The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the highest coastal mountain range on earth. It climbs from the Caribbean to five and a half thousand metres in barely forty kilometres — snow above, sea below, cloud forest in between.
At nine hundred metres, the air turns cool and green. Coffee and banana grow up to the door. Mornings begin with birds you'll hear before you see. At night the forest goes dark and the lights of Santa Marta appear, far below, like a city dropped into the sea.
This is where the houses are.
