A Certain Idea of Travel

by Thibaud Perdrix

In 2009, I was sailing through the San Blas archipelago with two friends. One of them lived in Cartagena. Colombia was on my mind for a simple reason: there was still so much left to discover.

The country had barely opened to tourism. On the French foreign ministry’s map, a large swath of the territory was still marked in red — travel strongly discouraged. Colombia remained distant, hard to reach, known mostly for what it had been through.

One evening, on the boat, my friend mentioned an agency looking for guides to accompany its first travelers.

He gave me a name.

A few weeks later, I had the job.

That’s how Colombia started for me.

I settled in Cartagena and began moving through the country. I learned its history, its complicated geopolitics, its pre-Columbian peoples and how they had shaped the land. I got deep into its wildlife, its plants, its cultures, its food.

I loved sharing it.

But I also learned how to look after travelers. How to read what they needed, find the right pace, catch the small things that could make or break a day.

Then I met María Julia. She would become my wife, the mother of our three daughters, and — years later — my partner at Tempo.

Through all of that, other bonds were taking shape.

I’m a musician. I play guitar, I sing, I drum. That pulled me naturally toward Colombian musicians — vallenato singers, bullerengue voices, salsa pianists.

My mother is a sculptor. I grew up around artists, and Colombia kept giving me more of them: painters, designers. The stories I filed as a journalist opened more doors — reporters, photographers, foreign correspondents.

The longer I stayed, the more I wanted to understand what Colombia is made of. Its history, its contradictions, its Afro-descendant and indigenous cultures, its Spanish, Lebanese, and Syrian threads, its music, its food, its artists.

Those encounters became friendships. Those friendships became a network.

A musician, a chef, a choreographer, a designer, an artist, a photographer, a journalist. People who carry a piece of this living Colombian culture inside them — sometimes without knowing it.

We built Tempo with them.

When we go out looking for new experiences, we follow one compass: the beauty and truth of Colombia.

A chef who has spent years working with the ingredients of his region. A musician who knows the history behind a rhythm. An artist whose work holds a piece of Colombia inside it.

Our job is simple: open those doors and share those connections.

But a trip is never only what you see.

It often arrives at a particular moment — a wedding, a milestone birthday, a promotion, a retirement, a search for roots. A decade turns. A career ends. A life changes pace. Travel can hold space for those passages, whether we plan it that way or not.

Our travelers hand us more than a booking.

They hand us their time — and, with it, a piece of their memories.

Looking after that has become the center of what we do.

I also think travel is one of the best ways to learn — or remember — how to be genuinely surprised by things.

A night with an Arhuaca community in the Sierra Nevada.

The quiet inside a church in Barichara or Cartagena.

The seven-colored sea off Providencia.

A sunrise over the páramos of the Quindío.

Away from routine, we look differently. We listen harder. We taste things for real. We make room for what’s around us.

Colombia taught me that.

Tempo grew out of a desire to share that way of seeing — to open those doors, to put our network to work for the people who trust us with their trips, and to take real care of the ones who come.

We don’t have a fixed definition of travel.

Just one conviction: find the beauty and truth of Colombia, and give our travelers the chance to arrive at their own way of seeing this country.