Colombia Land Of El Dorado

Chronicles early expeditions to uncover the treasures of El Dorado and looks at the culture, sophisticated skills, and traditions of the Colombian Indians.

This guide to Colombia reflects the resurgence of the country among travellers following years of lawlessness. With a strong focus on the country's cultural attractions, it will appeal to visitors seeking to discover Colombia's renowned flora and fauna, as well as its historic colonial cities, and its range of eco-tourism initiatives

Distant Lands and Dodgy Places chronicles the adventures of intrepid traveller Tan Wee Cheng — from witnessing an Eskimo seal hunt in icy Greenland to meeting Chinese stranded in Paraguay and The Amazon, and arriving in chaotic Comoros just as a volcanic eruption threatens to blow the capital apart. Hot on the heels of his runaway success Hot Spots and Dodgy Places, Distant Lands follows Wee Cheng into the heart of Mauritius, Land of the Dodo, and across the exotic Land of Many Waters in Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, where he sidesteps a drug proposition and survives nearly being mobbed at the chaotic French border. From partying in Columbia as the world’s longest civil war rages on in the surrounding countryside, to risking life and limb with Cypriot gangsters and a host of other dangers — Wee Cheng has done it all. Forget the package tour and venture into the unknown from the comfort of your armchair!

In November 2017, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at its headquarters outside Palmira, Colombia. As an important research center of the so-called Green Revolution in agricultural science and technologies, CIAT emphasizes its contributions to sustainability, food security, gender equity, inclusive markets, and resilient, climate-smart agriculture. Yet these terms hardly describe the Cauca Valley where CIAT is physically located, a place that has been transformed into an industrial monoculture of sugarcane where thirteen Colombian corporations oversee the vast majority of this valley's famously fertile soil. This exemplifies the paradox Timothy W. Lorek describes in Making the Green Revolution: an international research center emphasizing small-scale and sustainable agricultural systems sited conspicuously on a landscape otherwise dominated by a large-scale corporate sugarcane industry. Utilizing archives in Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the United States, Lorek tracks the paradoxical but intertwined twentieth-century processes that produced both CIAT and sugar in the Cauca Valley. This history reveals how Colombians contributed to the rise of a global Green Revolution and how that international process in turn intersected with a complex and long-running rural conflict in Colombia.