Answers (3)
Colombians often live in neirborhoods where you will not see a lot of buildings, except in the major cities / in downtowns. Most of the time you will see 1 or 2 story houses and stores. The population is in its mostly young. Frequently under 30. The youth tend to do outdoor activities such as talking with friends, play sports such as soccer, go out dancing, etc. Nothing too different than in other countries. Colombia is well known for its great music: Cumbias, Salsa, Merengue, Vallenatos, etc. are played at many places in Colombia. Colombians like to dance a lot and would go out dancing quite a bit. They would have parties often. You might hear a party near you at least once a week at some places, maybe more depending on how much they like to do that. Often neighbors would bear the noise, not say anything so that they would be able to play loud music until very late when they want to do their own party. Colombians often have parties until 3 a.m. or later, even past 7 a.m. and even continue until they cannot bear it anymore, maybe 10 a.m. or later, then continue partying again once they wake up. Many Colombians like to drink alcohol. Their favorite drinks are Aguardiente (meaning hot water), beer, whiskey, and rum. Aguardiente is very strong and is drank in very little cups since most people could not handle much more at once.
Colombian food is great. Some may want to live in Colombia because of the food. Some dishes are the soups named sancocho and ajiaco. For dry food they could eat bandeja paisa, tamales, or frijoles con arroz y chicharron, for some to eat after that they could eat a masamorra or a juice (the recipes should appear on the Web). Some juices from fruits are from tomate de arbol, maracuya, mora, lulo, strawberry, mango, etc. Colombia is a tropical country and produces all of that. Colombia also has the very popular arepa (made of flour). The bread products are great, have a great flavor. Some are the buñuelos, pan de queso, pandebono, etc. The sweets are great too: dulce de breva, natilla, bocadillo, etc. The bThe weather is great at most locations except for the rainforest that would be very humid and have a lot of rain. The high mountains would have a very cold temperature. Since there is a lot of nature nearby people like to have ranchs out of town to go on the weekends or might prefer to live there and live out of what their farms produce, which could be agricultural and livestock.
The most popular sport is soccer. Most Colombians are followers of their teams. Often they would chose the team from their state and identify with it. Colombians will wear their team’s t-shirt design very often. They will make sure they wear it when there is a game being played and they go to see games at the stadiums. Often the games occur at night or on the weekends. Prior to the games and after they would gather to talk about the games, about other things, and drink a lot.
Since the weather is good people would go out and ride bicycles, go places in a motorcycles (there are a lot of motorcycles), play soccer or other sports at parks, go to nightclubs, etc.
Colombian has its own TV channels, and at most homes they have TV cable because it is not expensive. Colombia has festivals at many cities in different times of the year. The festivities could be related to the foundation of the city, the traditional carnival in February, Halloween, Christmas, etc. They do not have a big tradition about Santa Claus since that is pretty much in the US and the like, did not come much to South America. Is seen on TV and people know about him, but they are not followers of him. They do not have a day for Thanksgiving because that is also from something that happened in the US. They have a lot of holidays here. Often celebrated on Mondays. I could imagine those added holidays could be as many as 6 or 7. One major one is the 20th of July, which is for Independence Day (independence from Spain). As you know, Colombians speak Spanish, and study English in schools in their attempt to make it their second language. Other languages are hardly used. Visitors mostly come from nearby countries and from the US. Not much from Europe. One popular destination are the coasts of Colombia, mostly to the major ones such as Cartagena and Santa Marta. Colombia has many places to go to do things. It is not boring to live in Colombian. People is very friendly and visit each other very often. Some almost leave at the other person’s home. They are used to it. In some homes, like in the coast they may leave their doors open all or most of the day and be (specially the older) at the porch watching people walk by, the children playing soccer, etc. In the main cities people would often gather at parks where they would sit and talk or play (depending on age and type of park). Some would do sightseeing or take transportation where it would be fun to be (where there would be a lot of food, music, etc.). It is fun to be in Colombia. Safety is nearby since they have a lot of military and police everywhere.
Thanks @ Farooq lala , for sharing such a great things about Colombia. This is really great thing for us, because we are planning for a tour to Colombia. And this is really helping us. We are also contacting a travel guide “Hicartagena (dot) com”. And also looking for more ideas.