me vale verga!

i have been contemplating this post for quite sometime and have very mixed feelings on what/who/where to start and then what/who/where to go from there. fuck, this was the best journey of my life and still much too short. i have been privileged enough in my time to have been a few places in the world and had some great "vacations", (and while every amazing person we met in Colombia was informed by us that we were in fact on vacation) this was much more to me. more of an expedition of radness and epic adventure of dopeness. shit was en fuego.

before i just start throwing up some pictures and rambling about crap i want all of y'all to understand how 100% perfect our time down there was. between the people, the landscape and architecture, and the general overall way these people live...it was just fucking fantastic. we managed to spend some time in 4 cities in the 17 days, all of which were very different in many ways but shared underlying similarities with each other. Colombia es la mejor. that is all i can say.

i suppose you can grasp my point and that is all i wanted to get across, everything bad you have ever heard about Colombia is a lie. the place is mellow but fast paced, rugged but beautiful and fun but fun. what else could i have asked for? shit, nada, damn nothing. did i mention we had a good time?

ok, so we bailed on a friday evening destined for a land totally unknown to me but thank the heavens for my trusty Bait who had been there recently and the team was ready for anything, and boy did we get it and more. san francisco to lala crapland to mexico city to Bogota. this shit was on putos. here is some images from our first 24 hours:

sfo ready to fucking do this shit! the excitement was at an 11 fo sho.


first cocktayl, peep the camaraderie already, sharing the tunes. feeling the flow. that and the vics and whiskey.

looking good matty. mexico city airport amiga.


and.........WE ARE IN COLOMBIA. unfortunately for us our bags how do you say, umm not so much. we were bummed on having absolutely nothing with us for a bit but that subsided REAL quick. "fuck it man, we will figure it out". turned into a pretty common phrase of the journey.

on our way to our friends sweeticle apartment in Bogota. i was a little out of it and really stoked on this street for some reason. everyone likes clouds right?

this was one of the first things we saw after going to Brian's place to say hi to our mom for a few days of the trip. Brian was not around as he was in the states (haha) but his mother in law took us in and was so kind it was insane. making us food when we were still in bed, generally dealing with us, the whole kit and kaboodle. Brian if you ever see this, thank you from the bottom our or hearts and Merriam you are the best lady ever! oh, and this pic is for my chico state wildcat brothers and sisters!

very first purchase in Colombia. aguila - el rey de Colombia. best beer ever, we no joke had a thousand of these at about 50 - 75 cents a piece. this bar was cool and the owner fellow was super nice (i will try not to mention how fucking nice everyone was anymore but it was mindblowing).

this sign was outside the bar. i mean, c'mon. sign from god for the future, me think so.

i could not figure out if that first picture was real. i mean a team named america and the mascot is the devil, couldn't be could it? true story. on top of that they were playin the best state ever later that afternoon. it was like another sign, hey californians...let's do this shit and take on america, no? who's coming with me?

blowers are about 3 bucks. not bad.

missed this guy by like one day. not sure if the locals would have let us in but my guess is fuck yes.

walking to go find our first meal and i saw this guy, all the same day. so much gold. i was smiling so much and jumping around, i think matt might have wanted to kill me at some point. i was like a 9 year old at chuck e cheese who wanted to play with everything except these were real freakin people. anyway, then we ate this:

steak, fries, bananas, salad, guacamole and 10 more aquilas. so bomb.

this dudes name is Thomas. he is german. he works with Brian. he is a-mazing. so funny, so happy go lucky, down as hell. clearly we are now wearing new clothes, that is because we charged back to the airport about 8 hours after we landed to see if they had our gear. they would not let 2 of us back in and matt was thrown to the dogs of screaming airport folks in spanish. they said come back in half an hour. we proceeded to walk to the gas station a couple blocks away and thank god find our first taste of aguardiente of the trip. shit is like, fuck i dont really know, that stuff they drink in greece all the time that tastes like licorice a bit but this was better. it is clear, it is cheap and it gets you drunk. i was in. took down a little bottle of that sitting in front of the little market attached to gas station, dont worry nobody looked at us weird or anything...haha. sight to see people. got back to airport, and matty pulled it super hard. comes out dancing with the bags and straight back to the city to fiesta. it was also matts birthday night which was fuel to the fire that we did not need but loved!

this is in the same bar as above. they had all sorts of old record players and that whole wall is records, cool spot. this was part of thomas' tour he gave us of an area called the candelaria. it was jumping with young folks having beers and blaring tunes. you could compare it to the mission in SF but less lame by 25 times. we hit up many a bar. thanks again thomas!

cool park spot and then a sign behind the bar at some spot. basically says "we kill and rob but we don't hurt anyone". dont like americans but loved us, go figure. be cool and get cool back was the general scene.

this stuff is called chicha, it is a traditional fermented drink of the area. it used to be made by people chewing up corn thus mixing it with spit and letting it ferment. it was some sort of right of passage we had to take. i liked it, but then again i have been called a spit drinker since 3rd grade.

we stopped along the pub crawl for an arepa from the coolest chick ever. she was so laid back and whipped these things up and then grilled them. these had egg and carne and possible other things with some seriously good sauce to add. one of the best things we ate all trip. here are a few of the real sick pieces of art i saw walking through this area:

i was truly amazed at how good some of the shit was, right along busy areas just huge pieces. sick. we eventually made our way towards this nightclub called cha cha because thomas had never been and sounded fantastic.

it was on like the 35th floor of an abandoned building. i guess something had happened to the place and while they were renovating other floors they made this spot. it was nuts, views of the whole city. huge dance floor on inside and huge balcony with swinging benches and couches and shit. pretty rad. we got to meeting some of the locals and getting down with them. matt and i watched the sun come up over the city from right where this picture was taken. fucking incredible first night. this dude was originally from la but lived here for like 10 years or some shit:

then there was this bro who couldnt quite make it with the big boys. i mean shit, we had been up for about 2 days or more at this point but we had the excitement factor going strong for us. so concludes the day in Bogota, got in at 1 pm with no bags...ended up at a rooftop style club around 6 am. cruised back to the pad, climbed in the full size bed we were both sleeping in and got down on some sleep. we were pleased with day one...more to follow soon chickadees.