Finding Home—and Chaos—in Colombia’s Coffee Axis

How I learned not to be a gringo in Colombia (while still being a gringo).

Andrew Boryga is a novelist who was born and raised in the Bronx but has called Miami home for the past decade. His debut novel Victim was published in 2024 and named a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize, a New York Times Editor's Choice, and a best book of the year by NPR, the BBC and LitHub. His past writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He has also taught writing to elementary students, college students, and incarcerated men. He publishes a free, monthly Substack newsletter about his adventures in publishing called Dwell.

1.

Maybe you’ve been to Colombia, but you’ve likely never been to Armenia. If you’re a tourist, you have no reason to. There are no five star hotels or resorts, no infamous party spots, no award winning fine dining. It is a city of under 300,000 built not on cocaine, like the Colombian cities you probably have heard of, but on a different drug: Coffee.

As you drive around Armenia, and more so on the rural outskirts lined with fincas, the coffee plant is everywhere; tiny beans shading from red to green, full of a potency that can kill. The love for cafe is so real there is a whole theme park–think Six Flags–called El Parque del Cafe with coffee inspired roller coasters, and Armenia and nearby cities, Pereira and Manizales are known affectionately as El Eje Cafetero, or the Coffee Axis.

I am no expert on Armenia, nor am I an expert on Colombia. For the record, I’m not even Colombian. I’m a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, and before I stopped my beautiful Colombian wife, Marcela, outside of a class on campus 15 years ago and begged for her phone number, all I had known about the country is the same as what anyone seems to know about the country if they’ve never been there before; a series of names, specific items, and statements that goes something like: Pablo Escobar, cocaine, Shakira, burundanga, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, fine ass women, and, of late–though not specific to me at the time–excellent and cost-effective plastic surgery, J. Balvin, and Karol G.

Since getting Marcela’s digits and doing everything in my power to ensure she never leaves my side, I’ve been to Colombia five times–and to tiny Armenia thrice.

The official reason for my most recent trip in June was to take our two kids (like I said, anything to ensure she never leaves) to visit Marcela’s family, who include her 90-something year old grandmother, a couple of aunts and uncles, and as of this past May, her parents, who left Miami to retire in their homeland. Deeper than that, the trip was also an effort to keep our American kids in touch with their roots and provide them with a regular reminder that they live privileged lives in the U.S., no matter what their spoiled ass friends say, and to make sure their Spanish stays sharp so they can grow up bilingual, make their grandparents proud, prove wrong all my haters who mocked my own Spanish growing up, and secure a job wherever they go.

But what about me? Why was I going on this trip? As I packed for it the night before, I wasn’t so sure. I won’t front; I wasn’t even all that excited about going. Colombia, awesome. But Armenia, again, for the third time? What more was there to see? What more was there to do? I didn’t have great answers to these questions at the time.

2.

It didn’t help that the whole voyage was predicated on an extremely inconvenient necessity: Marcela and I had to blow five precious PTO days to secure our week in Armenia because there is only one direct flight to Armenia from Miami–a Spirit flight that leaves and returns on Sundays.

Spirit gets a bad rap because of all those fight videos–most of which take place at my home airport–but in my book we are cool. In fact, we became mad cool on this trip, because my daughter was now two-years old and required a full priced plane ticket.

This being our first flight with four seats, Marcela and I decided each of us would get one flight sitting alone across the aisle while the other parent dealt with the kids. I don’t remember how I drew this prized seat on the first flight, perhaps Marcela made the offer sensing I was already a bit grumpy about the trip as a whole, but it didn’t really matter because within seconds of the plane reaching cruising altitude, my daughter decided to cross sides and I spent most of the flight with baby girl in my lap watching clips of the OG Pink Panther.

When we landed a few hours later, it was the afternoon and my kids were tired, hungry, and cranky. So was I. My daughter caught a mega tantrum. My patience was thinner than an oblea (look it up, it’s fire). There isn’t a jetbridge in Armenia, so we had to walk down the plane steps and across the tarmac to get to the tiny immigration processing. My wife’s family were waiting for us in the pickup area and had a full view of the tarmac. This is all a long way of saying that the first piece of media that exists to document our trip is a grainy video of me throwing my daughter over my shoulder looking pissed while trying to wrangle our bags and our stroller.

Welcome to Colombia.

3.

Our digs on this trip were the same as the last three: Marcela’s grandma’s house, tucked inside a little gated community not far from the city center. It’s a house I’ve always liked for its odd, sharp angles that create nooks you can duck into if you need a breather–which is special because space is a premium in Colombia.

From the cars and parking spots to the clothes, bathrooms, and grocery aisles, it is a country built for smaller people. At 5’11, I instantly morph into an NBA small forward as soon as I step off the plane.

At casa de abuela, for example, our assigned room made a New York City apartment (rent-controlled monstrosities in the hood aside) feel generous: a sliver of floor wedged with a too-narrow twin, a pullout cot, and a pack-and-play. Each night Marcela and I folded ourselves into bed with a child on either side, pressed close not so much out of romance but to stop ourselves from rolling off.

What the house lacks in square footage, it makes up for in sheer entertainment value. Marcela’s grandma lives there with her two daughters and two sons, all of whom are in their sixties. That might sound adorable or insane. To me, it’s both—sometimes within the same hour. But the fun part is that it turns out siblings remain siblings no matter how gray their hair gets: grudges from grade school constantly resurface and get aired out, bickering erupts over nothing, and the political arguments are endless. Visiting during an election year is like front-row seats at a family cage match. All I have to do to get the party started is ask who is running.

4.

It rained all day. Pre-kids this wouldn’t have stopped Marcela and I. We would have hit museums, movie theaters, restaurants, bars. We did this the first time I ever went to Colombia, to Bogota, the capital, where my wife was born. Life was different. We had time to seek out culture, history, and inspiration. Time to wander in parks and bars, drinking guarapo and Aguila’s with the locals. Now, we are parents with two toddlers, and our first priority is ensuring our feral children–who were already beginning to destroy abuela’s home–are entertained.

So, we went to the mall.

Malls in Colombia consider children differently than malls in Miami. Back home, I’m always disappointed with whatever sorry installation they have that passes for a park. It’s the same almost everywhere we go in the city, unless the space is specifically advertised for children and hits you with a fee to get through the door. Even Burger King and McDonalds took the balls out of the ball pit.

At Flora Mall on the north side of Armenia, where we went, there was a whole wing devoted to keeping kids entertained. We broke off a few pesos to pay a woman to let our kids into a fenced area full of play kitchens, cars, Barbies, Legos and everything else their hearts could desire. The woman scrolled on her phone, ostensibly there to ensure nobody got injured. Parents, meanwhile, hung at the bar directly next to the play area, sipped on a beer, watched the soccer match.

Marcela and I slipped away to Frisby’s, or the Colombian, far more popping version, of KFC, where the chicken is fried to perfection and served with packets of flavored honey and a pair of gloves so you can go to town like a classy motherfucker.

By nighttime, my kids were sufficiently tired and clonked out. Marcela and I crawled out of the dark room like we escaped a bomb shelter and drank coffee and ate pastries downstairs, where her family gathers nightly to push aside their beef and act copacetic.

On this night, one of Marcela’s aunts, Cata, broke out a roscone–a donut but more brolic, sprinkled with sugar on top, baked golden, and stuffed all the way through with warm guava paste. I had never had it before. But it only took one bite to shake up my world and make me think to myself, you know what, maybe Armenia does have a thing or two to teach me yet.

5.

Cousins from California rolled into town, affectionately called Los Gringos because although the wife, Marcela’s blood relative, and her husband, a Californian, both speak great Spanish, their children don’t. The fact that my children aren’t called gringos–although I am called one, and rightfully so–brings me great pride.

Our kids and their kids combined forces and tore up the house again, which was enough of an incentive to get us to all roll out to Salento, a small town an hour outside of Armenia. There were only two cars, so all the kids lapped up on parents, which is normal in a country where seatbelts and stop signs are optional, and where people will stack up in everything from a moped to a horse to get where they need to go.

On the ride over, we pulled over to La Vaca Original, a dessert stand halfway to Salento that–true to name–has a huge cow installation overlooking the mountainside and sells arroz con leches and baked delicacies like pan de bonos and bunelos. I have seen it before, but my daughter–a big fan of cows, and now old enough on this trip to truly notice the world around her–stared at it for a while in amazement. Just seeing the light in her eyes made it worthwhile.

When we stopped again it was to see a river that cuts across the mountains. My son and his cousin started playing by it, throwing sticks off the side, getting way too close despite my insistence that he back up. But he’s five, so he didn’t listen to shit I had to say, and just as he was about to throw another stick, he slipped and I caught him mid-air by the shirt, dad reflexes in full effect, stopping him just as his body was to begin descending down into the river, where God knows where it would have taken him.

He had a wide smile on his face as I dragged him back and didn’t seem fazed that he almost certainly was about to get his shit rocked.

6.

Salento is one of the more visited towns in the region, full of artisanal jewelry shops, coffee shops, gift shops, and restaurants. When I came to Armenia for the first time in 2014, Salento was quaint, but with each subsequent visit, it has become an off the beaten tourist spot for the sorts of international tourists that tend to enjoy such places, meaning those scraggly Germans, Brits, and Nordics with tattered backpacks the size of toddlers.

We puttered around with the family. In the town square we rented miniature Willys Jeeps-historically revered cars because they were used post WWII to harvest the mountainous terrain–that the kids could ride around in.

We stopped into Fábrica de Chocolates for strawberries dipped in rich chocolate produced right there in the shop, Kafe del Alma for fresh pressed coffee, and ice cream paletas across the street at Delipaleteria Salento.

We climbed up a mountain of stairs that make the stairs on 167th street in the Bronx (made famous by the Joker movie) seem like a step stool to get up to one of the many miradors in the area that overlook the town and make you feel like you can reach up and touch the clouds.

7.

At some point, we were asked by a woman posted up outside of a building if we were interested in riding horses.

Yes, of course, we said.

She led us down a dirt road where a man stood with horses tied to a fence. After a quick WhatsApp exchange–our only “paperwork” for the afternoon–we saddled up. My son rode with his grandma, leaving me on a beautiful white horse with an ego that insisted on leading the pack.

The horse charged ahead on a route it seemed to know by heart. I’d ridden before, so at first I was cooling–zipping along dirt roads, taking in the countryside, and enjoying my solitude, which is hard to come by in a country of tiny spaces packed with people, in a small home packed with relatives, and in a smaller bedroom packed with my own family.

In my fitted and Air Maxes, alone on a horse, with no one around to guide me or help me, just the expanse of a Salento countryside before me, I pictured myself a modern cowboy, or some explorer riding into new, unexplored land. I’ve never been into travelogues, or settler diaries or even Gulliver’s Travels (I recall, in fact, telling a professor in college who asked me why I wasn’t engaging in discussions in class around the novel, “that shit is boring”) but for some reason, riding this white beast whose taut muscles bulged under my legs, I felt like I could finally understand the men who populated these narratives–or more so, understand the appeal of exploring a foreign terrain and all the thoughts and senses that might suddenly appear to you like a gift.

This became even clearer as my horse kept pushing faster and faster, like he was on his own mission to ride and, sensing I was game, or perhaps sensing I was having an epiphany I needed to have, decided to take me on it. He broke into a full sprint, galloping up and down the sloping pavement cracked straight through with thick vines and I thought I might fall or get launched off the side of the mountain range.

And yet, despite this fear, this feeling of near-death, or perhaps because of it, I felt so alive; exhilarated. I had the sensation that in this modern world of screens and notifications and technology and sophistication, none of it, despite all its flash and promise, could eclipse this feeling right here: the innate, ancestral thrill of flirting with the edge of destruction.

When the horse finally slowed down, I had a huge smile on my face. I laughed, all by myself, alone on that path. I suddenly understood my son’s reaction earlier that morning at the river.

8.

Our last excursion of the trip was to Parque Tematico Quimbayas, a water park about an hour outside of the city that we discovered on Instagram and figured the kids might enjoy (again, if they are entertained, all is well).

We lapped up in the car once more. My father-in-law drove the car I was in, following his nephew who knew the way. He drove for about 15 minutes, just enough to get us out of the city center, when his nephew called to say he’d gotten an alert on his phone that there might be a police checkpoint up ahead.

My father-in-law–generally an even keeled man–pulled over and started to freak the fuck out. He didn’t have his driver’s license on him because it was his American license and he didn’t like to carry that identification out of fear that people might discover he was not just a regular Colombian citizen but an American citizen, too, and therefore rob him, extort him, or worse. (These things happen.)

Fearful of the trouble that might come with getting stopped by corrupt cops without identification, his eyes, and the eyes of everyone else in my car, landed on me, since I had my license and was clearly a tourist, a capital G, gringo–who the cops are less inclined to fuck with.

I had never before driven in Colombia. Although I drive plenty in Miami, every time I’ve been in the country, a more experienced driver of the city and its chaotic, narrow roads has taken the helm. I’ve always ceded that seat with no problems. For as much as I’ve come to the country, I’d never felt I’d graduated to the point where I could drive in it, where I could deal with the stampedes of motos and cars swerving in and out of thin lanes, and the traffic lights so minuscule and few and far between that they might as well not even be there.

But something about that horse ride the day before gave me confidence I couldn’t ever reach for before. As I sat in the driver’s seat of the Camry, I was still nervous, I won’t front–even though I was 100 percent fronting to everyone in the car, including my kids who I never reveal an ounce of fear to out of some ancient machismo far too ingrained in me to rid myself of. But within a couple minutes of following the car ahead of me, I calmed down. I realized, naturally sticking my nose into lanes, cutting people off at the appropriate times, and leaning into a familiar aggression in the driver’s seat, that despite all my previous fears, I had been prepared for this.

I had learned to drive in the mayhem of Fordham Road in the Bronx, at an old driving school, with an instructor who smelled like he bathed in Newports and Hennessy, and who told me on the first day that it didn’t really matter if I used two hands on the wheel or one, but that I would look a lot cooler and like I knew what I was doing if I only used one. I had built on those early skills by driving on Dyckman Avenue in Washington Heights, where I lived when I purchased my first car and learned how to whip it expertly around all the double parked cabs and Escalades used as outdoor sound systems for the Dominicans smoking hookah late at night. And I had perfected my driving by moving to Miami, where highway speed limits were never enforced and where using your signals to alert other drivers on the road which direction you were heading in was basically a challenge for them to speed up and stop you.

Thus, I conquered the highway with ease. The road eventually narrowed to a strand of hair, full of craters better suited for a Willys Jeep than a Camry. Still, I carefully bounced us through and made it to the water park in one piece.

9.

The park appeared out of nowhere—a compound with two big pools. One had a swim-up bar, a cave behind a waterfall, and a slide that shot you out like a cannon. Outside of the pools, it was all Instagram traps—a massive swing that swung you toward the valley, a wooden hand you could stand inside, palm outstretched over the forest.

My son and I hit the water slide. Each time it threw us so fast into the water below that I was certain this particular slide would be illegal in the United States. By our fourth trip I was so focused on keeping him from flying off that I didn’t notice my $600 Warby Parkers slip away to the bottom of the murky water. When I came up for air I couldn’t see them anywhere; couldn’t see anything, since I’m effectively blind without glasses.

I parked my son on the edge of the pool and dove to the bottom, but bodies kept raining on me. When I asked the crowd up at the top of the slide to pause, I thought they’d dismiss me as a silly tourist who should have known better, but the group of beer-drinking Colombian men up there surprised me by agreeing, and wishing me well.

I searched for five minutes with no luck and started imagining the rest of the trip half-blind. Then someone shouted: “Try the slide again, land where you landed before.”

A genius.

I launched myself down again. I focused less on my velocity and more on my feet. I kicked around, felt the frames and surfaced with the glasses in hand. The crowd above clapped, and for a brief moment, I was the hero of the pool.

10.

On the following Sunday morning, we hit the airport early–mostly for the food. Airport food in America is usually buns, but in El Eden, the Armenia airport, there is an amazing, little restaurant with menus the size of stone tablets and a waitress who hates her life that you can gorge on on your way out of the country.

I got the bandeja paisa–a dish concocted to fill up farmers for a full day of work in the fields that includes rice, beans, a fried egg, chorizo, steak, plantains, and chicharron. I am not a farmer, but I figured I would be on a plane with my two children and then going through immigration, and getting to my car parked in the airport lot, so therefore the long journey ahead justified the meal.

After finishing off our food and saying our goodbyes to family, we made our way through security.

The past two times I’ve tried to leave Armenia, I have been pulled aside for a “random” check. They separate me from my family, pat me down, double check all my bags and belongings, and ask me why I was visiting the country, where I went, who I stayed with, if I had any plants or drugs on me, and so forth.

No one has told me this is true, but I believe this is done because to these cops it is unusual that American tourists who are not also Colombian actually come to this part of the country. In fact, I read the whole song and dance as one big question: Tell us, why the fuck are you really here?

But in my third time in the city, and my fifth time in the country, after having conquered a horse, the highway, and an extremely miniature version of the seas, I guess I passed enough tests, or perhaps gained a certain level of confidence I didn’t previously possess on my past trips, because the security let me sail right through without so much as one curious glance.

It felt right.

Because on this trip to Armenia I gained more than yet another Colombian stamp on my passport, updated photos with my wife’s family, and a couple pounds of fat made of delicious starch and meat. Sitting on the flight, stuffed between my toddlers, the trip no longer felt like a waste of PTO days, and the city itself no longer felt like some random, out-of-the-way town an American tourist has no reason to visit. It felt like home.