Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the highest coastal mountain range in the world and includes almost all climatic zones across a strip only 17 miles as the crow files, from the sea to the perpetual snow. This park covers an area of 15000 square miles.This is Colombia. Land of coffee growing fields, music and dances, carnivals and beauty pageants, cock fights and bull fighting, warm beaches and bewitching lakes, indigenous and colonial worlds that stand watching the ongoing course of modern industry; a land of tropical dawns, prairies and virgin jungles. Situated in the north east corner of Colombia, South America, near the Venezuelan border, lies one of the world's most remote and spectacular mountain ranges - The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Here the twin peaks of Cristobal Colon (named after Columbus) and Simon Bolivar (the famous South American Liberator) tower 5775 meters (almost 19,000ft). These summits harbor abundant snow fields and glaciers. Yet, the tropics of the Caribbean are only forty kilometers away.

The drastic change in climate with elevation makes these Coastal Mountains posses some of the worldâs most diversified flora and fauna. Inhabiting the coastal rain forest lives a tribe of white robed natives, the little known and mysterious, Tairona Indians. National Geographic featured the area in itâs Secret Corners of The World book as well as an article in the August 1970 issue.