Hey, I´m Lena from Germany and I would like to tell you a little bit about my experience in Colombia and why I recommend Bucaramanga as the best place to visit.
When I came to Colombia I didn’t know a lot about this country and especially not about Bucaramanga where I lived for six month. I went to Bucaramanga to study one semester abroad. I was excited about the country and the culture. The people are very kind and cooperative. They are always happy and love people from other countries with another culture. I visited a lot of different places in the whole country. Colombia offers a beautiful nature, nice weather and amazing animals.
My favorite place was Bucaramanga because the city doesn´t have a lot of tourists. For this reason, Bucaramanga has a lot of Colombian culture. You can visit nice restaurants, bars and clubs. Close to the city it’s possible to visit beautiful places like „Mesa de los Santos“, „San Gil“ or „Barichara“. San Gil is famous for extreme sports which is really recommendable if you are a fan of outdoor activities. Colombia has the best coffee in the world. If you ever visit Colombia, you must visit a coffee farm to learn something about cultivating coffee and to taste the delicious drink. I even took one coffee package with me to Germany.
The thing that I liked most in Bucaramanga were the Colombian people that I met. They are incredibly nice and welcoming, nobody treated me in a bad way and it was so easy to get along in the new city. The people were curious about me because some of them never see blond people around them. It was a totally different experience from other touristic places I have visited in my life before. Nobody tried to increase their prices because they thought I am a tourist and they can earn more money. I was paying the same prices as Colombians, no matter whether it was on the street, in a taxi or in a bar. Sometimes the people invited me and were happy to share their culture with me. Living in Bucaramanga I felt really comfortable.
I really liked to see the diversity of the country and to get to know different places. Big cities, nice landscapes, mountains, rivers, lakes, fruits, everything. However, in cities such as Bogotá, Medellin and Cartagena the people are used to tourism and treat you like tourists. So in those touristic places I had the experience that a taxi drivers tried to charge me more for example. How I said before, in Bucaramanga it´s different and the special thing is that in Bucaramanga you can find the diversity of the country in one place. You do not need to fly from one part of the city to another. If you know Spanish, have time to organize your trip an, you can just take a bus starting Bucaramanga and go to all places nearby. Bucaramanga is the place that I would visit any time I come back to Colombia. It´s place to fall in love with.