I thought a lot about my first article for the Colombian Official Bloggers. Shall I talk about myself? Why I decided to settle down in Colombia? Maybe pick my favourite places? Surely after more than 2 years of extensive travelling in the country I can consider myself an expert. Those would be natural options, I could even make something interesting out of it. But no, not the first post. For this post, I would like to share an emotion, something unexpected that deeply touched me. After all, this is what Colombia is about.

Traveling the northern Caribbean coastline from Cartagena, Bolívar to Cabo de la Vela, la Guajira you can find an incredible diversity of beaches.

You might think that after my time in Tayrona it’d be a bit of a downer to go back to the city, but frankly, though I loved the park I wasn’t at all disappointed because Santa Marta is a pretty charming place to “have” to come back to.

Some destinations loom large in the collective imagination. Leading up to my trip to El Parque de Tayrona, everyone who I mentioned it to had the same reaction: It’s gorgeous, it’s amazing, can we come too? I admit to going into it rather blindly, excited by everybody else’s excitement, but other than that pretty clueless as to what exactly made Tayrona so special.

We recently reached a huge landmark in our See Colombia Travel Blog , with our 500th post so we thought we should share it with all of you our Official Colombia Travel Bloggers' readers, here's probably the longest post you've ver seen :)

December in Colombia means several things with names that are quite likely as of yet unrecognizable to you: novenas and alumbrados, natillas and buñuelos, though if you spend any time in Colombia during this time of year you will quickly become well acquainted with them.

The Quindio is Colombia's smallest “departamento” or province, but it is without a doubt one which is packed with many attractions. Every village in Quindio is worthy of a day trip. Recently I visited Salento, with side trips to nearby Cocora valley and finishing up in Filandia.

While most of Bogotá's art galleries are located in the Zona Rosa and Macarena neighborhoods, the last few years more galleries have opened in La Candelaria, the city's historical center.

I’ve written here about the sacred 4 pm. merienda (afternoon snack) in Colombia before, the beloved fourth meal of the day between lunch and dinner. Merienda (also called “el algo”, “the something”) is often something sweet, along the lines of a pastry, or maybe one of the numerous cheese-based breads that Colombian bakeries excel at.

My thoughts are elsewhere as I clutch at tufts of grass and haul myself up the steep hillside, sweating profusely in the soporific heat all the while desperately trying to keep up with my guide. Each dry discarded or felled tree appears in my line of sight as a possible lurking place for some venomous creature or another, and risking increasing the distance between the guide and me, I skirt around the edges rather than suffer the possible consequences. And then we arrive at the hillcrest, and below us the claustrophobic confines and still Caribbean waters of the Gulf of Urabá open out with clear views west onto the famed Darien region and from up here I can understand why, in 1509, Spanish Conquistador Alonso de Ojeda, chose this spot.

The first time I went to Colombia, in 2008, I stayed with my friend Carolina and her family. It was December, and people were already gearing up to celebrate. In daily conversations with friends, the word "rumba" kept coming up over and over again in the context of going out at night, but I could never pin down what it actually meant. “Hay rumba?” “Vamos a rumbear?” Is there a rumba? Are we going to rumba? I tried asking Carolina: -Rumba is like fiesta? -Sort of....-It's going out dancing? -Well, kind of...

As is probably pretty obvious by now around here, much of my time in Colombia has been spent in people's kitchens, principally my boyfriend's mother's. Though the fact that most ovens in Colombia lack any form of temperature control drives me crazy, Colombian kitchens come standard with a fair amount of ingenious gadgets that aren't seen in the states but that I think would be equally as useful for many households.

Colombia is known world-wide for its great coffee. But it can sometimes be hard to find a good cup of coffee here, because the best coffee is exported, while inexpensive coffee is actually imported for domestic consumption.

Learning to dance salsa was the last thing on my mind when I arrived in Colombia. I'd taken lessons at a studio in Washington, DC a few years earlier, but I was far too shy to start asking strange women to dance outside of the classroom.

When I visited England this past Christmas, there was général bewilderment at my lack of a tan. For people back home, Colombia is a sun-drenched paradise where we all drink coconut milk on the beach. Now, as lovely as that would be, I’m a Londoner and so I’m thankful to be living here in Bogota where I can indulge in that great English activity: complaining about the rain, even though it’s an unavoidable, inherent part of living in England (or Bogota).

Bogotá's colorful and opinionated graffiti - perhaps more appropriately called street art - turns plain and boring walls into canvases. Four prominent Bogotá graffiteros recently published a book called Calle Esos Ojos and created a website: www.BogotaStreetArt.com, to display their work.

“You live in Bogota? How do you manage it? I have heard that in Bogota it gets so cold that sometimes smoke comes out of your mouth.” A conversation with a San Andresano.