Homeland

A year before I travelled to Canada I already knew that I was going to leave my homeland. I was born in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia, and I lived there with my family all my life up to that point. When we knew that I was leaving the country, my family and I really wanted to say goodbye in the best way possible; so we decided to be together the most time that we could. Following these thoughts, we did some travels inside the country.

Colombia is an extraordinary country; it is located in the northern part of South America where the Andean Mountain Chain, originates in Chile, and continues across all the countries, up to Colombia where it ends. It has limits with the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and close to Venezuela there is a very big plain and a desert too. All these changes of environment and weather make the customs, clothes and food of the people different between them. Colombia is a very diverse country.

As Colombia has many mountains, the weather changes a lot depending on the altitude of the place. For example, Bogota is located 2600 meters over the sea, so it is a very cold place where it rains hard and frequently. However, if you travel 3 hours down any mountain you can find a very touristic place where the weather is above 25 centigrade all the time, and the rain is not common at all.

When we decided to travel, we wanted to tour places located higher than Bogota. One thing that we used to do during these travels was to climb the mountain that was closed to the town that we were visiting. Usually, they are very cold places, so the ground was wet or it was raining still, in both cases it was very hard to climb the mountain. However, we were able to reach the peaks, and there it was clear why the efforts were worth it, as we saw the most beautiful landscapes.

Once, we visited a place that is very famous in Colombia because some decades ago many airplanes crashed there because of the heights. This place is called Tablazo, and is located 3600 meters over sea. The place is very cold and hard to find, therefore we had to walk a lot to reach some peaks. On the road, we met a military station where they had the control of the air fleet of the zone, because it is one of the tallest mountains in the area, the police explained to us. When we reached the peak, there was a very big rock sticking out from the side of it, and we could see the cliff of the mountain and the town on the bottom. The people in the town looked like ants from the peak. It was so high that we could see the clouds below us, and they were floating under the rock.

The year before I came to Canada was one of the most meaningful years of my life. I had the chance to get to know my own country and its people better. Also, I could become closer to my family, and understood that those little moments with the people that you love, make your life special.