Colombia's City of Parks — where Bucaramanga sits at 1,000 metres on a mesa above the Chicamocha Canyon and has more public parks per capita than any other city in South America (165 parks in a city of 600,000), the Parque del Agua (Water Park) and the Parque Santander are surrounded by a ring of café and empanada culture that defines Bumanguesa daily life, the Cañón del Chicamocha (45 km south) is one of the deepest canyon systems in South America (1,800 metres deep, wider than the Grand Canyon by volume), and Bucaramanga is the starting point for the Camino Real colonial trade route to Cartagena's port via the Magdalena River
Bucaramanga (600,000 city; 1.2 million metro) is the capital of Santander Department in northeastern Colombia at 1,000 metres elevation — a mid-size industrial and commercial city known informally as the 'City of Parks' for its unusually high number of public green spaces. It sits on a plateau above the Chicamocha River canyon and is surrounded by the Cordillera Oriental, giving it a permanent spring climate (average 24°C year-round). Bucaramanga is not a major international tourist destination but is one of Colombia's most liveable cities by Colombian quality-of-life indices.
The Bucaramanga area was inhabited by the Guane people — a Chibcha-speaking indigenous group of the Cordillera Oriental, distinct from the Muisca of Bogotá and notable for their advanced textile tradition (Guane cotton weaving is considered some of the finest pre-Columbian textile work in South America). The Spanish founded Villa de San Juan Girón (predecessor to Bucaramanga) in 1631, and the settlement of Bucaramanga itself was officially founded in 1622 (though disputed sources give 1622, 1630, or 1675 as the founding date). The city was a major node on the royal road (Camino Real) that con…