Big monks in volcano country

Big monks in volcano country

Greetings from Bogotá, on a day on which water rationing is allegedly in force. The two reservoirs that supply the city with water have been greatly depleted by the El Niño weather anomaly and the city council has instituted rolling restrictions. The city of some 9,000,000 people has been divided into 9 zones and each […]

A grand tour

A grand tour

Greetings from Bogotá, where I have being enjoying a quiet time of relaxation and reflection. After an October and November under intense pressure as we partook in the preparation and production prior to the presentation of Adriano’s art and my book, the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 offered a welcome change of pace. […]

Better Than Cocaine now on sale

Better Than Cocaine now on sale

Greetings from Mykanos. I just got back here from a pretty torrid time in Bogotá during which both Adriano’s exhibition and the physical form of my book ‘Better Than Cocaine: Learning to grow coffee, and live, in Colombia’, saw the light of day. When gallery owner Boris offered Adriano the opportunity to be part of […]

Tourists and pilgrims

Tourists and pilgrims

Greetings from Mykanos. I have just returned from Bogotá, where the weather was 15ºC, varying between sunny and light clouds. Here, in, the bush, it is sunny and 26ºC. Nothing remarkable about that, it is usually thus, and in fact is uniform throughout the year. Bogotá is known as the City of Eternal Autumn, and […]

The Supermarket Santa

The Supermarket Santa

Greetings from Bogotá. There’s been another long pause since my last Letter, but all for a good reason. The reason? I was waiting for certain things to come to fruition so I could include them. The trouble was that every time we got close, another thing would come into view. First thing was a commission […]

Better than cocaine

Better than cocaine

Greetings from Bogotá Yes I know, it has been a while since my last Letter and some masochists amongst you have actually been asking when the next one would arrive? The answer is self-apparent … today. The delay is not the result of lack of interest or lack of subject matter. There are plenty of […]

A novel turn

A novel turn

Greetings from Mykanos. It’s been quite a while since you last heard from me, and I imagine some of you were counting your blessings not to have to even consider whether wasting time reading my ramblings would be worth it. For those more tolerant, or with more spare time, I can assure you that my […]

New year new farms

New year new farms

Greetings from Mykanos.  Happy New Year!  That is a very traditional salutation to mark the transition from an anything but traditional 2021, to a hopefully far more positive 2022.  But if we thought we would wave Covid goodbye as we turned the page on the calendar, we were sadly disappointed. Omicron seems ubiquitous and rapidly […]

Cosecha in the time of Covid

Cosecha in the time of Covid

Greetings from Mykanos. This month, the letter from Colombia is definitely ‘C’ … for Covid, the pandemic of the century, and for the Cosecha, the main coffee harvest of the year. Not surprisingly, one is far preferable to the other. As far as Covid is concerned, it is almost as though it never happened here […]

Bogota bound

Bogota bound

Greetings from Bogotá.  Yes, you read right. For the first time in 17 months I am in our apartment in Bogotá.  Two weeks after my second Astra Zenica shot I had my first plane flight since February 2020. It was from Pereira’s new airport terminal, which was only being constructed when we were last there, […]