My bus trip to San Gil is memorable for one reason and one reason only; a Belgian girl named Han. Han has one of those unique, way-out-there personalities that always keeps you guessing about her sanity, sobriety, and general knowledge of how the world actually works. Today, her fascination was drawn out the bus window to the sides of the country roads where plump, fully plumaged, healthy looking chickens roamed freely about. Her amazement literally amazed me an...

Even Colombia recognizes a rare gem when they find it and the colonial village of Villa de Leyva is living proof. The town has been around since 1572 and modern architecture is almost non-existent. Colombia has been protecting it as a national monument since 1954. There's not much going here but the people are friendly and welcoming. The two days I spent here passed by slowly with me just walking around the quiet old streets pretending to be a National Geographi...

I left one big city for a bigger one. Bogota, the country's capital is a huge metropolis where the streets share smog belching buses carrying the middle class, Mercedes Benz' moving the rich in style, and to this day, horse drawn carts and the random donkey moving some poor person´s **** to wherever it needs to go. It's not as appealing as I remember it but I came here specifically to visit some old friends from my first time through back in 2005. My reunion...

I found a cheap flight to Medellin Colombia so here I am....becoming the jet setting backpacker. And as luck would have it, my crazy Christmas mates from Australia are here too. Natalie, Tom, and Chloe are performing the saintly task of volunteering in an orphanage on the outskirts of Medellin. I am acting as the devil´s hand that encourages us all to go to the Zona Rosa, stay out too late, and then just sleep in when they have to get up for work in the morn...

So now that the craziness of the new year has died down a little, I just have one more thing to do....and that´s to head into no-man´s land again on a bike. The greatest obstacle, as usual, is predicting if it will rain or not. I got pretty lucky this time out with just some cloudy skies and even some sun in the late afternoon. My mission, solo this time, was to to just pick some random roads and see where they go while still maintaining some sense of ...