the worst conditions imaginable (Mrs. Betancour). In addition, sicarios, as the killers-for-hire are called, make a great living killing people for others for any vague reason.
While there, I had three tentatives of assassination and a good friend of mine disappear forever.
Sorry, but the word for foreigner in Colombia means “fat duck ready for killingâ€.
The people behind the adds should be processed for tentative murder.
Your numbers are preposterous. Just simple Googling shows that.