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I was hesitant to go to Colombia for all the bad information we hear about it. Alejandro assured me that everything would be fine and that I would have the time of my life. That same day I bought a one way ticket to Bogota. I was in Colombia for almost three weeks, in which I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by some really cool riders. I organized a flat contest under a bridge in Bogota with the help of Red Bull and Pierre. Every Sunday the three major freeways are closed to cars and open for bikes!! It is amazing to see everyone and their dog out pedaling the freeways! Medillin is an amazing place, there are a lot of riders and they have the support of their local sports center! So basketball courts turn into fields of flatland on the weekends. On a sad note, one of the riders that I met was shot to death three days after I left Medillin, I had met his wife and child. I guess two young kids were playing with a gun and a stray bullet hit him. Very sad.

Later on I met up with Alejandro in Manizales, way up in the mountains. It is where the best coffee in the world comes from but I don´t recommend eating raw coffee beans. From there we drove to Cali. I had a great time everyplace I went, Cali was no exception. There is a song that goes-- If it smells like tobacco you know you are in Cali, if the people are dark, you must be in Cali, if the woman have little clothes, than you must be in Cali. One day we took a trip up into the mountains and into a country house that Alejandro house just outside a small town called Buga. A dirt jump into foam pit was newly finished, so watch out for the Colombian dirt jumpers. In the ¨finca¨ Alejandro had fruit trees called Lulo, kind of like Kiwi, that he sells. Also lots of Coffee plantations and Banana trees, it is a surreal place.

After my 3 weeks in Colombia I left with my mind clearly touched by the countries' beauty, the friendliness of its people, and just for the record I did not see cocaine once! The politics of Colombia are of the most complicated, but things seem to be slowly getting better as the ¨Paramilitaries¨ are slowly being dealt with. The instability of the government was directly related to the control that they didn´t have over the areas affected by the power and control brought by the black market. i.e. Coca.

Muchas Gracias, Gustavo de Bogota, John ¨manager¨de Medillin, Nelson de Bogota, and of course Alejandro who showed me that Colombia is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Nathan