Colombia Calling - Living And Working In Colombia

'Romantic, adventurous and thrilling ... remarkable' Telegraph  'Vivid, fast-paced and wonderfully ambitious … Patria teems with alternative stories of a continent’s life and peoples' New Internationalist In late 1869, Richard Francis Burton stepped ashore in Southampton, fresh from a sightseeing tour of bone-strewn South American battlefields. The most lethal conflict ever fought on the continent was still stumbling to its gory conclusion. But if the celebrity adventurer expected to be mobbed with reporters, he was disappointed. Burton was ‘mortified’ to perceive how oblivious his fellow Britons were to ‘perhaps the most remarkable campaign fought during the present century’. Tales of Dr Francia – Paraguay’s dour, iron-willed dictator for almost thirty years – had once piqued the public’s curiosity. But the country had since ‘dropped clean out of vision. Many, indeed, were uncertain whether it formed part of North or of South America.’ He found ‘blankness of face’ whenever Paraguay was mentioned, ‘and a ge