Santa Marta in the context of "Airports"

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east and northeast, Brazil to the southeast, Peru and Ecuador to the south and southwest, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and Panama to the northwest. Colombia is divided into 32 departments. The Capital District of Bogotá is also the country's largest city hosting the main financial and cultural hub. Other major urban areas include Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Cúcuta, Ibagué, Villavicencio and Bucaramanga. It covers an area of 1,141,748 square kilometers (440,831 sq mi) and has a population of around 52 million. Its rich cultural heritage—including language, religion, cuisine, and art—reflects its history as a colony, fusing cultural elements brought by immigration from Europe and the Middle East, with those brought by the African diaspora, as well as with those of the various Indigenous civilizations that predate colonization. Spanish is the official language, although Creole, English and 64 other languages are recognized regionally.

Colombia has been home to many indigenous peoples and cultures since at least 12,000 BCE. The Spanish first landed in La Guajira in 1499, and by the mid-16th century, they had colonized much of present-day Colombia, and established the New Kingdom of Granada, with Santa Fe de Bogotá as its capital. Independence from the Spanish Empire is considered to have been declared in 1810, with what is now Colombia emerging as the United Provinces of New Granada. After a brief Spanish reconquest, Colombian independence was secured and the period of Gran Colombia began in 1819. The new polity experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858) and then the United States of Colombia (1863), before becoming a centralised republic—the current Republic of Colombia—in 1886. With the backing of the United States and France, Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, resulting in Colombia's present borders. Beginning in the 1960s, the country has suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict and political violence, both of which escalated in the 1990s. Since 2005, there has been significant improvement in security, stability, and rule of law, as well as unprecedented economic growth and development. Colombia is recognized for its healthcare system, being the best healthcare in Latin America according to the World Health Organization and 22nd in the world. Its diversified economy is the third-largest in South America, with macroeconomic stability and favorable long-term growth prospects.

An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface such as a runway for a plane to take off and to land or a helipad, and often includes adjacent utility buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminals, to maintain and monitor aircraft. Larger airports may have airport aprons, taxiway bridges, air traffic control centres, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, and emergency services. In some countries, the US in particular, airports also typically have one or more fixed-base operators, serving general aviation.

Airport operations are extremely complex, with a complicated system of aircraft support services, passenger services, and aircraft control services contained within the operation. Thus airports can be major employers, as well as important hubs for tourism and other kinds of transit. Because they are sites of operation for heavy machinery, a number of regulations and safety measures have been implemented in airports, in order to reduce hazards. Additionally, airports have major local environmental impacts, as both large sources of air pollution, noise pollution and other environmental impacts, making them sites that acutely experience the environmental effects of aviation. Airports are also vulnerable infrastructure to extreme weather, climate change caused sea level rise and other disasters.

Simón Bolívar International Airport (Spanish: Aeropuerto Internacional Simón Bolívar) (IATA: SMR, ICAO: SKSM) is an international airport serving the city of Santa Marta, Colombia. The airport is located 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of Santa Marta city center, on the shores of the Caribbean Sea. 18 kilometres (11 mi) north of the municipality of Ciénaga in Colombia.

It is operated by Aeropuertos De Oriente S.A.S., through a concession agreement with Aerocivil. It is the international airport of Colombia with the shortest runway, 1700 meters long.

Caribbean South America is a subregion of South America that borders the Caribbean Sea, consisting of the Caribbean region of Colombia and the Venezuelan Caribbean.

Significant cities and metropolitan areas with populations over 250,000 on South America's Caribbean coast include, from west to east: Cartagena (914,552), Barranquilla (2,370,753 metropolitan area), Santa Marta (499,192 district), Maracaibo (5,278,448 metropolitan area), Caracas (8,956,813 metropolitan area), Barcelona (815,141), Puerto La Cruz (454,312), and Cumaná (405,626).

This article lists cities and towns in Colombia by population, according to the 2005 census. A city is displayed in bold if it is a capital city of a department.

Magdalena (Spanish pronunciation: [maɣðaˈlena]) is a department of Colombia, located in the north of the country by the Caribbean Sea, with more than 1.3 million people. The capital of the Magdalena Department is Santa Marta and was named after the Magdalena River. The department inherited the name of one of the original nine states of the United States of Colombia that its current territory integrated.

Rodrigo de Bastidas (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈðɾiɣo ðe βasˈtiðas]; c. 1465 – 28 July 1527) was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who mapped the northern coast of South America, discovered Panama, and founded the city of Santa Marta.