Cali, Pt. 2: This Time With Company

I've been keeping a mantra since I crossed into Mexico all those weeks ago: when traveling by motorcycle, never make plans more than two days in advance, because something will inevitably happen to blow them up. And so it went with Ngaire's and my plans to meet up in Ecuador.

To recap, from my last post: massive, widespread protests in Ecuador over the end of fuel subsidies and other austerity measures abruptly instituted by the government had resulted in road closures, riots, and violence all over the country. The news stories and reports from other travelers who'd been in the country when the protests started were getting worse by the day; not only were nearly all of the major cities effectively shut down, people on the various travelers' groups I keep up with on Facebook were reporting incidents of protesters attacking foreign travelers, and just about everyone who hadn't been near a border was stranded in place, wherever that might be. Ngaire and I had planned to meet in Quito on October 11th, but there was absolutely no way that was going to happen; even if she'd been able to leave the airport, which wasn't a guarantee at all, crossing the border and attempting to make it to Quito by road would have been borderline suicidal on my part. Luckily, after an overly complicated process with LATAM Airlines that bordered on a Catch-22 scenario, Ngaire had been able to change her flight to meet me in Cali with less than a day to spare, and I'd made the 8-hour ride back from Pasto in order to be there when she arrived. It had been a frantic couple of days, and we didn't have anything like a plan in mind, but the only thing that really mattered was that we'd be in the same place for the first time since early July.

And in total keeping with the Adam my friends know and love, I was late to the airport. Serves me right for trusting Google's flight tracker (and I kind of got the bike stuck trying to get it out of our hostel). Neither of us really cared once we were reunited, though. After Ngaire's frantic day trying to get her flights worked out, and my slightly frantic road blitz back to Cali, we were both a little worn out, so after a quick and somewhat underwhelming lunch (the basic meat-rice-plantains combo got old for me long ago), all we really wanted to do was stock up on groceries for the week and take a nap. I'd booked us a private room at Oasis, another highly rated hostel in Cali, and in the evening, we joined several of the other guests for salsa lessons and then enjoyed some nice live music from the hostel's roof terrace over a homemade dinner.

Saturday would be a day for adventuring and hiking. We'd hoped to be able to visit the Farallones de Cali national park, but it turned out that we needed advance reservations to even enter, and there didn't seem to be any way to arrange that on a weekend. I'd read about a small town near the park called Rio Pance that supposedly had some nice trails leading to a couple of waterfalls. The road leading along the river of the same name had some sketchy parts, and I was more than a little nervous about riding two-up on dirt for the first time, but as usual, the Twin performed flawlessly. We stopped in Rio Pance for a lunch of freshly grilled Tilapia, then set off to try to find the trails. It wasn't quite obvious where we were supposed to go, but after half an hour or so of walking up the road leading away from Rio Pance and towards the mountains, we found a national parks sign and a trail leading off into the jungle next to the river. The trail was soaking wet but a nice hike, but as it turned out, the waterfall we'd hoped for was way further than we'd thought, and it was about to get dark, so we turned around and headed back to Cali.

After getting back and showering off, we joined a few of the other hostel guests and went out to Malamaña; I'd talked the bar up quite a bit, and hadn't been the only one. There was no live band this time around, so the place was far less packed, but that gave us some actual room to dance, and Ngaire and I took full advantage. Other than some patrons who got overly territorial about bar seats, it was a great night and an opportunity for Ngaire to experience a quintessential part of Cali culture.

Since nearly everything closes on Sunday and we still hadn't heard back from the park service, we decided to be tourists for a day and see some of the famous sights in Cali. First up was a return (for me) to the Gatos del Rio, certainly more enjoyable with a partner (and we're both cat people). From there, we headed up above the city to the Cristo Rey, with a stop at the Mariposario Andoke on the way. We had fun walking around the gardens and butterfly enclosure, which was full of Blue Morphos and a few other species we'd never have seen in the U.S, and then continued up to the Cristo Rey, an 85-foot statue of Jesus overlooking Cali. We had a gorgeous view of Cali and the valley beyond, and after taking plenty of photos and enjoying some luladas, a drink made with local Lulo fruit, we rode back to Oasis for the night.

Monday was a national holiday, and as such we knew that any of the major attractions that were actually open would be packed. We decided instead to ride west into the mountains, to the town of Pichinde, where the owner of our hostel had recommended we explore the river and trails all around the tiny mountain town. We ran into a couple of steep sections, one of which was precarious enough that Ngaire hopped off and walked it so that we wouldn't both fall over on the bike, but after a few confusing signs and some local advice, we found at least one of the trails we were looking for. A couple of hours of hiking ended with the trail dead-ending into private property, but the wildlife alone was worth it; we saw a number of tropical birds we'd never have encountered in North America, a few snakes, and a toad the size of a salad plate that didn't seem too impressed with us. 

The ride back was thankfully much easier, with a couple of stops for photo ops on the way, though we did end up getting stuck in standstill traffic once we rejoined the main road back to Cali. I wasn't as brazen about passing traffic as the locals, but we were still able to jump large parts of the line; the perks of riding a motorcycle in South America once again.

We'd planned something special for our last full day in Cali, and after eating an early breakfast, we loaded our packs and cameras on the bike and set off for the two-hour ride west to Zaragosa, where we would park the bike and cross over to the jungle town of San Cipriano. The ride went great until we ran into light, but constant rain about half an hour out, and by the time we found a place to park, we were both a bit wet. Once we crossed the pedestrian bridge over a raging river and paid the entry fee for the park and the town, we were treated to San Cipriano's unique form of access. San Cipriano has around 500 residents, and lies around 7-8 km from any road access, and requires at least two river crossings no matter how you get there. There is a railroad leading from the town of Cordoba further upriver, past Zaragosa, and into the jungle to San Cipriano, but the passenger trains that once served the town have long since stopped running. The residents, quite aware of the tourism potential of their town, came up with their own solution to replace the trains: the brujita.

The brujitas are, in essence, a low, flat railway cart with bench seats bolted to the bottom, and propelled by a motorcycle with the front axle secured to the cart and the rear tire hanging down onto the rails for propulsion.

This was, without question, the strangest form of transport I'd ever experienced, but once I got over the feeling that I might fall off the narrow bench seats at any time, one of the most hilariously fun. The motorcycles were small, commonly available 250cc units, but with little resistance from the rails, they could push the whole rig at a pretty good clip, and seated on the front, it felt a lot like a rollercoaster ride. The jungle whipped by on every side, though the rain made it a little hard to keep looking forward without my helmet on. The total lack of suspension made for a punishing ride at times, but I found myself loving it; it was like someone had combined the ease of a taxi with the exhilaration of a motorcycle, and despite my forward-facing side being completely soaked by the time we finished the half-hour journey to San Cipriano, I couldn't stop smiling.

San Cipriano's biggest attractions, other than the brujitas themselves, are the many hiking trails leading away from the town, and tubing on the river. With all the rain lately, the river was swollen, rapid, and far too dangerous for tubing, so after paying a small entrance fee for the national park, we set out in search of more hiking trails and wildlife. We didn't have to go far, and soon found ourselves hiking through gorgeous, thick jungle to a beautiful waterfall and lagoon. We spent some time swimming, and found a few frogs and birds around the lagoon, and once we'd had enough, dried off and started hiking back so as not to miss the last brujita back to Zaragosa. We saw many more tropical birds on the way back, including a couple of toucans overhead, and some beautiful insects and butterflies; we'd certainly had a nature-filled couple of days, and I didn't mind at all.

After another fun ride back to Zaragosa, thankfully dry this time, we got back on the bike and headed back to Cali. We'd thought about trying to go out for more salsa and music, but we were both wiped out and wanted to do nothing more than clean up and fall asleep.

Wednesday was supposed to be Ngaire's last day in Cali, with her flight back to Santiago leaving in the late afternoon. We'd wanted to get a taste of Colombia's most famous (legal) export, and found a couple of coffee shops that offered tastings of various types grown in the country. One turned out to be closed, but the other, Macondo, served up some excellent brew and a light lunch. After walking around some of the neighborhoods we hadn't seen, enjoying murals and old buildings, we went back to the hostel to pack up and get Ngaire to the airport. It was fortunate that we double-checked her flight status however, as thunderstorms in the area had delayed a number of flights out of Cali, including hers. So much so, in fact, that she had no chance of making her connection in Bogota, and thus would have to wait until the early morning the next day. Happy to have one more night together, we enjoyed a nice dinner together, and another few hours of drinks and chatting with other hostel guests, a few of whom we'd gotten to know well over our nearly-week there. Waking up at 4 A.M. in order to get to the airport wasn't ideal, but at least we didn't have to fight traffic, and after heartfelt goodbyes, Ngaire made her flight with time to spare, and I headed back to the hostel to get a few more hours of rest before I would have to ride to Pasto for the second time.

The trip had been a much-needed diversion from world events for both of us, but fortunately for me, the protests in Ecuador had ended days earlier, and it looked like I would have smooth riding for the rest of my time in Colombia and onward to Quito. Little did I know what was to come...

Cali to Pasto & Back

Still riding the happy feelings from the previous day, I set off for Cali early in the morning. For the first time in over a week, I ended up on an actual highway, giving up fun curves for passing lanes and high speed limits. After over a week in the mountains, I was now seeing the Cauca Valley spreading out on all sides, with tall trees giving way to sugarcane fields. As I got closer to Cali, I started seeing warning signs for "Cruce de Tren Caneros." As I was puzzling over what exactly that meant, a truck pulling four enormous trailers overflowing with sugarcane passed by in the other direction, and the mystery was solved. Sugarcane season appeared to be in full swing, with harvesters crisscrossing the fields, cane trains (hah) trunding along the highways, and the sometimes oppressively sweet smell of the crop being boiled down at the sugarcane mills interspersed between fields permeated the air.

One other thing I noticed as I got into Cali: it was hot. I'd grown used to pleasant days and cool nights in the mountains, and the 90+-degree temperatures and oppressive humidity in the Cauca Valley were a rude awakening, and I was glad to get to my hostel for the two days I'd be spending in Cali, and out of my riding gear. La Sucursal is located in one of the nicer neighborhoods on the north end of Cali, and leans heavily into the city's famous love of salsa dancing. When I arrived, there was a couple practicing steps in the main common area, salsa music was playing nearly the whole day, and the hostel offers free lessons every day for aspiring dancers. The friendly staff large murals throughout the hostel only helped the good vibes. After dropping my things and showering off, I found a parqueadero to park the Twin for the night, souring somewhat at the attendant's attempts to charge me double because my bike was larger than the others there, and returned to eat dinner, meet people, and partake of the free lessons.

As it was a Saturday night, nobody wanted to sit around all evening, so after dinner and a somewhat rushed salsa lesson, several of us headed out to Malamaña, one of the more popular salsa bars in Cali. After paying the cover and a security pat-down, we entered and found a packed sea of bodies swinging and spinning to upbeat salsa music. As tourists from Australia, Germany, and the USA, we were wildly out of our league; there were some seriously good dancers and couples there, but we each got in a few numbers, and had fun watching the activity either way. A live band went on around midnight, making an already exciting atmosphere even better, and overall it was a great introduction to Cali's famous salsa culture.

The next day, I took a walk from the hostel to explore a bit of Cali during the daytime, forgetting that it was Sunday and everything was closed. With the museums I'd had in mind off the list, I took a walk through the central park bordering the river, eventually ending up at the Gatos del Rio, a series of sculptures inspired by a giant cat sculpted by artist Hernando Tejada, and the Iglesia La Ermita, a small but very ornate Gothic-style church built from white stone. It wasn't the most productive outing, but I still enjoyed getting to see more of Cali than I had from the seat of my motorcycle, and even wandering around the neighborhoods and small parks, I could still see Colombia's general love of murals and colorful art.

I'd assumed earlier in the day that being a Sunday night, there wouldn't be quite as much going on, but the music in Cali never stops, and neither does the dancing. One of the guys I'd met at the hostel had heard about a cabaret-style salsa club called El Mulato, supposedly famous for its stage shows, and it didn't take much convincing to get myself and several others on board. Midnight would mark my 32nd birthday, and it certainly sounded better than lounging around at the hostel. As it turned out, I shared a birthday with another one of the hostel guests, so it took even less convincing to get us all out again. After some confusion with how exactly the admission worked, eight of us found a couple of tables at El Mulato, right next to the dance floor and stage. Watching the many local couples and dancing a few numbers ourselves was fun, but nothing compared to the stage shows. The dancers moved so fast it was hard to keep up, and the acrobatics they pulled off were spectacular. Between the dancing, the shows, the music, and a couple of shared bottles of local aguardiente liquor, it was a pretty excellent way to finish off year 32.

Monday morning, feeling surprisingly OK given the night I'd just had, I loaded back up and continued south, hoping to make it to Popayan by nightfall, and Pasto the next day. Despite running into a torrential downpour just outside of town, I made it to Popayan just fine, meeting Daniel, my Couchsurfing host for the night, at his family's home. Daniel had spent six months working in Oregon, spoke excellent English, and was an enthusiastic motorcyclist himself, so we had plenty to talk about and bond over. His family owned a chain of restaurants in Popayan, so dinner was taken care of as well. I was a little disappointed to only be staying one night, but I had a deadline to make in Ecuador...or so I thought.

Ngaire and I had long ago made plans to meet up in Quito on October 16th, a date I thought I could easily make when we'd first set it. Since then, however, things in Ecuador had rapidly taken a turn for the worst. On October 2nd, while I'd been making my way through Manizales, the Ecuadorian president had announced an abrupt end to 40 years of fuel subsidies in the country, increasing the price of gasoline by about 25%, nearly tripling the price of diesel, and sparking immediate, widespread protests throughout the country almost overnight. The indigenous communities in Ecuador, already one of the lowest-income groups in the country, would be hit particularly hard, and responded by blocking roads throughout the country, along with violent protests in many major cities. In a matter of days, Ecuador was effectively paralyzed; I'd been reading reports of road travelers stranded all across the country by impassable roadblocks and attacks on vehicles attempting to cross them; in addition, all roads leading into and out of the airport in Quito had been completely shut down. I carried onto Pasto, hoping against hope that things might let up in time for me to cross the border and for Ngaire's flight to make it, but if anything, the riots, protests, and road closures were only getting worse. I spent two days in Pasto, doing some hiking in the mountains surrounding the city and photographing a few of the beautiful churches, but with no changes apparent in Ecuador, it was obvious that even if I could get across the border, I wouldn't get anywhere close to Quito as things stood.

After a frantic evening and morning of consultation with Ngaire, and lots of battling with LATAM Airlines on her end, she was able to change her flight to Cali, and with less than a day's notice, I hopped on the bike and blitzed it back up north. The road between Cali to Pasto was utterly gorgeous, with the mountains and canyons surrounding Pasto being some of the most spectacular I'd seen all trip, and the weather was thankfully cooperating this time.

Just outside of Pasto, I ran into a group of motorcyclists on large adventure bikes not too dissimilar to mine, with a BMW GS, a couple of KLR650s, and another Honda touring bike in the mix, who turned out to be in the same situation as me; they'd been hoping to cross the border the previous night, but thwarted by the protests, had turned back towards Cali. I ended up joining them for almost the whole ride, noting how much quicker the trip went when following locals, and by that evening, had made it all the way back to Cali. The trip had taken yet another unexpected turn, and I had to scramble to make plans for the next five days in Cali, but all I cared about was that in less than a day, Ngaire and I would be reunited for the first time in months.

Mountain Palms, Ghost Towns, And Unexpected Friends

I left Medellin somewhat reluctantly, but eager to continue exploring more of Colombia. My next major destination would be Cali, but I had several natural and man-made points of interest I wanted to see as I meandered south. I couldn't get out without a few more stoplight conversations and a couple of selfies to go along with them, though; small talk about my trip was starting to get old, but the enthusiasm that Medellin's motorcyclists had showed towards me, my bike, and the trip was infectious. I was going to miss Medellin.

My first destination would be Manizales, where I'd booked two nights at a hostel run by the Hacienda Venecia coffee farm in the small mountain city, and I rejoined Colombia's section of the Pan-American Highway for the approximately five-hour ride through the mountains. While the parts of the Panamericana I'd ridden through Costa Rica and Panama had been mostly flat and straight, Colombia's Highway 25 was anything but; most of the route to Manizales consisted of switchback curves with the bare minimum of straight pavement in between. It was a motorcyclist's paradise...or would have been, if not for the fact that it was still one of the busiest highways in Colombia and heavily traveled by trucks and buses. I spent much of my first couple of hours on the road stuck behind slow-moving trucks, taking advantage of any straight bits of road to get past, but almost always running up on another line of cars before too long.

At some point, I glanced in my mirrors and saw the driver of the pickup behind me waving frantically out his window. Thinking something had fallen off the back of the bike, or that I'd run over a nail or piece of metal on the ground and punctured my tire, I pulled off as soon as I could. The pickup driver got out behind me, and with a huge smile, explained that he owned a nearly identical red, white, and blue Africa Twin, and that mine was the first other one he'd seen in nearly two years of ownership. When I explained that I'd ridden all the way from the U.S. and was on my way to Chile, Adrian immediately offered to put me up for a night in his hometown of Armenia, beyond Manizales on my way to Cali. I gratefully accepted his offer, and we agreed to stay in touch via Whatsapp in the meantime. I couldn't help but marvel at the total, random chance of the whole thing as I rode off again.

I didn't manage to make it to Manizales before nightfall, which only became a problem when I got to the Hacienda Venecia and realized that it was at the end of a long, rocky dirt road with several steep slopes that weren't entirely dry. I probably would have been fine had it been daytime, but not being able to see more than a few feet in front of me made those final few kilometers absolutely nerve-wracking, particularly since the last section was very steep and covered in sawdust, making it impossible to see what I was actually riding over. As the saying goes, send it and hope for the best. Once past the nighttime obstacle course, I found one of the most comfortable hostel dorms I've yet stayed in, along with a cozy garden and friendly hosts.

The next day, with low clouds hanging around and a slight threat of rain, I headed east from Manizales over the mountains. Climbing quickly to a chilly 12,000 feet through fog and rain, I found myself on one of the genuinely best roads I've ever experienced on a motorcycle. Even the slippery and cold conditions couldn't dampen the fun I was having on the nearly deserted switchbacks winding around and through the Los Nevados range, and it only got better once I descended below the clouds and back onto dry pavement.

My destination for the day was the abandoned town of Armero, a site I'd read about several times before, and one that had held a morbid and somber fascination to me since I'd first learned about it. Located in a river valley approximately 30 miles from the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, Armero was one of the most productive agricultural centers in Colombia, and at its peak boasted a population of nearly 29,000 people. On the night of November 13th, 1985 after several months of low-level activity, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, producing pyroclastic flows that rapidly turned into lahars (volcanic mudslides) as they melted glacial ice on the volcano's slopes and gathered material on the way down. Although Colombia's national geology institute had produced maps warning of an imminent eruption and extreme hazards to Armero and many surrounding towns, the maps were poorly distributed and confusing to anyone not familiar with reading topography. In addition, despite warnings from scientists and pleas for assistance prior to the eruption from Armero's mayor, the Colombian congress largely dismissed warnings of an eruption and potential danger from lahars as scaremongering. Storms on the night of the eruption hampered communications and kept most residents of the region inside, and as a result, nearly the entire population of Armero was in their homes when the first of the lahars slammed into the city around midnight. In a matter of minutes, a 30-mph wave of mud the consistency of concrete and up to 100 feet deep almost completely buried Armero; when the mudflows stopped after more than two hours, over 23,000 people, nearly three-quarters of the population, were dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced from homes all over the region.

Photos copyright U.S. Geological Survey

Nearly all roads to Armero had been destroyed by the lahars, and as a result, the first rescuers took more than 12 hours to reach the buried city. Rescue efforts were haphazard and disorganized, due in large part to a lack of equipment and preparation, and the soft mud made it nearly impossible for rescuers reach victims without sinking in themselves. The events that came to be known as the Armero tragedy were immortalized by photojournalist Frank Fournier's iconic photograph of 13 year-old Omayra Sanchez; discovered trapped in water up to her neck, rescuers were unable to disentangle Sanchez from the ruins of her home, and she died of gangrene and hypothermia after two and a half days in the water. Sanchez became a symbol of what many in Colombia and around the world saw, with good reason, as a disaster caused in large part by governmental negligence.

Armero appears almost without warning when heading south on Hwy 43 through Tolima; other than a couple of signs in the neighboring town of Guayabal, the first indication that one has entered the site of the worst natural disaster in Colombian history and second-worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century are the rows of gutted buildings on either side of the road. The few buildings that remained above the mud were abandoned more or less as-is, and the streets running between them, though mostly loose gravel and broken pavement, can still be traversed on foot (or motorcycle). Though I did see a building marked "MUSEO" just off the main highway, no one was there to open it for the two hours I spent in the city, and so my tour of Armero was almost entirely self-guided. 

What I found was one of the most haunting places I've ever been. I have always been fascinated by abandoned buildings and ghost towns, but knowledge of how the town was destroyed made for an unsettling experience. In parts, all that's visible of the houses and businesses that once formed the town are foundations and bits of rubble peeking through the grass, some with grave markers in front of them and cattle grazing in between. Other deaths are marked simply by names spraypainted on the sides of the buildings where entire families were buried alive. The sheer scale of destruction is hard to comprehend, but the names, and the simple gravestones clustered around the memorial in what used to be Armero's central square, brought it home in a very real way. The knowledge that tens of thousands of people had died in the buildings I was looking at, and that many of them were still buried in the ground beneath my feet, was ever-present in the back of my mind as I walked the quiet gravel streets. It is hard to put the thoughts that ran through my head into words, so I'll let the photos I took speak for themselves.

Riding back to Manizales revealed many things I hadn't seen on the way out. With the fog lifted and most of the rain gone, I could actually see all the way around corners, which made the ride even more fun, and the scenery around was as amazing as anything I'd seen in Colombia thus far. Around the halfway point, the parting clouds revealed a distant landscape of rock and snow above the rolling green peaks, and I realized with slight turn of my stomach that I was looking at Nevado del Ruiz, the volcano that had wiped out the town I'd just spent my afternoon in. 

The following day, I packed up and headed south again, intending to head to Armenia for a rendezvous with Adrian, with a stop in Salento to see the Valle del Cocora and its world-famous wax palms. Salento itself was gorgeous, with yet another beautiful and tightly curving road to get there, and the Valle de Cocora absolutely lived up to the hype. The mountain landscape was gorgeous, with easily accessible hiking trails, and the wax palms, so-called for the natural wax covering their trunks, stood more than 100 feet tall all around. Cocora has the distinction of hosting both the tallest and highest palm trees in the world, and they made for a unique landscape juxtaposed against the Andean paramo. I even saw an Andean Condor soaring among the slopes and trees, the first one I'd ever seen up close. 

At the highest of the overlooks in the valley itself, I met Sergio, a fellow motorcyclist who'd recognized my boots and riding gear for what they were, and after hearing about my trip and how far I'd ridden to get to Cocora, he and his girlfriend invited me for coffee in Salento on the way back. Sergio was eager to hear some of my stories from the road, hoping to do a similar trip in reverse someday, and it turned out that his girlfriend was a nurse and volunteer paramedic with one of the local Cruz Roja squads, so we had lots to talk about for the rest of the afternoon, while enjoying some excellent coffee and nice views at the overlook atop Salento. After chasing each other back down the winding road connecting Salento to the main highway, we parted ways.

I managed to make it to Armenia before nightfall, and after some confusion with directions, met Adrian at the costume and party shop he owns in downtown Armenia. His Africa Twin, identical to mine but for a few accessories, sat out front, looking sparkling clean and immaculate next to my dust-covered machine with its missing handguard and battered crash bars. I figured it was a sign I was using it properly, and besides, Adrian had already shown me photos of him hurling his Twin around some very rough trails. He welcomed me happily, and after closing up shop, I followed him a few blocks to his apartment, where I was able to park under shelter and get changed.

I'd expected to shower off, find a cheap dinner somewhere nearby, and turn in early, but Adrian would have none of it. Unbeknownst to me, he'd gathered a couple of his motorcycling friends for dinner at a steakhouse in Armenia, and took me to meet them there. Over drinks and some truly excellent steak, we spent the evening discussing my trip, the joys of riding motorcycles in Colombia, the seven years one of Adrian's friends had spent living in New York, and anything else that came to mind.

They refused to let me pay for anything at the end of the night, and I found myself both humbled and incredulous. Adrian and I had met by the most cosmically tiny chance, connected by nothing but the fact that we owned the same motorcycle and I liked his country, but that had been enough for him to not only offer me the hospitality of his home, but also pitch in on buying me one of the best meals I'd had all trip, and it was hard to wrap my head around. The phrase "mi casa es su casa" gets bandied around a lot, but my experiences all throughout Central and South America, particularly in Mexico and now Colombia, had convinced me that it's more than just a saying.

The hospitality and friendship I had been offered from complete strangers in through seven countries, across nearly 7,000 miles of traveling, had been unlike anything I'd ever experienced, and while Adrian had gone far above and beyond some of my previous hosts, I was starting to understand that what I was experiencing was as much cultural as it was personal. While I won't go as far as saying that Americans are inherently paranoid, we're taught from a young age that our first reaction to meeting new people should be to distrust them until proven otherwise. It had taken a while, but I was starting to realize that that instinct had unconsciously colored many of my interactions with people over the previous two months, whether through a reluctance to engage in conversation in the first place, or having to suppress the idea that people couldn't be this friendly to strangers without an ulterior motive. This cultural norm that I'd grown up with didn't seem to exist in Latin America as such; if someone greeted you with a smile and you responded in kind, you were OK. If someone asked you a question and you responded in a positive fashion, you were worth talking to. And if someone flagged you down on the side of the road because they owned the same motorcycle as you and you professed your love for their country while not immediately bailing out of misplaced paranoia, you were worth opening their home and circle of friends to. This is likely a lesson that every world traveler learns at some point; for me, that point had been the side of a Colombian mountain highway kilometers from anything, but I wasn't going to forget it any time soon.