Bango Cheito.........most dangerous?
Bango, I respectfully differ from your choices of the safest cities. Cartagena, I can swallow. But Bogota? I feel safer in Medellin as compared to Bogota. I have felt safer in the favelas in RIO and the Sarengetti in my Safari trip as compared to Bogota. No joke! Just the fact that the hotel employees have to take down the personal information of the taxi drivers that are picking you up at the hotel( in case you disapear, they can at least have a clue of who you were last seen with), raises a big red flag.
Granted, most of the rough places I have been to have been with a paisa friend, a rolo friend, and a carioca friend(rio). I have been to some pretty screwed up places, in different countries and I just felt totally unsafe as soon as I stepped on the sidewalk in Bogota. All that being said, I don't think Bogota is the most dangerous city in Colombia. Just my two pennies worth, according to my experiences and the experiences of mi amigos y amigas de Colombia.
Don't send by regular mail!!!!!
A friend of mine did a little experiment sending postcards all over Bogota via the postal service there.... by his results they lost 60% of what he sent!!! No I didn't slip on the zero there, it was over half!
Private courier services are generally good and reliable. It usually takes a week or less from NYC for stuff to get to Bogota, here we have Servientrega and Expresito, the two big ones, and then a bunch of smaller envios places. I'm using some little place in Queens on Tuesday that only charges $1.19 per pound!