We’ve been writing for some time about the resurgence of tourism in Colombia, thanks largely to a drop in drug-related violence and crime. Even the New York Times jumped on the cheerleading bandwagon. This week, while acknowledging the trend, the Guardian reports on the small but “growing minority” of backpackers and travelers who are more interested in sampling the other Colombia. Namely, the Colombia made infamous by its cocaine trade and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

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What happens to the untrained and often inebriated matadors involved in corraleja, Colombia’s amateur form of bullfighting, when they take on pissed-off bulls? New York Times writer Simon Romero likened their wounds to those in a Hieronymus Bosch painting: “intestines peeking out of a belly, bone protruding from a fractured shin, blood spurting from a gash in the buttocks.” Yeouch.

Related on World Hum:
* Is Colombia the New New Zealand?

That’s the number of journalists killed around the globe this year—the most in over a decade. Not surprisingly, Iraq claimed more lives than any other country, 31, nearly all of them Iraqi. “Somalia was ranked the second deadliest country with seven journalists deaths in 2007,” Reuters reports. “Sri Lanka and Pakistan each recorded five journalists deaths, and Afghanistan and Eritrea each had two deaths.” One positive note: For the first time in more than a decade, there wasn’t a single reporter murdered in Colombia. Could it be further evidence of this?

Not long ago, Colombia’s Tayrona National Park was the bloody haunt of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as right-wing paramilitary organizations, which battled over turf for the cocaine trade. But since Colombian President Álvaro Uribe began a military crackdown on death squads and drove the FARC out to the southern jungles, the park has apparently been reborn. According to Joshua Hammer’s New York Times story, in fact, Tayrona is now being touted by Colombian authoritites as a tourist paradise that’s “among the most biologically diverse of any coastal zone in the Americas.”

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We’ve been tracking Colombia’s rise from narcotics netherworld to “hipster tropical destination du jour” for some time now, and it looks like an upcoming potential blockbuster movie could help complete the transition. “Love in the Time of Cholera,” based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, hits North American theaters in November. Last week Jaunted predicted an accompanying movie-tourism explosion. Amandak writes: “If you haven’t read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s fantastic book Love in the Time of Cholera you should, now. It’s about to become for Colombia what Lord of the Rings was for New Zealand: a major tourism generator. The nice part is that Garcia Marquez really did set his book in Colombia, whereas the whole Lord of the Rings thing was kind of a scam, really.”

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World Hum contributor Emily Maloney writes about a visit to Colombia’s Lost City, not to mention a cocaine paste factory, in The Smart Set this week. She even takes a gander at the jacket drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was wearing when he was shot. Good times.

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* Drexel University Launches ‘The Smart Set’

In the ongoing debate over whether its safe to travel to Colombia, the New York Times has weighed in with a yes, at least for the city of Medellín. “[I]n the last decade, this city of two million, with its beautiful colonial architecture and year-round spring-like weather, has awakened from its drug nightmare,” writes Grace Bastidas. “Mr. [Pablo] Escobar and his minions are gone and the cocaine trade has been largely dispersed. Bullet-riddled neighborhoods are coming to life with art museums and well-designed parks. And the constant rumble of construction—new shopping malls, flashy casinos and luxury hotels—can be heard throughout the city.”

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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has had a busy few weeks. Not only was it busy issuing a press release claiming no affiliation with the new seven wonders, during meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand, the group added the Galapagos and their surrounding marine reserve; Samarra, Iraq; and Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park to its list of endangered World Heritage sites. Two more sites—the Royal Palaces of Abomey, Benin and Kathmandu Valley, Nepal—were removed from the Danger List. 

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The impression of Aracataca, Colombia as a representation of the entirety of Latin America stems from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the man who 40 years ago thinly disguised his hometown and used it as a setting for his classic novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Marquez returned to Aracataca for the first time in 25 years the other day, an event noted by many news outlets, including NPR. Juan Forero covered the homecoming for ‘Morning Edition,’ and his audio postcard from Aracataca gives a great sense of the town and just how much the residents love and appreciate the man they call Gabo.

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Thanks to reports of dropping crime under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia just might be the hipster tropical destination du jour. International visits to the country have risen by two-thirds since 2002. But according to an Associated Press report, those flocking to the celebrated colonial port city of Cartagena expecting to find a similarly shrinking crime rate are in for a surprise. 

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Colombia ranked No. 2 in the Happy Planet Index last year, which seems an impressive finish given the country’s well-known problems. Drug cartels and years of civil war have colored the world’s impression of Colombia, and though those dangers have begun to recede the U.S. State Department has kept its travel warning in place. So how should we characterize Colombia? Daniel Kurtz-Phelan ventured to Bogotá and Medellín for a piece in the March issue of Travel + Leisure, and he writes of a country in transition. “Throughout my visit,” he writes, “everyone from government officials and security experts to shopkeepers and demobilized rebels told me that Colombia is becoming ‘a normal country’—or, if not quite normal, at least one where violence no longer defines daily life but merely infringes on its margins.”

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Coordinates: 7 0 N 73 15 W
Area: 12,382 sq. mi. (32,069 sq. km)
With this year’s Nobel Prizes still in the headlines, the words of the 1937 winner in medicine, Albert von Szent-Györgyi, spring to mind. “Discovery,” he opined, “consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” If he was right, then the two scientists who ventured into deep into the jungle-covered slopes of the Yariguies range in Colombia’s east Andes should be commended for boldly going where no one had thought to before. Their commitment to documenting bird diversity led them to the Santander Department, an administrative region that is at once isolated from the rest of the country and yet roughly 100 miles from Medellín, Colombia’s second most populous city. News that Thomas Donegan and Blanca Huertas had discovered an unknown species of brush finch in Santander’s shrinking cloud forest was released this month.

-- is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.