Bali to Colombia! You don’t often see those two countries in the same sentence, and probably for good reason. The transit from Bali to Colombia was a real journey; I genuinely felt like I forgot what time was after jumping in and out of planes for 44 hours and ending up on the other side of the world. It’s always bittersweet leaving one place and saying goodbye to new friends and it was certainly no different this time. However, without being on the move, I’d never meet so many incredible people in the first place. Usually, I’ll see them somewhere in the world pretty soon and that’s exciting. En route to Colombia, I was super pumped to see my great mate Jackson Groves. Similarly, he was flying in from our hometown Adelaide and we were meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia.

THE BALI SWING AND RICE TERRACES

There was no more sleeping in this week, I think two weeks of excessive smoothie bowl eating was enough to get me back up and about after the ultra. Monday morning I was up early and ready to go for a day of adventures around Bali, like usual, I like to jump in for the ride and see where I end up. First stop, our man April from @balinusapenidatour took us this rice terrace valley filled with swings and other funky creations. The engineering of rice terraces will always fascinate me, a system that works so well that I’m sure could be implemented within Australian agriculture?! If you’re up for going on a swing, it costs about $15 bucks. I was pretty happy to watch so I could put the money towards food instead.

Marie out on the swing.

From here, we went waterfall exploring and to the land of monkeys (non-offical name).  Here’s my favourites shots from these two places.

Jake and Marie basking in the golden light.

I wanted a flick out there too, so lush. Thanks @mariefeandjakesnow

My favourite photo of the week. What cool little monkey.

Bali to Colombia

Bali to Colombia?! My flight path was from Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur, KL to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Bogota, Colombia and then Bogota to Santa Marta. It was a lot of time in the air, I can assure you that. As I’ve said before, I really don’t mind flying because it’s such a unique time these days to completely switch off and be uninterrupted from everything else going on in your world and the outer. For me, these flights consisted of a lot of writing, listening to podcasts, watching a couple movies and walking up and down the aisles to raid the snacks at the back of the plane.

Why am I in Colombia?

This week I’m working with Hostel World. My great mate Jackson and I will be spending time in both Santa Marta and Medellin, in some of Colombia’s funkiest hostels. The one we are staying in currently is called Calle 11 Hostel, previously in the 1970s it was a big cartel mansion. After being bought back off the bank 4 years ago, it has been transformed into a hostel and it’s a seriously cool place.

Jacko infront of the former cartel mansion, now Calle 11 Hostel.

It’s wicked to be re-united with Jackson and work on the same project, if you don’t know Jackson, you can check him out on insta at @jackson.groves or on his travel blog www.journeyera.com. Jackson and I met three years ago in Hawaii, long story short, we ended up living together for 3 months after I didn’t have anywhere to stay. It was in these three months I jumped into photography and laid a solid foundation for how I choose to live my life now. You’ll be able to find out more about that story in the preface of my upcoming book “WHY DON’T YOU?”. Right now, WHY DON’T YOU is in pre-production with Amazon, so I’m just waiting to get the pre-order date to let you all know.

Like Bondi Icebergs, but Colombia Cartel style?

I’m looking forward to the adventures and challenges South America holds for me. Already, the language barrier has been tough. I grew up hearing that it was imperative to know some Spanish if you travel to South America and that really is the case. For me, I’ve never travelled to a place where English wasn’t easily spoken or at least a common second language. It’s Spanish or nothing here, so I guess I’ll be trying to learn as much Spanish as I can, very quickly.

Push yourself to do something you wouldn’t usually do this week!

Big Love,

JL.

Each time you push your comfort zones or put yourself into a challenging environment, what you once thought was ‘crazy’ or ‘strange’ is no longer that. To others it may still remain ‘crazy, but that is only because they can’t grasp the idea themselves. – Joshua Lynott

Another snap I like from this week, from behind the scenes of I shoot I did for some mates.