Why I started living in Latin America
A trip to Colombia flipped a switch
October 2017, Medellin, Colombia
As I walked out of the Medellin airport for the first time, my nose was immediately filled with the refreshing aroma of Colombian smog. I had been smelling smog my entire life in Los Angeles, but this smog hit different.
I had been up all night flying from the US and running on no sleep, but I gave no fucks. I was finally in Latin America for the first time after months of watching travel porn.
Months before I had been binge watching Narcos with some bros, thinking how beautiful Colombia looked in between all the terrible things happening in the show.
Riding in my uber towards the city of Medellin, the novelty of my new environment was in full effect.
Motorcycles surrounded us and were weaving in and out of traffic. Advertisements and asado restaurants were everywhere with words that made no sense to my Google Translate level Spanish. Reggaeton was blasting from every car. And it seemed we were driving endlessly through some beautiful kind of valley.
Eventually I arrived to my shitty studio apartment, located above a fruit store. Home sweet home. It had all the basic essentials; a small bed, tiny kitchen, and a bathroom.
It also had wifi which was key, as I was going to spend the next 2 weeks here deciding if the nomad lifestyle was for me.
At this point I was already working remotely, so the wheels had been in motion for awhile.
Now it was time to explore and figure out if this lifestyle was for me.
First Day
I decided not to sleep at all so I could explore during the first day. For hours I wandered the streets, fascinated and a little bit anxious as I was in unfamiliar territory. This was one of the first countries I had ever been to. So everything was fascinating to me.
It was an interesting mix of people. Local Colombians doing their daily routine, hippy backpackers in the street selling jewelry, normal looking foreigners, and middle aged dudes who looked like they just got divorced that looked like they wanted to hit the reset button in Colombia.
Apparently from the lack of sleep, I looked and felt like shit. Like I was just walking home from a late night.
At some point, some policia stopped me and started harassing me.
I had no idea what they were saying and said “no habla espanol”. The cop pulled out his phone and started using Google Translate to talk to me.
He accused me of being high on “chemicos” and this continued for about 10 minutes. I repeatedly said “no” and tried to walk away but one of the cops kept blocking me. Finally I just walked away and they didn’t try to stop me again.
Now years later, I realize this was just typical Colombian police. I’ve been searched for drugs so many times in this country. The cops love trying to hustle a gringo and will search you without any reason to try and find drugs on you for extortion. Money is the only thing they care about.
To end the day, I decided to try some Aguardiente, the local Colombian liquor. I had heard stories of foreigners being drugged with Scopolamine so I was paranoid as fuck. I watched the bartender to see if they slipped anything into my drink. After all the suspense I tried it and it tasted like nasty black licorice. And I remembered everything
I love Colombia but Aguardiente is pretty disgusting, even though I’ve been drunk on it countless times. It’s great because it’s cheap, but that’s about it.
Meeting Some People
Throughout the trip, I went out near my apartment to interact with some locals. I was staying in Poblado, which is basically a gringo safe space.
Colombians were very friendly and I had some entertaining conversations with locals in neighborhood bars, crushing some beers and using Google Translate. People were pretty engaging and I enjoyed some good chats even with the language barrier.
I also ventured over to Laureles and did some co-working from various coffee shops and hostels.
Between these various co-working days, I met an interesting Brazilian couple who were traveling the world and funding all their travels with an online business.
I also talked with a chill Canadian dude who was roaming around Latin America, sleeping in hostels and doing some part time freelancing online.
One other dude I met was from Miami. He was basically just living off of savings and trying to stay in Medellin as long as possible.
It was inspiring to see a decent amount of people doing this, especially because at the time it was 2017 and pre-covid, so there were far less nomads at the time. Remote work was pretty scarce.
Networking with some other foreigners gave me the confidence that this was something I could definitely do. All I needed to do was make the move, as I already had remote income coming in.
Other Inspiration
I would be full of shit if I said I was only excited to eat arepas and do salsa dancing.
One of the other appealing things about Colombia is obviously the beautiful women.
Colombia is a beautiful country with fun people. But the tourism would be much lower if the women were ugly.
Clearly I wanted to enjoy this aspect as a single dude at the time.
I’m not going to go deep into the details but I had a great time.
At the time, I had only dated women I met in the US. So chilling with latinas from outside my country was a thrill for me.
It definitely made me more excited about my dating life.
I highly recommend chilling with some latinas from outside your country. You might never go back.
Sitting on my plane back to the US, whatever doubt or concern I had in my mind about being a nomad or living in Latin America had been completely eliminated.
It was like a switch had been flipped in my head.
I no longer had any desire to live in the US. After years of commuting and grinding at work, I was burned out and felt dead on the inside.
For the first time in years I felt alive.
I had been hustling for months to get to this point, working so hard to get remote work so I could stop watching travel porn and start making my own.
The adventure was just too appealing and the trip to Colombia had confirmed it.
When I got back home, my only focus was going back to Latin America. I sold my car and all the shit I didn’t need and I figured out all the tax benefits from living overseas.
Then I left to Mexico City a couple months later, right before the start of 2018.
I’m still here in Latin America today and I’m always thankful for that trip to Colombia that got me started.
