Buenaventura, Colombia

With a population of 423,927, Buenaventura is a gritty port city that serves as Colombia's main Pacific gateway, but its strategic location has also made it a hotbed of gang violence. The port handles nearly 60% of the country's imports and exports, yet the city remains one of the most impoverished in Colombia, hampered by a notorious history of drug trafficking and armed conflict. While the government has deployed a marine special forces unit to combat the violence, the murder rate in 2010 was a staggering 175.2 per 100,000 residents - five times the national average. Those looking to relocate here should brace for a heavy bureaucratic burden and a climate that sees up to 7,000 mm of annual rainfall, making it one of the rainiest cities in the world.