Útica

Utica is a town and municipality in the

Cundinamarca Department Department of Cundinamarca (, ) is one of the departments of Colombia. Its area covers (not including the Capital District) and it has a population of 2,919,060 as of 2018. It was created on August 5, 1886, under the constitutional terms pre ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

located some 127 kilometers from

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

. The village lies at an altitude of 506 meters above sea level and has an average daily temperature of 26 °C. Utica grew from a small fishing community, with the Rio Negro and the Quebradanegra running through it. The village is prone to flooding, caused by heavy rains further up the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

causing the rivers to burst their banks. The most severe flood washed away the village bridge and unearthed the corpses from the cemetery. The village is a vacation spot particularly promoting extreme sports such as

rafting Rafting and whitewater rafting are recreational outdoor activities which use an inflatable raft to navigate a river or other body of water. This is often done on whitewater or different degrees of rough water. Dealing with risk is often a ...

and

abseiling Abseiling ( ; ), also known as rappelling ( ; ), is the controlled descent of a steep slope, such as a rock face, by moving down a rope. When abseiling, the person descending controls their own movement down a static or fixed rope, in cont ...

. The village is said to have been founded by Manuel Murillo Toro c. 1802 who stopped whilst travelling, liked the area and built a house. The building remains as the defunct railway station in Curapo Utica {{Cundinamarca-geo-stub