Colombia Has a Town Where It Rains So Hard They Built an Entire Culture Around It

[00:00:00]Columbia has a town where it rains so hard, they built an entire culture around it.

[00:00:04]Most people don't know that Columbia is home to one of the wettest places on Earth. The Chocó region on Columbia's Pacific coast receives up to 13,000 mm of rain per year.

[00:00:17]That's more than 10 times the average rainfall of London. Some parts of Chocó see rain every single day of the year.

[00:00:23]But what happened there isn't misery.

[00:00:25]It's magic. The Afro-Colombian communities of Chocó developed one of the richest and most distinct cultures in all of South America.

[00:00:34]A fusion of African rhythms, indigenous traditions, and Spanish influences that produced music, food, spiritual practices, and crafts completely unique to this region. But here's where it gets wild. The Colombian government historically neglected Chocó despite it sitting on some of the country's richest biodiversity and mineral resources. Gold, platinum, timber, the region is one of the most biodiverse on Earth and one of the least visited.

[00:01:02]The people of Chocó turned constant rain and government abandonment into an identity so powerful that their music, currulao, is now considered a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage.

[00:01:15]They didn't just survive the rain. They turned it into art. Watch the full documentary on National Geographic.