The Low Down Adventure — Colombia
Pushin’ Passion
Sometimes you gotta return “home” to regroup and regain focus. Almost six years later I’m back in Colombia. Our first sourcing trip went down here, just a few months shy of officially launching RAD AND HUNGRY.
I can navigate La Candelaria, Bogotá like I never left. I walked straight to the ghetto-ass miserable place where Sam and I stayed six years ago — a sketchy B&B that to this day I don’t know how we managed to stay even one night. Penny pinching gone extreme? Yes, I was testing how frugal we could be to make RAH a viable company.
I found the action-packed square where all the university students hang and start drinking at noon, straight out of the bottle in a paper bag. La Candelaria may be a hipster mecca now, but it was totally different when we first visited. It was still a super-rad spot, but the number of hip cafes and places to check totally blew me away. I was told that back in 2010 there were only 7 hostels in Candelaria — now it boasts over 400 rentals for visitors. I don’t know if I’ve been anywhere in the world that’s been changin’ as fast as Bogotá. Even Seattle’s massive nonstop change seems slow compared to the speed I’ve witnessed here.
But some things never change. Milk in plastic bags. Coffee so smooth it don’t need cream or sugar. A shit-ton of tasty fruits — including a zillion kinds of passion fruit. (Why can’t we get these in Seattle, why??) A million little reasons that made us fall in love with Colombia in the first place.
Second time around for a Colombia Kit and I again selected a newsprint notepad. After a few days of searching and obsessin’ over which paper good to go with, I felt that newsprint had to happen. It’s delicate, it’s smooth. The logo is dope as hell. Everything about ’em screams Colombia to me. It’s the nonchalant charm, the quiet confidence that I witness about the Colombians that I see in the newsprint notepads. And that’s what we’re all about — hunting down lo-fi office supplies that rep the local culture.
I got a passion for Colombia that runs deep — and six years later we’re still sharin’ it with RAHstrs. Pushin’ passion, Colombia for life.
oxxo, Hen
Originally published at blog.radandhungry.com.
