Colombia Street Address

How do you read a colombian street address.

This is an example in Cali

Calle 21N # 2N – 10 30

With the great link Lionheart provided in a different thread, I was able to locate the street on a map. Great. Now how do I figure out where on that street this address is? All the roads around it are all numbered. Shouldn't be too difficult! I get that this is 21st street, but what about the rest?

By fzrdan on Jan 26, 2005, 17:58 in Friendly Talkzone.

Dan says on Jan 26, 2005, 18:10:

almost there.. First you are right about 21st street. Normally, from what I've seen, the first number is the street that it's on. The other numbers afterwards is the cross road and how many meters it is from that intersection. for example Cl 12 No 62-50: 12 street crossroad is 62 and it's 50 meters from the intersection

God Bless America!

RecochanBoy says on Jan 26, 2005, 18:51:

Streets in Colombia are usually arranged as a grid, with (0, 0) at the city center. You always start with the street where the place is at; in your example it's Calle but it also may be other things like Carrera, Avenida, Diagonal, Transversal. In Bogotá, a Calle runs from east to west and a Carrera runs from north to south. Avenida can be either one and it may have either a name or a number (i.e. Avenida 82 or Avenida Caracas). Calle and Carrera usually have numbers only. The rest of the number is read as Dan explains it; find the cross road and then the number after the dash is the house number, i.e. houses in the same block (let's say 45) should start at 01 and end at 99 (more or less), for instance 45-01 for the first house and 45-99 for the last one. The even house numbers on one side of the street and the odd ones across the street from the even ones. Sometimes you may find an "N" or "S" added to the number; that means North or South, to distinguish that street from the same street number at the opposite half of the town.

R.B.

Chuck says on Jan 28, 2005, 22:10:

Not quite right.... Most of the towns do not start at a grid with 0,0 downtown. They start with 50,50 which means that Calle 50 x Carrera 50 is downtown. This was decided when cities were small and they thought it was improbable that the town grew more than 50 streets south or 50 carreras east. This is the reason you don't see NW SW NE SE in most street addresses. But the above didn't worked out right in some cities. Downtown Medellin is Calle 50 x Carrera 50 but the city grew towards el poblado whose main street is Calle 10. If you continue south then you reach Calle 1 and then it changes to Calle 1 Sur,Calle 2 Sur, Calle 3 sur and so on. Only the streets South of the nonexistent Calle Zero are marked with an "S".

One more thing! The system works! I've been in the states trying to find a street address in a small town and it is imppossible. The only way is to get a map and search with a huge magnifing glass for the name of the street. But when you try to buy the map no one carries it! 7-11? nope, gas station?, last sold was in 84! I was lucky and found a fire department and they called their map expert and finally he found the address I was searching. A trailer park!