I don’t know why they let me, but I managed to get myself invited to the official launch of Colombia’s new national tourism campaign. Well, two official launches of Colombia’s new national tourism campaign. First, though, let’s have a look at what some of Colombia’s greatest minds have come up with.<\/p>\n
I’m not even being ironic in that last sentence. Few would argue that Gabriel Garcia Marquez<\/a> wasn’t one of this country’s greatest minds, and he’s pretty much responsible for the thrust of the new campaign: “Colombia: Magical Realism.” It was largely through Gabo’s work that a new literary genre found its way into the world, and really, it just makes good sense that this concept is used to describe the country which gave birth to such works as A Hundred Years of Solitude <\/em>and Love in the Time of <\/em>Scurvy I Mean Cholera<\/em>.<\/p>\n We here at the almost completely fictional STC Towers think we’ve been attuned to this aspect of Colombia for a good while now. The amazing things that happen here every day<\/a>; the slightly baffling mega<\/em>diversity (I’m assured it is <\/em>actually a word, and not the name of the new Bruce Willis flick) of this place, where you can go from snow-capped mountains to bath-warm ocean beaches in the matter of a few hours; and the stories that are told about how particular sites came to be the way they are clearly fit the Magical Realism bill nicely. This struck home for me particularly when I was writing about Cartagena (this to come), and how the very walls of this city seemed to be built with magical realism. Perhaps that’s why my favourite ad (I’m sure the English version is to come) of the new campaign is the one about the Heroic City, A?<\/p>\n