Modern office buildings tower over centuries-old cathedral spires. Yellow, bug-like taxis dart past ragged horse carts. The electric pulse of international house music compliments a full repertoire of folkloric standards from the provinces. Contemporary art galleries and explosions of graffiti. Boutique hotels and backpacker hostels. Theatre festivals and street performers. Five-star restaurants and five-thousand-peso luncheonettes. Highlife on 93rd and whores on 23rd. Ten minutes of equatorial sun and ten hours of ice-cold rain. Vast flatness leading to a jagged horizon of green mountains, Monserrate andthe Virgin Mary blessing the whole array. Developed-world comforts and developing-world chaos. Rags and riches. Bogotá is contrast, perched 2,600 meters above sea level. That’s high.

Hosting a burgeoning population of over eight million, Bogotá has almost shed its not-so-unearned reputation for insurgent violence and other such un-pleasantries. Almost. Battling both selective news reports and erroneous Hollywood imagery, most of the city’s renaissance has only been chronicled in Spanish-language media (which many English-speakers just don’t understand). But this year, the crown of the Colombian Andes caught the eye of The New York Times, which listed Bogotá in its “53 Places to Go in 2008,” and we consider it our duty to continue exposing the shiny new Bogotá as it joins Buenos Aires, Santiago, and São Paulo among the ranks of the continent’s world cities.

Bogotá 2600 is a gateway to the Bogotá that welcomes ever-increasing scores of foreign tourists—three times as many gringos since 2003—as well as foreign expatriates, planting roots in the city in the clouds. Here, English-speaking visitors and residents can discover the who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s, why’s, and how’s of Colombia’s on-and-poppin’ capital city. So welcome to the Cinderella of South America, where, as the country’s official tourism agency touts, “the only risk is wanting to stay.”

Ernest White II and Pepe Caracas