517: Kicked off the Podcast!

So if you want to hear more about my background and the tall tales that I have, all of them true from the region, Brazil, etc, Colombia and so on, please tune in. So maybe you'll get to know a little bit more about your favorite podcast host, hotelier, writer, journalist, publisher, whomever else you think I am. And I'll be talking a bit more about the books we've published so far this year and those that we plan to publish. So it's quite an exciting episode, with our friend and guest Eric Tavoni taking over the Columbia Calling podcast this week. I think you've enjoyed the previous podcasts because listener rates have gone up.

That's always good. Thank you to the new sponsors on Patreon that's www..patreon..com. Forward Slash Columbia Calling if you wish to help fund the Columbia Calling podcast. We've had some great episodes, as I said, we did a fantastic one. With Joshua Collins of Pirate Wire Services and Adrian Alsema of Columbia reports talking about the protests in the U.S.

And making comparisons with Colombia. Prior to that, we spoke to Tyler Schwab of Libertas International NGO and we were talking about, well, this nefarious business of a sexual exploitation of children in Colombia. Not something we really want to talk about, but must be talked about and must be worked on so that this does not continue and Colombia can somehow get itself in order. So that it's not an industry here, but of course, it's very deeply ingrained. And of course, when you have a country where the haves and the have-nots are such a broad distance between them, well, who knows how we need to solve this?

But I've got some great episodes lined up. Hopefully we'll be talking to Mario Pinzon about Gustavo Pedro in coming weeks. And indeed, I've heard from a very famous Columbia musician, a classical musician, so perhaps not a household name, but who is really quite a spectacular musician. And we're going to try and get him on the Columbia Calling podcast again, so don't go away.

We'll have the Columbia briefing up with you next and then we'll be back in. Segment three kicked off the Columbia Calling podcast. Thank you for listening. Do Not Go Away. The Columbia Calling podcast is sponsored by Latin News, a leading source of political and economic analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean since 1967. Their flagship publication, the Latin American Weekly Report, provides a behind-the-scenes briefing on all the week's key developments throughout the region.

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We are also sponsored by BNB Columbia Tours, which is a leading tour operator, providing a wonderful range of exclusive small group shared tours for those over 50. Along with customizable private tours to both popular and off-the-map destinations throughout this beautiful and diverse country, if you're interested in experiencing one of their unforgettable journeys through Columbia, be it a shared tour with like-minded travelers or creating a unique private package of your own. Just complete the form on the Columbia Calling website that's www..columbiacalling..co or the BNB Columbia Tours website that's www..bnbcolumbia..com. And they'll be in touch within 24 hours to answer all of your questions and to start the planning of your exclusive Colombian adventure, so that's Bnbcolumbia.com and Latinnews.com. Thank you for supporting our sponsors. I'm Emily Hart and these are your headlines from Columbia for this week.

President Gustavo Petro has officially severed diplomatic ties with Israel. Arrangements have now been made for the departure of diplomats from both countries. During his Labor Day speech, Petro announced the break. Calling the Israeli government genocidal and saying that Columbia cannot be complicit or silent about the war crimes and violations of international law being perpetrated by the State of Israel. The decision has reportedly been in the pipeline for months. Petro having previously suspended arms purchases from Israel in February and having had numerous public spats with Israeli officials on social media since October. If Palestine dies, humanity dies, he said.

On Wednesday, the move has been criticised by Israel, who called it anti-semitism. And three former Colombian presidents have come out to criticise Petro's decision. Alvaro Uribe, Ivan Duque and Juan Manuel Santos have said the move will not contribute to peace. Hamas, meanwhile, has publicly thanked Petro. Also on Wednesday, which was International Workers Day, huge pro-government marches took place across the country.

Tens of thousands took to the streets to support reforms led by trade unions and public sector employees following the mass anti-government demonstrations last week. Petro defended his reforms and again proposed a constituent assembly, a new body with powers to change the constitution. He called on social organisations to mobilise behind the idea.

Controversy, however, arose around the president's promotion of the marches. He posted an image made with artificial intelligence to his ex-formerly Twitter account, complete with distorted faces and misspellings, including of the word Colombia. Graphic designers spoke out against the use of AI, and the culture minister ultimately advised the Cabinet to stop producing text and images with the help of AI. The president deleted the image. Ivan Mordisco, leader of the FARC dissident group Estado Mayor Central, has been convicted of the forced recruitment of 10 children who later died in a 2019 airstrike in the Department of Meta.

Guillermo Botero, then defence minister, resigned over the airstrike, which was carried out by the army in the knowledge there were likely to be children present in the camp. Despite that controversy, airstrikes on camps continued during the mandate of Iván Duque, only stopping when Petro came to power. Petro has, however, threatened to resume airstrikes on camps where confirmation can be attained that no minors are present. Peace talks with the Estado Mayor Central are currently in crisis due to the group's fragmentation.

Around 150,000 munitions and weapons are currently missing from army battalions, though the president's government initially announced that more than a million were missing. The Minister of Defence later corrected the figure. In December, authorities found state grenades used in an attack by an armed group on a toll booth. The president has now said that authorities are looking to understand the extent of the army's corruption and arms trafficking to illegal groups. Both within Colombia and further afield, specifically to Haiti, the Supreme Court has ruled on criminal prosecution, confirming that under no circumstances can jealousy be grounds for justifying aggression.

This was determined in a case from Antioquia in which a man had smashed a bottle of rum into the face of a minor who had spoken to his girlfriend. The court concluded that this kind of romantic jealousy stems from a pattern of domination, which perpetuates the fallacy that women belong to men. With this ruling, the court dismissed the criminal defence of jealousy and upheld the conviction of the man, who now has no further means of defending himself from criminal charges.

Unemployment in Colombia rose to 11.

3 in March, meaning that 340,000 more people were unemployed last month than the same period last year, when unemployment was at 10. 2.8 million people are currently unemployed in Colombia. With significant regional variation, cities like Quibdó in Chocó and Riohacha in La Guajira have rates over 20, while cities like Bogotá and Medellín have rates of around 10. Those were your top stories for this week, Thanks for listening.

And if you value these updates or want them direct to your email or WhatsApp as audio and text every Monday. You can subscribe to the Colombia Briefing just sign up to my Substack at Substack..com, forward slash at e H a r T, or you can sign up on the Colombia Calling Patreon site. That's all for me. Have a great week.

It's that time of week again. Folks, this is me, your host Richard McCall, 2,600 metres closer to the stars. And this is episode 517 of the Colombian calling podcast. Well, for you loyal listeners out there. You know, I'm actually not Richard McCall, but I have something even better. I'm Eric DeBone and my guest this week is yours truly Richard McCall. I so happen to be the president of the Richard McCall fan club. So it is my absolute honour and pleasure to have this time to get to chat with Richard.

Richard, thank you so much for being here with us today. thank you for hosting. I was unaware that there's a Richard McCall fan club, but maybe I could make an appearance at one of your conventions, at conventions. We have a total of one member right now, so anybody else who wants to join, there are membership dues that go directly to my bank account, just let me know.

Okay, well, that's right, you're about to get a daughter into school. So we need all donations. There we go. Richard, thanks so much for connecting with us.

Everybody knows you, but a lot of people don't know a bit about behind you, how you got to where you are. You know I? For one, we've been friends for what? 14 years, 13 years, something like that, something like that, and everything you've done, everything you've always told me, I've always been amazed by and in awe by. So I'm very excited to kind of dive in a bit about who you are and how did you get to here today? So with that, let's get going.

Richard For people who don't know about you, give them a quick introduction and let's talk a bit about where you're from and those first kind of formative years growing up. Incredibly flattering Eric Incredibly flattering to be here as a guest on my own podcast and to be heralded in such a way. Now. Born and raised in London, but with lots of travel elsewhere, my father was from Canada, from Winnipeg, no less.

But he moved over in the 1970s to England because he was an oil miner, he was exploiting the North Sea, he was a geophysicist. Then he met my mum, my mum, she was from northeast London.

She was a cockney, although I didn't know that until later. What is a cockney for people who aren't British? East London? And I talk a bit like this, okay? So she moved to Los Angeles when she was 18 and did elocution lessons to change her accent.

Okay, there you go. So when she came back after many scrapes and misadventures, she moved to West London, and that's where I was born. So with this plummy accent. But that said my mother, she opened her own secretarial business in the 70s in London.

And the day that she was meant to send a secretary to my dad's office, the secretary called in six. So my mum went great and stepped in, and the rest is history.

The rest is history, anyway. I grew up in London. Yes, my mother absolutely loved Mexico, hitchhiked through it in the 60s, 70s. I think it was. My dad lived in Brazil for about a decade.

And that was before you were born. Oh, these were both before I was born. He had his first family, Canadian family. Some of them were born there.

And my stepmum, who's originally from Ohio, lived also for about six years in Sao Paulo. So let's Latin America. Bug was very good. And did you go up going back to Winnipeg quite a bit? I've never been to Winnipeg in my life, you've never been to Winnipeg.

I've never been. It is on my bucket list, in truth, just to see something of the history of it. Because I want to go up and see the polar bears, which are further north, up to a place called Churchill. But my dad had moved west, actually aged 14 or 13, they moved west out to Victoria, because my grandfather, of course, very old. He was pensioned off by the Canadian Pacific Railways after World War One.

And he had problems with his lungs because of the mustard gas in the trenches, and so they moved him from Winnipeg. Not so good for your health. Victoria Much better, there we go.

That makes sense. So then you grew up in London? Tell me about where did you go to university? Tell me a bit about your education and what did you choose, and why? why?

Well, I went down to the southwest of England, so if any of you know England, Devon, it's the county next door to Cornwall, which is in the end sort of like that end bit of England. I didn't know a lot about it when I went and saw the university, good university, still one of the top ten in the UK.

It was a sunny day and I was shown around by a pretty girl and that was enough. And I did French and Spanish, sort of humanities and literature, because that's what I was good at, and that's, you know, I just want to sort of cruise through. But obviously, doing humanities, literature and language actually isn't as easy as it sounds.

Did you already speak a bit of French and Spanish before? Yeah, I studied them at school. Oh yeah, so you were decent at that? Oh yeah.

And then it became very much not fluent, but very good. I spent my third year abroad in Guatemala. Okay, and that was cool, I spent, you know, languages for some people are very easy, and for others they're very difficult.

And I'm in that category of very difficult, all right. And so the only class I ever failed in my entire life was actually Spanish, and I actually failed it twice. And there were several reasons why.

Number one, I just wasn't smart enough to learn it, but then number two, I also thought, here's the ironic part. I also thought I would never be using Spanish in my life after university. Turns out that Spanish is the only class or subject matter I'm actually using that I learned at university.

But this is the thing I'm going to jump in there and turn this around. As I knew, you know, you grew up in Texas and California, Spanish is, you know, a significant language it is.

But, you know, the way we look at that, like when you think of Texas, it is a significant language. But people who speak Spanish also speak English. And then so we never. I really, never had the need, and I grew up in suburbia, so I wasn't as exposed to it as it makes it sound.

But yeah, okay, sorry, I jumped in and turned the tables there, so then I'm going to turn the tables back on you.

So you were in Guatemala, you said, Did you do your study abroad? In Guatemala? No, I didn't study. I was a teacher in a private school, so basically like the American School here, or what do you call it?

The Colegio Nuevo Granada I was a substitute teacher in the equivalent in Guatemala City, it was called the Inter-American School. And it was, I mean, one of the most formative years of my life. And actually saying that 25 years after leaving that, I went and met one of my former students in a cafe in Bogota who's living here.

We hadn't seen one other than 25 years. And what's the first thing? he says when he walks in? Wow, you got old.

Well, that's what happens after 25 years. How old were you when you lived in? When this time was in Guatemala, and what year was that? It was more than that, so I was 21 or 22..

22, I was 22, so that's why, but imagine this. It was 98 99..

Yeah, 98 99.

So that was the year of Hurricane Mitch, so I lived through that, which, you know, set Central America back about 10 years because of that.

Yep, the volcán Pacaya, or Fuego, erupted several times, leaving ash all over our houses. I was in a huge car crash. It was on New Year's Eve, but I was the one who was. It was a taxi going home on New Year's Eve, but it was fine. I was jumped by a gang at the beach but managed to fight them off.

I don't know, I had so many scrapes and yet I still kept coming back. And how long were you in Guatemala for just a year?

Just a year, just a year, all of these things. How was Guatemala in the late 90s? I went there around 2008 2009 and I loved it, but the 10-year difference is....

Well, it was two years out of a peace accord, so it was still a sort of stumbling forward, a lot of mistrust around, I mean, you could see the rampant corruption. It wasn't safe, let's say. But at the same time, you know, I lived in Guatemala city, which most people avoid, and I had the best time. And actually one of my. Well, I had two Canadian housemates who both worked in schools, but one of them is like my sister to this day.

She's moved around a lot. It's just one of those friendships born out of I don't know hardship, an emotional hardship. That's great, you know, I....

Go ahead. No, no, I just said, I loved it, I absolutely loved it. I was going to say, Yeah. Guatemala is one of the most magical countries I've traveled in, and I spent about five or six weeks there years ago. And it was just the people, the culture, everything about it is amazing.

It's so rich in culture, it's so fascinating. I've only been back once and I really want to take my family up there. But the flight costs from Colombia to Guatemala are ridiculously expensive. Completely, yeah, you'd have to probably go through Miami, Miami, Guatemala City.

Well, no, you can go on the Central American bus, you know, the one that goes to Abianca, Taca, up through El Salvador and stuff. But it's still going to work out. It's like almost 600 bucks a person. You're like, if I'm spending that kind of money, you know, I put it towards flights to London. Yep, exactly so. You did Guatemala, and then where else? where did life take you from there?

Well, I went back to England and scraped through my degree because it was really it was tough to go back, you know, after a year of total independence and all sorts of adventures and everything else. And all of my companions on my course had gone, like together to Valencia and Alicante and stuff in Spain, and they'd all just done study programs together. So my best friends, one had been in Argentina, well, two had been in Argentina, I was in Guatemala, another guy was somewhere strange. And, you know, so we were actually a lot more mature than the rest of our, you know, we'd lived a little, but I made it. It was absolutely certain that I had to leave England and I had unfinished business, let's say.

I wanted to do more traveling and more time. So I sort of wrote newspapers in Central America and one in Costa Rica, an Anglo newspaper which no longer exists. It was called Central America Weekly. And Jose said, Yeah, we'll take you on as an intern if you want. So I flew out to Guatemala, spent a few weeks there and just sort of, you know, ambled my way down to Costa Rica, where I spent. I don't know, six or eight months interning there. Something like that. This was 1999??

No, this would be 2000.

Yeah.

You fly down, you get to Guatemala City, you get an internship, and then you make your way to Costa Rica. Yeah, where the internship is in Costa Rica. Yeah, great, and so how long were you in Costa Rica?

And what was Costa Rica like in 2000?

Yeah, well, you know what I mean, with no offense to any of my Costa Rican friends. It didn't measure up to Guatemala, and it didn't measure up to, like Nicaragua, because they didn't. It doesn't have the same, I would say, you know, original culture.

And I was a bit disappointed in that I did love the nature and everything else, but it was. I found it quite pricey as well because it had been, you know, a U.S and European haunt already for a while. Very carefully marketed on having no army, right? And so, of course, that is a great marketing campaign.

You know, when you look at Central America and all of the different troubles that have taken place. And all of the news out of the 80s and 90s, the gangs, the civil wars. And Costa Rica's there going, Oh, we don't have an army, right? So I did find it not great value for money. I spent six to eight months. Costa Rica's very expensive, yeah.

Yeah, 20 years it was expensive, and even today even more so. Yeah, and so, I mean, don't get me wrong, I had great times. My first ever job as an intern was to interview the vice president of Costa Rica. Oh, that's cool.

Which was pretty cool, you know, I don't even remember anything about the interview, I remember, just I walked in. I didn't think I even had like an ironed shirt, and, you know, just a crumpled student turned up. But then the second job, which was by far the best, was I was sent to review the Miss Costa Rica finals.

And it was, it's live on television and it's a big deal. And it was held in the Museum of the Child or Children Museum, which used to be a prison, like so many museums in Latin America. In Latin America, yeah, and it was live on prison. So we had to pause midway through events for advertising. And I just, I just found myself laughing a lot because.

You know how it is. I've been to two, two of these pageants, one in Colombia, one in Costa Rica. I can get on to the Colombia one at a later moment, but the Costa Rica one is when you realize the difficult questions round. And they all said, You know who's your role model?

God and I was just like, Come on, man.

And I was like, fair enough, I mean, fair enough, if that's your thing. They all said that. And then when we would break for after the swimwear round. Which is just kind of vile because there's a whole lot of men just latching over them.

You know, after the swimwear round, we break for advertising, so it's put up on the screen. Obviously, none of these things can run without advertising, TV advertising. But the first, the first publicity that came up was for condoms. And I just thought someone has thought this through, that's awesome.

That's hilarious. Looking back. So you were in Costa Rica for about how long? More or less six or eight months or so? And I thought, you know what, I've had enough.

So I bought a flight to Brazil, okay, and so this in Costa Rica. This was kind of like your first foot into journalism, to an extent. Did you feel? Did you know you were going to work in journalism before this? Or was this just the first opportunity that you were offered and you took it?

Well, I think I always had an idea that I wanted to be in something reasonably creative, and I wanted to, you know, at least use. I would say that undergraduate, and especially in arts, undergraduate humanities, is to teach you how to think, you know, and I just thought I've got so much literary knowledge and all this other stuff. But you can go into something like journalism as opposed to studying journalism, which I don't recommend to anyone as an undergraduate. Because you haven't learned how to think and you haven't found your interests. And a lot of my interest then came from actually learning so much more about the civil conflicts in Central America.

So that's why I wanted to be there, and I started getting interested in politics and just the nature of it. Because we don't get taught any of it in England, you know, it's not our sphere of influence. You get basically the old empire is what you're taught about. Yeah, I mean, it was the same to.

You know, my education, we in the United States, obviously I'm from Texas, grew up there. But we didn't learn any Latin American history, anything about conflict, we learned. Yeah, the empire, to an extent, the British Empire, and the history of that had history of Texas, which I find very interesting. It is interesting, it's very interesting. But the history of Texas has also been created to map the story they want to portray, which isn't always accurate, which is really, even more interesting. But yeah, so I mean, I understand exactly what you're saying.

Like often times, you know, Latin America, conflict, all that stuff, it's a bit overlooked, especially in undergrad. Yeah, for us, because we didn't get much. We had North American studies, of course, we all. Around the age of 13 14 was the what would you call it settlement of the United States, the wars against the French. And then you call it the Great Revolutionary War, and we call it something else. And those things. And then we have we all studied. Let's say the exploration of the new world, which is, you know, as in Cortes to Mexico. But then in Mexico, I didn't even get that down south as far as it was.

As far, you know, there's a huge gap until we get to Peru and we learn about, like, let's say the Incas, a bit. But it was always from the perspective of the conquistadors, you know, Pizarro, and so on. So I felt that there was a gap, and I absolutely devoured the history and the politics of it all. That's great. So let's jump into Brazil because we still have a lot of ground to cover, so you get to Brazil. And if I remember correctly, this is going to be when you also start guiding. There's a huge amount that happened before then.

I spent about a year around Latin America, so I covered pretty much everything. And when I was in the Amazon, having travelled up the Brazilian Amazon, up into Iquitos, having been accused of murder on the boat, which was another story.

Tell us about that because that sounds like a good detour. I was the most. I was the number one suspect for a murder. Because basically, when you're on those boats, the transport boats, and this is again back in 2000, and it's now 2001.

You're just in a hammock, right with everybody else. And on the first or second night, I woke up because I heard something, you know, scraping underneath my hammock and rustling. And it was one of the boys who worked in the engine room was trying to rob my stuff. But it was so pitch black darkness and you can imagine, sort of mid river up the Amazon. No light, all the lights are turned off to sleep, nothing, so I can't tell who it is.

But I just start shouting and everybody else starts shouting and this guy just runs off again. I couldn't identify him, you know, even if you forced me at gunpoint, I wouldn't have been able to identify him anyway. The next day, we docked at a small town and you know what happens, it's basically piracy up the river here.

The guys that work the boat get drunk, really get drunk, probably go to a brothel and stuff and come back on the top deck and gamble anyway. Midway through, it must have been two in the morning, there was a splash and a man went overboard. And of course, stop in the dark in the jungle, you have to go to the next stop point anyway. So apparently the worker he died, he went over and drowned. And, of course, who had motive?

Yeah, motive was me, so I was questioned for quite a long time in a Brazilian police checkpoint along the Amazon River. Oh wow. And how did they figure out how he went over? Uh, I think, I think it was his drunkenness, I think it was really.

I mean, because, you know, people get absolutely. It's not like happy drunk, drunk to fight, drunk to stay. Yeah, yeah, okay, wow. That was hard, but then we got to Peru and I was around.

I was in the jungle in Peru and stuff. And I was just like, you know, I've still got time because this is early in the year, it's in the earlier months of the year. Still got time to travel a lot. And I'm going to do as much as I can, but I'm going to need to formalize my life a little bit. I can't just be a vagabond. Uh, and I. I applied for, UH, a masters in International Journalism with International Relations at the University of London and was accepted.

Okay, great. So I had, like March to September to travel and then went back to do that for a year. Wonderful. And then after that, when you finished your masters, how did you get back to Latin America? Well, I worked for, I did little jobs, you know, sort of intern, but paid internships. I did work for The Independent in London.

I worked for Newsweek in London, I worked for the Daily Telegraph in London, although I walked out after two weeks because I was on the social pages. Okay, first reporting. Ever staying up all night and being told you have to go to a club to look for Paris Hilton to see if she's done something? It's the worst. And you know, they say, Oh, there was this.

The runner up in Big Brother 7 is going to be there. And I'm like, I don't even know who that is, you know? So then I fell into a job with the environmental NGO WWF, not the Rescue, and they sent me to Colombia. Great, what year was this when you came back? This is 98. And I was sent to the Pacific Coast for a few weeks to travel from Baya Malaga down to Buena Ventura. Checking out the projects to preserve the mangroves and the people living there.

And I don't know it was the second time I've been to Colombia. This is from 98, this is later, it's 2001 or 2002 2002 after you finished your masters, correct?

Yeah, so I was there in 2002 and it was something I was only on the Pacific Coast. I was only there for a few weeks and I loved it and it was just there. And then after that, I said, I don't want to be in a desk job anymore in London.

So I quit, uh, went to New York to clear my head for a couple of months. That was fun. Uh, haha. Um, very nearly. Got a job with National Geographic but couldn't get a visa. Uh, and then essentially, essentially, to skip a lot of stuff, uh. Got the job as a guide and social project coordinator for a company in the UK. And this would allow me to travel and write freelance, but also earning in pounds whilst doing jobs. What was the company? It was called Quest overseas.

It doesn't, I don't know, I don't really think it exists anymore because we did a lot of gap year stuff. So OK, I remember, I think, I actually. I think when I was in high school, I did something with Quest overseas. I believe I can't remember exactly, but that's why. So how many trips did you do?

What was the guiding lifestyle like for? Well, I was there for a few years, you know, because I would do 3 month jobs and then be off for 3 months. So it was fun for me because I'd be like, OK, well, I want to go here now and write an article about this. I'll do that and then I'll be back.

So I worked in Ecuador and Amazon OK on a sustainable sort of farming project, and I guided for a few weeks. I don't know how many times I've done the Inca Trail because I did that so many times in these groups, which is cool, of course, I love it. And then I also ran a project with disabled orphans in the favela Manguera Favela in Rio. Oh, wow, that had to be challenging, it was an experience.

That was a time when I was walking up through with my group, there were about 20, I think I was sort of at the back, walking them up through the favela. Because we were known, we were known to looking after the children, so we got free passage in this favela. And one guy said, Oh, we've got a market up here, and I was like, Great, we can get some fruit and vegetables and whatever for our, you know, to cook. And he was like, No, no, no for drugs and guns. I was like, Oh, OK, perhaps we'll go the other way around.

And we were walking up one of those, you know, those images of really narrow sort of corridors between these houses. I was going up one and there were a bunch of kids, just like out of City of God, standing there, just in shorts and Havaianas. And one of them shoved a gun in my stomach and went, So who's going to win the World Cup? And I was like, Well, Brazil? And he went, Oh, wow, and was it a loaded gun? Were you scared at the time?

I don't know it was a guns, a guns, a gun for me. I mean, I'm not. That was one of those. And then, you know, long story short, I was there. I worked in Peru, I worked in Ecuador, I worked in Bolivia, I worked in Brazil, and then. So in my off time, I spent a lot of time in Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. And then, yeah, it was gone.

England was gone, you know, at that time, and so with that, how did you find a settlement in Colombia, and what? What kind of brought you here? Tell me a bit about that. So I got very sick in Brazil, okay, and I got dengue and malaria at the same time. Congrats in rural Brazil. And I was. My life was saved by a Cuban doctor called Dr.

Lenin And anyhow I. Then I recovered, went up through the Guyanas. A girl that I grew up with in England, red headed Irish girls, now married to a guy in French Guyana. So I spent some time with her.

Yeah, Guyana then went up and skipped over Venezuela and came to Colombia. And in Colombia, in Santa Marta, I got dengue again and I got hemorrhagic dengue this time, and that brought up the malaria the second time. Because it's hammering your, you know, your defenses. So I was in Santa Marta and I went, No, you know what, I'm getting on a plane to Medellin right now. What year was this? 2009?

No, no, much before that.

4 4 I was not yet 40, No, not yet 30, whoops, I was not yet 30, so I almost didn't live to see 30. And I. I went because I knew that there was a very good sort of tropical medicine, you know, hospital there, and I went to the clinic at Rosario. And a doctor whose name I will never forget is Dr. Ana Maria Gomez Chvatal.

I think her parents or grandparents were Czech or something, she had spent time in her rural. You know that Colombians, when they do medicine or dentistry, they just spend some months out in the wild. She had spent in a red zone, where the gorillas had come to her always for medicines, and they tried to take her off into the. She told me they tried to take her to their camp to attend to people and she's like, I can't do that. But you can come here with the symptoms or bring your guys here. And they were like, No, we can't do that either.

But he was like, Come here, give me the symptoms and I'll send you the creams and diagnose. So she had seen a lot of tropical diseases and I was in there for several weeks. I mean, horrible, horrible experience. But at the end, she said, Promise me, you'll leave the tropics. And she said, You know, one of the times I was in a delusional state. And I woke up and there's a priest praying at the foot of my bed, my son, are you a Catholic?

And I'm like, whatever it takes, father, anyway, I get better. But I flipped out at that moment. I flipped out because no one was telling me anything and I'm all alone, right? Finally, they came in and said, Listen, we're very worried about you. we are very, very worried. And at the end you went.

You stayed just above the limit we needed to give you a full blood transfusion. I was like, whoa, anyway? They were like, stay calm and promise us you'll leave the tropics. You may be the unluckiest man alive, but you're alive, and I've never known this, so I flew to Chile.

Got out of the tropics and so that's kind of what you hung up your guide hats. Yeah, I actually was called in in an emergency for the company. Several years later. They had someone, one of their guides got sick or broke a leg or something. And they were like, Well, we've got Richard out there and he's in Colombia, we can just fly him down to Bolivia and it will be a lot easier. So I did it quickly, but it was only 8 weeks.

It wasn't in the Tropics, no, it was just Bolivia, it was just Highlands. And I decided, where did I want to be? I wanted to be in Colombia? So it was a question of getting better. It was a question of getting my visa. I got a visa to be a journalist in Colombia.

What year was this? So I moved full time in 2007, full time. I don't know many journalists who were craving to get a journalistic visa in Colombia in 2007. It was not easy, but I was able to show articles on who I was, and I don't know, I guess I got the consular somewhere.

I don't even remember where, but I guess I got the consular on a good day. Because this is the Uribe years. And they're not very friendly to journalists. It wasn't too safe for journalists at that time. We even nano sometimes. But I promised my dad, who was still alive at the time, I promised my dad, he said. Because he knew Latin America, having been in Brazil for a long time, having worked in Nicaragua and been like he was, he had trouble with the. I think it was Aleman, the president at one point and stuff. And he had been in scrapes in Angola and elsewhere. And he was just like, Please promise me, you'll not do politics. And so I didn't really do politics to begin with. I did a lot of culture, I did a lot of travel stuff because I had the contacts, but I got really bored of it.

I mean, really bored of it. And you know, sadly, he passed away, and as soon as he passed away, I moved into politics, politics.

There we go. So obviously I know you from your journalistic pursuits, and you've been doing this for, like, since his last what? Almost 20 years, just in Colombia. But you also have quite a few interesting business ventures, so talk to me a bit about that. How did you get into that MomPost?

Tell me your back end story. how did you get in and how are you now? The the dawn of MomPost?

I had actually read about MomPost during my undergraduate in Exeter in Devon. Because when you do this, sort of, let's say, the colonization of the new world. The Magdalena River comes up. And I'd read about this beautiful colonial town, and I've been to many, many colonial towns through Latin America. And I was like, this is one of the last, I don't know, and I wanted to go there for Easter. I was already seeing my then girlfriend, who's now my wife, Alba, and I said, Listen, I'm going to go to MomPost for Semana Santa. It's 2007 and she's like, my maternal family is from there. It was total chance, total chance, and I was like, Well, OK, I'll go and they'll help me find a place to stay and everything else. And I was there and I was like, this is the most incredible place.

It's really it, there is so much potential here. And in Semana Santa, which was the high season, the actual, you know, the big tourism season, there were only two foreigners. Myself, I was writing an article for the South American Explorers magazine or something. And the other guy was an Englishman who actually we had friends in common in England, who was writing the footprint guide. And, of course, we gravitated to one another and we were like, we talked about it and he's now like the Reuters.

Correspondent in Spain or something? He's gone on to great things. But he, he said, you know, we need. Why do people not come here? And we realized it was a lack of communication, not just a lack of actual information about the place. And I was like, I can do that, and I said, Well, everything is so cheap, I'd like to buy a house, set it up and have a project.

And really, I told my future mother-in-law this, and I didn't really think anything of it. I thought six months, eight months. She might come back within a week, she said, and of course, her doing the negotiations as a means that things are better. They knew it was going to a Gringo.

We bought it, but we didn't know that. There were 36 or 38 heirs to the property because the lady who owned the property had died eight years previously and the house had been left to ruin. And she never had children. And so looking at nephews and cousins and great nephews and this flowchart. If you had seen how we had to do it, we had to bust some people in from the Guajira. And they were only getting their share was like 250,000 pesos, but they were on time so they would do it. A free bus ticket, you know? It's like no one had to do this. You had to bring everybody in to get all 36, 38 signatures, and the last one, this was 2008, when you purchased it.

End of 2007 in the 2007, and well, no, actually, midway 2007. And the last person to come up to sign goes, I'm not going to sign. And so you have to pay them more money, you sort of double it, but again, like 500,000 pesos is not going to break the bank. But it was like the Wild West. We had the room in the back of the bank and a stack of cash on the desk.

I wish I had a photo, I don't know.

Each person came forward with their cellular ID card and they were like, Who are you? Check it? Okay, you'll do this, you know? I mean, so this is the beginning of Casa Amarillo? Yeah, we opened in March 2008. Okay, so you did four rooms?

Yeah, within three months you were able to get it functioning well, you know? The four rooms were easy to sort of polish up, it was basic those four rooms because we'd only got one side now. The other side had been bought. Because years previously, this family couldn't decide how they were going to divide the inheritance.

So one side took half of the house and the other side took the other half of the wall down the middle. Okay, so I had to buy the other side of the house. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you look at it. The man who lived in the house alongside had been swindling money from his job. And either he had to pay the back. They found out what he'd been doing over years either pay them back, end up in the river, or flee to Venezuela. So anyway.

He was of the white upper class, so he.

Couldn't lose face by public negotiation, we had to do all negotiations at night, under the cover of darkness. Wow, wow, wow, so so you get this?

You're launching your project in 2008, and let's fast forward to today. Now you have two hotels in Mambos.

Yeah, now you have two hotels in Mambos, you also have your own house in Mambos. So how did you go from one place until now? Owning three properties and bringing a lot of tourism and industry to the city or town? It's a good story because it was, you know, first of all, everyone thinks I'm laundering dollars.

All the gossip behind me is I'm laundering dollars. If I wanted to launder dollars, I'd do it somewhere like Barranquilla, where there's a natural flow of dollars.

It was, you know, we never really, until pandemic. Of course, I don't want to talk about that. We never turned a loss, there were always backpackers coming through, you know, you know. Then we went upgrading to mid range and then upper mid range with Casa Maria, and we realized we needed to.

We had the platform for a top end place, now we had enough people to need a top end place. And we bought this house, we ended up buying the next house. Which, again, you'll have to buy my book to hear all the ins and outs of that one. We'll get into that in a second. That was hard.

At one point I gave up, I paid the deposit, you know, the security deposit to buy the house and hadn't heard anything in more than two years. And one night I went to bed going. That money is just lost. I've got to just bite the bullet. And the next day, the paperwork came through.

It was one of those things at that house, but we didn't renovate what is now San Rafael first because it was such a huge job. It was a question of getting money together. We were sitting, me, my wife and my mother in law were sitting in the main plaza enjoying a cold drink there, and me and my wife were saying, we have an apartment in the Casa Maria. But it's becoming a bit tiresome because guests come and look for you at all times, and if they can't find you, they will see you on your balcony. So they will walk out into the cloistered garden and waver you and say, one more question, you sucked me. Dry of information all day long, post 8 o'clock.

I'm not expecting to give you more information.

So we said we would really like our own place, and my mother in law says that house over there on the main square. I think it's secretly for sale. And I was like, Could you find out? And it turned out the guy who owned it, his wife, had died and she loved the house, but it was now time to sell. But her brother was living as a hermit in one of the rooms.

He didn't want to sell because it would mean he would lose his house because he was living there in grace and favor. So he kept it signed down.

So we actually bought a house that legitimately wasn't on the market, and I can't remember what year exactly. Now. It's more than 10 years now, I think, but we the houses were so still so cheap. Because Colombia, you know, the tourism boom hadn't happened. Nobody believed in Montparnasse, everyone thought I was mad.

What's this Gringo doing now? But we bought it now, we've got this wonderful four room house overlooking the main plaza. Then we restored the other one, which is now the top hotel in town, the San Rafael. We've only got between the two hotels 17 rooms.

These are not big places. Running and caring for colonial houses in the tropics is not an easy task. No, not at all. That's amazing, that's amazing. Why?

I know you have a new book about to come out, so let's do a quick pitch on your new book. Actually, it's quite exciting, I've got a designer working on the cover, so that's quite exciting.

Well, tell everybody quickly what's coming out, when do you expect to get it? and just give us a quick glimpse on what to expect. Well, it's called the Momposs Project, a story of love, hotels and madness in Colombia. I love it, my catch line. The issue is. I started writing it more than 10 years ago and just writing down some of the more curious things that happened. Witchcraft, ghost stories, Errant donkeys and so on, and some of the history.

And then I decided, You know what? Because the reality is, after a few years in Colombia, my life came to an impasse, where I no longer wanted to write. About tourism and stuff and blue Plate specials and restaurants, and so on. And there was something that happened and I can't remember exactly what it was, something nefarious in the conflict happened, some kidnapping or assassination that I was so upset by. I was like, I can't do this anymore. And so I started to incorporate in the writing, putting what was going on in Colombia at the time, but in its context with Momposs.

And so the first thing that I then slide in is the reality of this small, rural town on the Magdalena River, beautiful colonial UNESCO World Heritage site. The day that Ingrid Bettencourt was freed in Operation Hacke Checkmate, nobody cared.

I mean, it didn't mean anything to these people. And you start realizing that Colombia is amalgamation of several countries. And the guys who sit in the beer kiosk in front of the Casa Maria, playing dominoes, doing nothing all day, nice.

All I heard, I was alone in the Casa Maria running it. Everyone else had gone out on the boat trip, all the guests and I went. And I just heard I overheard them say, Oh, yeah, yeah, the white lady's been freed. LA MONA There was no un.

And I was like, God, that must mean something. So I switched on the TV and of course, it's channel page to page is everything. I was like, look at this, you go to Bogota or Medellin. I mean, this is the biggest thing ever in Paris.

But in these rural communities. And I was just like, you know what, I start putting these things in because it's a greater explanation of Colombia.

And I put them in, and I'd just been finishing up a professional MA. So I didn't have to do a thesis and conflict resolution here in Bogota, and so my knowledge of the conflict. And then, laterally, the peace accords were very, very up to date. And I actually got a prize for best students, like the first time ever.

It wasn't for best behavior, it was for academic work, let's just say, and so, but the stories out of MomPos keep coming. And when we restored our house, here's one of the things we had to dig up the garden to put some new electrical wires in.

And one of the elder members of one of the top families, I would say the Conquistador families of Mompos, came out and said, Did you find anything down there where you dug? I'm like, No, we didn't find anything, he said. Oh yeah, my cousin died a few days after being born. He was buried there. We didn't find any bones. Thank you.

But that's it becomes all these stories coming together, yeah, and it becomes like the daily chat, it's things like my wife. The most recent story is like, we wanted to buy six clay pots from, you know, Alfredo, you know, a clay maker who lives far out of Mompos. And he wouldn't, he wouldn't do the commission of making the pots, because he said, you know, he'd quedar mal.

He'd be, he didn't want to be in bad business with us and stuff anyway. He then decides that he does want to do it. A month later, he doesn't have our number, so he calls a number in Mompos and there's a security guard.

It's like the Casa de la Cultura. He speaks to the security guard and goes, Yeah, there was a lady I don't remember her name, but she lives close by. And her daughter's beautiful. And they want pots, her daughter's beautiful, and they live in Bogota. And the guy went, I think you're talking about Esther.

That's my mother-in-law, and yes, her daughter's beautiful, and they do live in Bogota. So that the security guard came around and knocked on our door to say, Yeah, does your daughter live in Bogota? Because she's beautiful? And the clay maker's looking, that's great.

So it's bringing all these stories and everything you've done for Mompos into a book. So when does this, when's this going to come out, and where can people get this? Well, it will be out second half of the year. I'm just getting, I'm just printing at the moment. Like a reference book on Colombian politics and history, called The Colombia at a Crossroads. It's a historical and social biographies that covers all of Colombia's politics and history, and some of the society.

So that one will be out in a couple of weeks or a week or so. It's with the printers now, so the MomPos project is going through its final edits, it's with a designer. I hope second half of this year, so within a couple of months I should be already talking to the printers.

It will be obviously on Amazon Ebook and print on demand, but it will be printed here in Bogota. And, excitingly, I am in conversations with a distributor in England to distribute the books that we start producing. Most importantly, I'm not going to be like Liz Truss and hold up the book upside down. Better than cocaine, better than cocaine. Learning to grow coffee and Live in Colombia by Barry Maxwell's. It's the first work of nonfiction that me and Alba, my Wife, published with our little editorial company called Fuller Vigil, and it's selling well.

Wonderful, wonderful Richard, that's great and I for one, I cannot wait for these. You are like the best client. I don't know how many you've bought.

I've bought a lot, I have my little frequent flyers club for your books. So, Richard, we're starting to wrap up for time. We're going to do a quick lightning round. I have a couple of questions we're going to go through.

These are quick answers, so let's go so. Favorite restaurant in Bogota Mesa Franca.

Mesa Franca, your favorite book?

It's usually what I'm reading at the time, but one that I go back to a lot.

I do love Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad that I go back to a lot, but People of the Abyss by no, No. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. Okay, great best book in Colombia.

Quite a lot. If you want a history one, the best one, of course, is David Bushnell's Colombia, a nation in spite of itself.

Fiction on Colombia Well, I've always liked nonfiction. I've always liked The Fruit Palace by Charles Nicol.

Good one, of course, is Tom Viling's Short Walks from Bogota. You're missing one of my favorite Columbia books. Magdalena Oh wait, David's Magdalena. Yeah, yeah. Of course. I kind of don't think of him as like, I think of obviously Colombia, but I always think of the Amazon.

Yeah, he does. That's a new, one, best story you have ever reported on.

Ooh, I don't know, there's been a few weird ones. I mean, that would have to be quirky. Although, you know, if I talk about the Columbia Calling podcast recently, the podcast with Gary Murray, where he was a hotelier in Bogota and all the scrapes he went through. I got a great message from a friend at the university, OH, at Birmingham City University, who works in tourism education, he said. You know, I started listening to this podcast.

I thought, you know, there'll be stuff there that I can use in my lectures. So we start on tourism. And then suddenly there's money laundering, and then there's infidelity, and then there's this, and there's that. He goes. I can't use this, but this interview has everything and it's phenomenal. Well done, great favorite cocktail?

Not really a cocktail man, I just prefer a single malt, don't like sweet drinks, all right, worst Colombian food.

Oh yeah, the Changua would be up there. horrible stuff. I've never been to Changua. it's pretty bad, yeah. Favorite podcast guest up until now?

Well, it depends of fame and so on. Wade Davis is gonna be up there, definitely, and that was a huge coup for me to get someone like Wade Davis, Wade Davis. And for those listening, if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that. It's still one of the best podcasts of all times.

Yeah, we've re-released it, we re-released it last year as well because it's still topical. All right, who's your favorite child? Neither. I love them equally. Thank you for that.

Favorite Colombian president? Dead or alive, Dead or alive, Oh.

That's a very good question. Let's just take out the last five.

Out of the last out of Petro Duque, Santos uribe Pastrana, I'll take Santos me too, Santos great, favorite British monarch, Dead or alive? Favorite British monarch.

Only because, probably, you know, you think of Henry V. out of the Shakespeare's play and so on, probably him. And last one to wrap it up. What do you want to be remembered for?

Humility. It would be nice. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. Well, Richard, thank you so much. It's been an absolute delight for everyone out there.

Thank you, this is for the Colombian podcast. I'm not your host Richard McColl, but it has been an absolute pleasure getting to know a bit more behind the curtain of our glorious Richard McColl. Thanks everyone. Have a great day. Thank you, Eric. The Columbia Calling podcast is sponsored by Latin News, a leading source of political and economic analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean since 1967.

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