The traditional Mercator projection map that we're used to seeing, disproportionately shows countries at higher and lower latitudes to be much bigger than they are in relation to those closer to the equatorial region. Perhaps one reason why Greenland has been getting so much attention recently.
There's a great website, thetruesizeof.com, that allows you to compare the actual relative sizes of various countries, which is from where the pink Colombia map was created.
The Mercator projection was originally designed to allow shipping routes to be planned in straight lines across the oceans. These days that's not a priority for most map users, so perhaps it's time to adopt a different way of fitting a round peg (our near spherical world) into a square hole (our 2D way of seeing things on paper or screens).
Looking forward to explore this large and famous country. Famous for all the wrong reasons - I suspect Colombia will be much more than those preconceptions.
For example it is a very mountainous country, at the north end of the Andes mountains; at the same time, it touches the Amazon rainforest. And so, I expect some nice views and interesting off-road riding.
Previously when flying to South America, a transit in Miami was a common routing. But this time, I'm flying there deliberately avoiding travelling through the US, in case there are any issues at the border. In fact all our group are also avoiding the US for the same reason. A very sad state of affairs.
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