Words by Felipe Bartolome
Photos by Glueeyes

I’ve been going to Colombia for three years now. I’ve gone three times, each year for twenty days to a month. I’d never been there before that. I live in Mexico now and I haven’t been traveling that much, not to other countries. I can’t go to the states anymore so I’m mostly flying to Europe to try and escape. I don’t have that many connections in South America, but I definitely wanted to know more places in the continent, so I started chatting with people. I used to talk a lot on Instagram with Gonogold. I really like his skating and shit. He used to welcome me there like, “Yo, come here anytime. You’re always welcome.” But it was like the kind of invitation that’s not so serious like “Yo, you’re always welcome in Colombia blah blah.” And at this point I was like fuck it. I’m just going to ask if I can actually go and stay with him and skate with him. So I took the chance and went there, even though I didn’t really know him. Flying there from Mexico is kind of cheap. It’s like $200 round trip. I just wanted to go somewhere a bit different and farther from where I live now in Mexico. I got there at 6:00 AM without knowing anyone or what to expect. And Gonogold was there ready with his motorbike to take me and my huge bag with him. That was pretty funny. I don’t know how he managed.

Before getting there, Gonogold put me in contact with Glueeyes who’s the photographer. He’s the best. He’s always been really nice. I mean both of them have been really nice to me. They took me in their home and skated with me trying to do this project, which hasn’t been that easy. I went three times already and the part is still not that ready. Glueeyes films too. He was doing everything. That was quite amazing. We were trying to shoot the photos and get the clip. He was really multitasking.

I did most of the tricks two times. You can see because we don’t have the photos of every trick and we don’t have the footage for every photo but most of the things we did twice. We would try and film it and then get a quick photo. It felt heavy, especially for Glue since he was carrying all the equipment. I didn’t really know what to expect and it was definitely harder to skate than I thought. There are spots, I just feel like they’re kind of hidden, at least the ones I like. It’s kind of a rail paradise but that’s not really my thing. It was quite hard. It would get dark really early and I’m not really the earliest guy (laughs). It felt a little bit like a mission all the time.

When we are skating, for me it’s not that much about the tricks, but about the experience you have with someone. For me, my life is going to be my memories. It’s about living in the present and creating good memories for the future.