Life in San Gil, Colombia

I've been in Colombia for a few weeks now and it's been a very different experience than I anticipated.

To begin with, the riding is sick. I apprehensively expected a bunch of dirt road tours, pedaling along super bored with a pack of tourists following along behind, but I was mistaken. The tours that we do regularly are cool and I don't forsee getting bored of them anytime soon. We start at the top of a mountain and ride some of the roughest dirt roads I've seen down to one of the most picturesque towns in Colombia. I always have to be scouting the road for cattle, drunk farmers, and angry dogs. We ride down into a beautiful river valley, then drive up the opposite side for lunch at a viewpoint overlooking one of the largest canyons in the world. Then it's back down the mountain through some small towns and on to a pedaling section rolling past small family farms called fincas. That's a day at the office!

I got that fancy "window office."

There are three guides, and on our days off there's plenty of singletrack to explore. The main trails are called camino reals - essentially 200-year old paths created so goat farmers could get from one town to the next. But don't let the fact that they used to be main transportation arteries fool you – they're about 8-inches wide and “paved” with rocks. Sometimes they're fast and flowy, but they almost always drop off into super technical switchbacks on extremely steep slopes. Some of these camino reals seem like they were purpose built bike trails even though they're hundreds of years old, and others have been modified by local riders with small booters and berms to add excitement. Across the board though they're way better riding than I expected to find.

John wisely dons a full-face helmet for a camino real run.

Just in case the off-road trails weren't enough, I arrived to find a nearly completed pump track in the empty lot across the street. John, a guide from New Zealand, had been working on it for months so all I really needed to do was build some drains to keep it from flooding.

Jamie shows the neighborhood kids what you can do with a helmet on.

Nearly all South American towns are awesome for street riding, and San Gil is no different. There's stair gaps, weird sidewalk transfers, ledges, and drops everywhere. I'm certain there's an amazing wall ride somewhere in town too, I just haven't found it yet.

Jamie ponders just how steep the city streets are.

What's stuck me even more than the riding though is the difference between being a traveler and living in a foreign country. I'm finding that the immediate connections people make in hostels aren't limited to backpackers. It's any expat, traveler, backpacker, whatever. I've hung out in the city square with a foreign hostel owner, had a local restaurant owner and a local firefighter help me buy a motorcycle, and struck up a half hour conversation with a backpacker eating alone. I just wish there was a way to capture the “live for the moment” mentality of traveling and transport it “home.” In the States I don't lock my house and am happy to lend out my car or bike when needed. But traveling takes it to a completely new level – I let a girl I knew for a few days keep my computer overnight because she felt sick and wanted to watch movie, and left my backpack and passport in a “friend's” room, even though we only became friends a few hours before.

I think there's an inherent vulnerability when traveling. I don't know the language, the culture, most of the time I don't even know what I'm eating. So when I meet someone and know something about them, if feels so much more concrete than when meeting people at home. Travelers are always looking for that definitiveness, so we reach out and try to know someone – where they came from, where they're going, and what they've done. Whether that is literal or figurative depends on the person you're talking to.

The best thing about traveling though is it makes me conscious of those connections, and reminds me to cultivate them no matter where I am in life.