Hi everyone,

I know. That subject line is pure clickbait. Stay with me, because that story is the reason our Colombia trip exists.

If you don't know, I'm Colombian American. Growing up, we spent holidays and summers in Colombia, sometimes for months at a time. Then for several years, we stopped going. My mom's family is from Cali, and the drug violence made the trip too risky. (If you've watched Narcos, Cali is season three.)

The summer I was in 6th grade, we finally went back, and it was the best summer of my life. There was family everywhere and a party every night, which I took as proof that life in Colombia was one long celebration. (It was a party because we were visiting, and only for a short time. I figured that out much later.) The boys were also much cuter than the ones back home. I begged my parents to move us back, baffled that anyone would ever leave. They did not oblige.

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The song that will forever remind me of my childhood trips to Colombia.

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That fall, everyone in my class presented how they'd spent their summer. I showed photos of my uncle's farm, the beaches of Santa Marta, the painted balconies of Cartagena. Afterward, a boy came up to my desk, smirking, and asked if I'd brought him back any of that "white coffee." Then he laughed, loud enough for his friends to hear, like I was the punchline.

I didn't get it. I only knew he was putting my country down, and me along with it. It would take a sobering conversation that night with my parents to understand what he meant. It was the 90s, and he was only the first. Next came years of people asking if Pablo Escobar was my uncle in jest when they found out I was Colombian, along with every other stereotype you can imagine.

It frustrated me every time, because the Colombia I knew sounded nothing like that. It was the Andes towering over Bogotá, the sugarcane valley outside Cali, the Sierra Nevada dropping straight into the Caribbean at Santa Marta. Fresh lulo juice at breakfast and salsa pouring out of car windows. My family dancing until three in the morning, a bottle of aguardiente going around the room, someone always on guitar. Strangers greeting you on the street like they'd been expecting you.
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From a young age, it is the place where I felt more alive than anywhere else. Much later, I learned Colombians have a word for that feeling. Sabrosura. Living with pure pleasure, in your body, in the moment.

Breaking those stereotypes became a personal mission. When Colombia's tourism board launched "Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay" in 2008, I was so proud. I quoted it every time someone asked me, "But is Colombia safe?" It came up constantly, whether I was visiting family or there for work.
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For several years, my international development work brought me back to the motherland, and to corners of the country and communities even most Colombians never get to see, from the Darién near the Panama border to the most rural towns in the coffee region to the Amazon. So when I launched Colombia as our second destination after Nicaragua in 2015, I didn't take it lightly. I wanted more people to know the Colombia I knew. A country that was resilient, and also thriving.

Early on in the El Camino journey, we worked with Maria Paulina Arango, the jewelry designer behind Makua in Medellín. When she met with our travelers, she often talked about a generation of young Colombians building businesses as a way to safeguard the peace, because no one wanted to go back to the Escobar years. She would describe the bombings and the violence so many of them had been caught in the middle of. Then she'd say something that still gives me goosebumps, even typing it out now.

Colombians have been answering that question ever since, and my job has been to put our travelers in front of the people answering it. I think we've done a pretty good job. Colombia is the trip I hear about most after it ends. Travelers write to tell me they went back to work remotely for a few months, or that they're planning their third or fourth visit. They're living proof that “the only risk is wanting to stay.”

Colombia was never Pablo Escobar. Still, the decades of armed conflict that peaked with the drug wars of the 80s and 90s are part of its story. Many Colombians my age and older remember what it was to live afraid. I think that's why people there live so fully. They take nothing for granted.

I'm clearly biased. But if you want a trip where music fills every corner, where you see firsthand how a country rebuilt itself after its darkest years, and where the shopping happens to be some of the best anywhere, this is the one.

Colombians know something about living fully that most of us have to be reminded of. You feel it the whole time you're there.

After everything I've just told you, it probably won't surprise you that I decided to lead this one myself. It's been a while, and I can't wait to go back with you. Alongside our local host, I'll introduce you to friends I've made over the years, [the designers, chefs, and musicians] whose relentless creativity makes me even prouder to be Colombian.

There is no place like Colombia, and I'm confident you won't find another trip that shows it to you the way this one does.

— xx, Katalina

If you want to join us in Colombia, learn more about the trip here and apply. If you have any questions, reply to this email and I will respond personally.

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