Colombia A Bicycle Adventure - Bike Touring Episode 2

In 2012 I said I sketch because it makes me happy and I can forget about anything that is bothering me and I can contemplate what I'm actually living. I sketch not because I have to but because I feel it more than anything. I know that if I sketch often it's what makes me feel alive. It's not to make a good sketch or not a good sketch. Of course there's a progress I want to involve. I want to grow on my art, on my sketching, on my ways of composing it. But the main reason why I sketch is because I'm happy. For sure I will learn something. For sure I will share something. And that giving and taking is very much what I've learned during these years. As much as I go home and I think I should have done this or I'm going to change this way of drawing and painting I learn a lot meeting these people, meeting urban sketchers, meeting these communities that just gather for the fun of sketching and enjoying the place, have a good time over there and just be relaxed. I've always liked drawing since I was a child but my mom used to give me pencils before she gave me toys. So whenever we went out to a place to have fun she gave me a pencil. When I was a child my dad was a public accountant and he had those accounting notebooks and he gave them to me to draw. So all the time I was drawing without thinking that those notebooks were going to be my life in the future. Urban started in 2013, in October 2013, here in Medellín. It was spoken for the first time. Only until 2015 did we start drawing, every Saturday. From there I started alone. On the second weekend I was also alone and around the third or fourth week people started arriving, two, three, and we were almost 100 people. And I think that urban sketchers is humanity. Beyond the drawing, which you can learn the drawing anywhere, we are teaching humanity. More than the technique, it is in the fact of losing fear and perfectionism. I have focused more on the experience, on making more mistakes to lose fear, to make the drawings as fast as possible, regardless of how they look, but as fast as possible to achieve more freedom in the stroke, to try to draw more without looking at the paper, to do more things without having so much control. That has been my evolution. Are you serious? The people are very friendly and it's a very beautiful country. I want to cry. Not at all. I'm not that good looking. Don't believe it's dangerous. Believe that it is a third world country and things don't work the same as the country that you probably, your homeland. But also believe, you know, the people are really awesome. I would like to see less corruption in Colombia. I think everybody would. That would be really good. And especially, you know, you don't have to be in Medellín where I am. It's great to go anywhere. An interesting thing that I found is that people in Colombia feel that no matter where they are, it's the best place to be in Colombia. Maybe the best place to be in the world. Here we go. It feels so good to be back on the bike. Two weeks have passed since we last pedaled. And finally we are back, sitting on our bikes, leaving Medellín. And it feels so good, the weight of the guide, the feeling through the sling. At this point, we knew that traveling with our bicycles was fun and at the same time painful. But could we explain why? I feel like traveling on a bicycle. It's more like a mind game for me. Because it depends on me. If I don't push my bike, it won't go anywhere. I had never traveled on a bicycle before and that scared me. 642 meters high, reached since we left Medellín. We caught a bit of rain. Anaís is back there, tired. At first, I was stressed because Luis was always in front of me. We are 21 kilometers from our destination, almost 700 meters high. It's a good start. But in the end, I know that I have to be patient. I can't do it. I'm not like Luis. I have to know my own capacity. So, it's okay. The stress is gone. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Dogs make me stressed. I was chased by a dog. I had to climb a mountain. I couldn't go fast. I was chased by a dog. My body was shaking. I was crying. I couldn't enjoy the trip. I couldn't enjoy the atmosphere. I still have to learn how to overcome it. It's hard to wake up in the morning. I wake up at 4 a.m. or 4.30 a.m. It's really hard. But when I'm on the bicycle, I look at the view on the left, and I'm like, wow. It's worth it. A bicycle trip requires a lot of effort, both psychologically and physically. And I think that's been the great advantage of this trip. And after all this scenery that we see, the fact that every kilometer means a victory for us. And that always leads us to the question, should we stop? Should we keep going? What I'm doing, it's the right thing. And if I don't do it, it seems it's the wrong thing. And so I believe that if I give up, I will lose a lot of opportunities to grow and to see and to understand more about this world and myself. Yeah. We were traveling for a while now, and we already had a good idea on how to do things. But what does it mean to travel with a bicycle? Traveling by bicycle means traveling slow. We feel the journey in our own body, in our eyes, in the smells we find in the smoke of the buses and cars that pass by us. All at a slow pace, which is our effort. It allows us to be free in a very spontaneous way. Freedom. Yes, freedom. You feel it at that moment when you leave the house and grab the bicycle and you don't know what's going to happen in the next few kilometers. Yes, the unknown. And that security of knowing that you are fine in that place and that you feel good and that you feel free. There was a feeling of growing every time we would go on another ride. We learned how to be more patient. Yeah, because we understand ourselves, so... I'm not patient, but in this journey, I realized that I have to be able to handle my emotions, control my emotions, to be more patient. That patience allows us to see more, allows us to understand a bit more, and see things slowly. First, the holiday trip has a time, a stage, but it's usually short. Usually, a three-month trip is a long holiday trip, but the other trip I do is without time. You have time, which is something that most other people don't have. Yeah. We have time to travel slow, to stop, to take a photo, to... To see more. It's unbelievable, actually. Our journey was great, and we loved to explore new places, but we also had our difficult times. When I have difficult times, I search for resting, stop. Yeah, I'm searching for peace. We search to find ourselves back, because maybe we've been giving too much. That's the basic need, rest.