I have written a number of articles on why I believe Colombia is an amazing travel destination and Lonely Planet have announced that they agree with me by naming Colombia one of the Top 10 Best Travel Destinations for 2017.
Lonely Planet has been one of the leading travel guides/experts for a large number of years. It has become a trusted brand with large numbers of people visiting their website each day. Colombia should be proud to be voted one of the Top 10 Travel Destinations for 2107, hopefully this will encourage many more people to visit the country and find out why it is so magical.
‘The only thing dangerous about Colombia is wanting to stay’ this slogan has been used to describe Colombia for many years after a very successful marketing campaign. Another successful marketing campaign is ‘Colombia is Magical Realism’, both these campaigns were created to influence and show people Colombia isn’t what it’s stereotypes suggest.
Stereotypes have been destroying the countries reputation for a large number of years, the media only publishing negative stories, generalising the country as a whole and creating a negative image of the country. I have been living in Colombia for the last 5 months and the amount of people who tell me I’m crazy is unbelievable. The only answer for them I have now is ‘your crazy for not being here’ or ‘how can you judge something you have never seen’.
To many Colombia is a country which they never had any desire to visit,in reality Colombia has the best of everything; with its Caribbean beaches, Andes mountain range, snowcapped mountains, Amazon Rainforest, desert plains and amazing people, why wouldn’t people want to visit. Colombia’s dangerous reputation was fuelled with the help of Pablo Escobar, Drugs, Farc and other cartels. Now in 2016 Colombia is on the verge of a peace deal with it’s main cartel with the promise of other cartels following. Colombia’s violence in the past 5 years has been confined to one city, with even that city becoming safer now.
Predominately America fuelled Colombia’s drug problem in the 80s with 90% of Colombia’s drug production being exported to the states or around the world. Colombians saw drugs as money, if they took the drugs they would be losing valuable profit. I’m not saying Colombians never take drugs I’m just saying the majority of drugs were exported to feed Americas and the world addiction.
The Lonely Planet Best Travel Destinations for 2017 states that Colombia is the jewel of South America and I believe this to be one hundred percent true.
Check out Colombia and the other 9 countries in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2017 here: Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2017 Guide
yes, i saw that article by Lonely Planet