Stories That Cross Boundaries
I always thought I’d be dead by thirty-five. I don’t know where this fixation came from, what triggered it, or why I believed it, but the imagined certainty that I wouldn’t live to see forty defined my 20s and early 30s in a very real way. My friends in university would tell me to stop… Continue reading Thirty-Five
There are things beyond our control. Things that force us to change our plans, to be flexible and spontaneous, things that humble us, that remind us that the world keeps spinning regardless of what we’re going through, things that make the impossible possible and the possible impossible. These unpredictable factors are known as force majeure—a… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: Force Majeure
It’s been nearly a month since I wrote a new post about this new chapter of My Nomadic Life, even though when I left Colombia I told myself that this time I’d be more constant about updating my blog—not like in Brazil, where it fizzled out after a few months as the daily distractions of… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: Life & Loss on the Road
Though I'd been dreaming of going back for years, I didn't expect to return to New York City in 2021. But ever since I left Colombia (again) in August, things haven't been exactly going to plan (in a good way) and I've been relearning how to embrace the unexpected. That's how I ended up on… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: If I can Make it There…
Being born in Colombia —a violent and lovely land of duality, of rancid poetry, marvellous heartbreak, impossible beauty, and sequestered abundance— is a curse. On the one hand, it’s a magical, fertile, lush kingdom filled with wonders and beauty. From the Amazon Rainforest to the Caribbean Sea, from the Andes mountains to the Pacific Ocean,… Continue reading The Colombian Curse: A Love Letter to my Country
It’s in my blood, this travel bug. I was born with it, into it, and it has only grown stronger with every passport stamp, every border crossing, every coastline I’ve walked on that signals the end of a continental mass that still hasn’t been swallowed up by the Ocean. Every year, as I stubbornly become… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: Embracing the Unexpected
Thankfully, you’re more likely to get sprayed by a 40-foot mechanical wood-and-steel elephant on a hot summer afternoon than to cross paths with an armoured knight these days in the Loire Valley, though both are fantastical notions.
In late 2015, I embarked on a nomadic journey through Brazil that forever changed my life. I wasn’t sure where exactly I would go or for how long— all I knew was I would start in the Amazon, head south to Uruguay, and stop at Iguazu Falls. After eighteen months on the road, I managed… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: Leaving Colombia. Again.
Walking into the small hippie village in Arembepe, located about 30 km north-east of Salvador de Bahia in northern Brazil, feels like going back in time. There are no roads, just sandy paths that get uncomfortably hot under the blazing sun; there's no electricity, so only the stars and the moon light the way at night;… Continue reading Aldeia Hippie de Arembepe
I don't know that I've ever felt like a less spontaneous person in my life than the day I found my Israeli friend unpacking his bag in our hostel in Salvador, Brazil, taking out everything he wouldn’t need for Europe but had been essential during his last year in South America. “I found a cheap… Continue reading My Nomadic Life: Life in Motion
Laura Restrepo Ortega 