The Nuances Of Colombia With Lachlan Page
We all pick up ideas about a country from a lifetime of media consumption, and stereotypes can shape our opinions, persisting even once a country has changed, as Colombia has over the last 30 years. Lachlan Page talks about how he ended up in Colombia after prioritizing travel first and work second, his recommended places to visit from jungle to coast, tips for safety, whether being bilingual changes your personality, cross-cultural marriage, recommended books, and more. Lachlan Page is the author of Magical Disinformation, a spy novel with a satirical edge set amongst the Colombian peace process. Show notes * Making travel the priority and fitting work around it, plus volunteering when you have useful skills * How stereotypes and media representations of Colombia are different from the reality * Recommended places to visit * Tips for safety, useful wherever you go * Does speaking a second language affect your personality? * On cross-cultural marriages * Recommended books You can find Lachlan Page at LachlanPageAuthor.com Transcript of the interview Jo Frances Penn: Lachlan Page is the author of Magical Disinformation, a spy novel with a satirical edge set amongst the Colombian peace process. Welcome, Lachlan. Lachlan Page: Thanks, Jo, for having me. Jo Frances Penn: It’s good to talk to you about this. Now, first off, I wanted to talk about your interesting jobs. You’ve worked some very interesting things. Volcano hiking guide, Red Cross volunteer, and language teacher among others. How has travel shaped your career? Lachlan Page: I put all the most interesting jobs on there. There are a lot of other jobs that perhaps weren’t as interesting, but I’ve really been interested in travel since I was a teenager, and tried to travel every opportunity I could through my university years. When I was about 18 or 19, I did a backpacking trip through Europe for two months. Later, I studied abroad in France and the U.K., and that eventually led me down a trail of doing those different odd jobs. Eventually, when I returned to Australia, I graduated university, did an office job doing market research reports, and from my previous Spanish-speaking skills actually got that job because it involved a lot of reading in Spanish, and then using that information for the market research reports, and one of my bosses was from Costa Rica. That idea of travel and language definitely shaped that early part of my career. But I guess I soon realized, like a lot of people, that office type of job wasn’t for me. I set off after that and went to Guatemala and continued learning Spanish. And that’s where through the school I was studying at, I got in touch with a volunteering organization which put me in touch with the Guatemalan Red Cross in a Central Highland city called Cobán. It’s a little bit off the tourist trail. But there’s a very popular river, waterfall nearby called Semuc Champey, which a lot of people go to. It was in that area and I was there for about three months, two to three months doing volunteer work with Red Cross. And that was based in what I’d studied, which was international business. So, helping them set up spreadsheets and very basic excel type things, but also getting out into the field and occasionally doing health checks, a lot of health information where I was doing more the organizing of the data and things like that, not the actual health aspects. From there really, I continued traveling through central America and originally had my sight set on Panama. But, as I was going through Nicaragua, I did a volcano trek tour, and when it finished I saw that they’re actually hiring for people to become volcano guides.