Visiting Colombia - Local knowledge for global travellers.
| Buying Emeralds in Bogota Colombia Bogota is one of the best places in the world for buying emeralds, as Colombia has ... Best Boutique Hotels in Cartagena There are a lot of new boutique hotels opening all the time in Cartagena. It's ... | Best Time to Visit Colombia The best time to visit Colombia is mid-January to March as well as mid-July to... Best Beaches in Colombia Some of the best beaches in Colombia are on the country's Carribbean coast. The abso... |
Good to see the inadvertent zoo from Pablo Escobar’s fortress (Hacienda Napoles) is still going strong. Sad about the hippo though.
From the NY Times:
DORADAL, Colombia — Even in Colombia, a country known for its paramilitary death squads, this hunting party stood out: more than a dozen soldiers from a Colombian Army battalion, two Porsche salesmen armed with long-range rifles, their assistant, and a taxidermist.
Colombian soldiers posed in June beside to a dead hippopotamus that had escaped from a ranch once owned by the drug lord Pablo Escobar.
They stalked Pepe through the backlands of Colombia for three days in June before executing him in a clearing about 60 miles from here with shots to his head and heart. But after a snapshot emerged of soldiers posing over his carcass, the group suddenly found itself on the defensive.
As it turned out, Pepe — a hippopotamus who escaped from his birthplace near the pleasure palace built here by the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar — had a following of his own.
The meticulously organized operation to hunt Pepe down, carried out with the help of environmentalists, has become the focus of an unusually fierce debate over animal rights and the containment of invasive species in a country still struggling to address a broad range of rights violations during four decades of protracted war with guerrillas.
