“NICELY FOUND”
Mael: When I read the tourist agency slogan, "nicely found," on my first trip to Colombia, I couldn't imagine how, ten years later, this sentence would perfectly illustrate my life. The exhilarating combination of cumbía salsa dancing, warm weather, tropical rainstorms, and the stunning landscape was intoxicating on its own. Add to this exotic cocktail the finest whitewater, from creeking to big water, runnable all year long, and you end up with all the ingredients for a piece of paradise that, once you visit, might make you want to stay forever.
The adventure started in 2010 with a crew of French young guns keen for everything and prepared for nothing. We came, enticed by promises of endless first descents and missions in the jungle, and were not disappointed. Despite some hazardous overnighters without camping gear or food in deep canyons flooded by rains, I was hooked. After two months, I had become totally addicted to this simple lifestyle of multi-day missions, nights in hammocks, salsa dancing, and the continual quest for the next new river. Back in France, I sold everything and worked for a year to have enough money to return to Colombia. In 2013, I was finally in Colombia again—and never really left. I officially married Eliana, my Colombian wife, in 2016 and finished building my house in 2020.
That first trip coincided with the moment when Colombia started to open up after more than fifty years of a deadly civil war. Hope for peace and social justice had been claimed by more and more people, who pushed policymakers to negotiate the end of the war with the oldest guerilla movement in the world. The newborn peace process allowed us to explore some new areas that had previously been impossible to approach, even for Colombians themselves. In this context, we set our sights on the region of Antioquia in the surroundings of the second biggest city in Colombia: Medellin.
THE EL DORADO ANTIOQUEÑO
Medellin has a bad reputation, and usually, the triad of Escobar, cocaine, and violence stick to the city name. However, people who have visited the city of the primavera eterna (Medellin is called the city of eternal spring due to the sweetness of the weather) testify that
