Diego Rosselli (Bogotá, 65 years old) has just achieved something incredible. This Monday, accompanied by his daughter Paula and his Land Rover, the Tinieblo Rezandero, achieved his goal of traveling by car to all the municipalities accessible by land in Colombia. He met 1,064 towns in the adventure, which lasted almost 20 years. And he has the proof. Sitting in his office at the San Ignacio Hospital in Bogotá, the neurologist, university professor, traveler, writer and father—that’s how he defines himself—proudly shows a 192-page Word document full of photos of him and his beloved Land Rover, in front of a thousand churches. Leaving a trace is important: without the photo with the car and the church, the trip does not count.
Rosselli’s has been a life of adventure and work – the two have often intermingled. He has been teaching at the Faculty of Medicine of the Javeriana University for 26 years and assures that he is the professor who most papers publishes a year—it has been 19 so far in 2023—. Before, he worked in the Ministry of Health of former presidents César Gaviria and Ernesto Samper, lived briefly in the United States, to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard, and in England, where he spent a year at the London Institute of Psychiatry. But “not as a patient,” he clarifies with a laugh. Now, about to retire, he says his plan is to work on a new book and continue traveling. There are about 30 photos missing in the towns not accessible to the Tinieblo Rezandero. You will have to get to those by plane.
Ask. What is the story behind the Land Rover?
Answer. My father bought it when I was nine years old, and with him we got to know the country. We went two or three times a year to a farm we had in Casanare. We traveled to Medellín, to the coast and even to Ecuador, all by land. Then, when I graduated as a doctor, my father was going to give me a Renault 4, but I asked him to give me the Land Rover. My sisters thought he was crazy. “What are you going to do with that bone?” they told me. I received it when I did my rural year, in a town southwest of Antioquia. That year, I took advantage of my free days to tour all of Antioquia, the coffee region, the north of Tolima and the Cauca Valley. All this comes from a lifetime, from a long time ago.
Q. And when did you make the decision to visit all the towns accessible by land?
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R. The adventure began in 2004. I met with my daughters, who were little at that time, we made a list of the 100 main towns, and I decided to get to know them. I achieved it in 2008 and wrote a book called The Stories of a Hundred Cities. I continued traveling over the next few years, and in 2018 it became an obsession to complete all the municipalities. The challenge is not only to go to town, but to go and take the photo in front of the church. There were several towns that I had already visited but had not taken the photo. Then I had to return to many municipalities when doing the tour again, to be sure to stop in each one and take the photograph.
Q. How have you managed to travel so much in such a short time?
A. I do not travel from Bogotá to Chocó or La Guajira by car. My strategy is different. I travel to Bucaramanga, for example, take a tour, leave the Land Rover in a parking lot in Bucaramanga, and fly to Bogotá. Then for my next trip, I fly to wherever the car is and start again. This way I save a lot of time. At the time I finished the hundred cities, I had the car in Riohacha (La Guajira), and I remember that there were flights from Bogotá to there for 59,000 pesos (about 15 dollars). So I bought nine months of flights to Riohacha and every weekend I traveled there. I toured La Guajira along all the most lost roads. At that time, I also decided to buy another Land Rover, and with that I dedicated myself to traveling around the south. I got to know all of Meta, then I took it to Putumayo, Chocó and so on.
Q. How do you pay for all these trips?
R. My style of traveling is expensive, so I have done 80% or 90% of the trips alone. But part of my secret is this: all Javeriana University employees are paid a salary and, in addition, they give us 10% recognition in one of the companies managed by the university. And he has a travel agency, Javeturismo. So they deposit me one and a half million pesos (about $370) a month for whatever I want for trips. That’s four national tickets a month.
Q. What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you on your travels?
R. The most incredible thing is always the people. Once I was with my daughter Paula in a mountainous and lonely region of Antioquia. It was in the morning, the coil was damaged and we were stranded. The next town, which was called Campamento, was 23 kilometers away. Then a couple on a motorcycle passes by and I tell them what had happened. “It’s going to be difficult,” they tell me, “they are already at fairs and parties in Campamento, but let me see what we do.” So, after a while a cart comes and I ask him if he can take us down, and he tells me “No, I came to destroy him. I’m Camp’s mechanic and they told me that you were stranded here with your daughter. “I bring you a coil.” That man saved us. And when we arrived at Campamento, the man on the motorcycle called me and invited us to spend the night at his house. There are always people who give you a hand in difficult times.
Q. The most beautiful memory of your travels?
R. It was this Monday, when we completed the last municipality. Santa Helena del Opón (Santander), number 1,064. It was a big challenge. There were three attempts: the first due to a landslide, the second due to car failures – I got up to five kilometers from the town and had to give up, because the Land Rover wouldn’t arrive. It is a very difficult road in a section of Magdalena Medio that is jungle and very rainy. To get there you have to cross a mountain range on a road that is only 42 kilometers from the last town, which is called El Guacamayo, but it takes three hours to cross it. So, getting there was one of those things that makes you say “wow!”, it’s like receiving a doctor’s degree. And it was also the last. So it was a milestone.
Q. Has it become in danger?
R. They always ask me about security risks, and to everyone’s surprise I have never had any encounter with a guerrilla or paramilitaries. I have never had anything stolen, not even theft, which is surprising because I always leave my car lying there. I have been detained many times by the Military Forces or the Police. They search me, ask who I am and stay to see my ID and papers. Many times when I have told them what I am doing they have collaborated a lot. Additionally, there are several things that help with security. I’m alone and in an old car. I think if we were five people in a vehicle it would raise more suspicions. And one goes asking. On two occasions, it has happened to me that they have told me: “Don’t go there, there are suspicious people there.” And then I look for an alternative.
Q. Where did that happen?
R. Once on the Magdalena roads, in the Ciénaga Grande area. The other, near a town called Magüí Payán, in Nariño.
Q. He has been traveling around the country for 20 years. How has Colombia changed in that time?
R. The national roads have been greatly improved. The route from Bogotá to the coast, for example, is beautiful. But the secondary and tertiary roads are still very abandoned. I think that valuing Colombian culture has also improved. On the Pacific coast the notion of marimba music is more valued. Or the llanera music on the plains. You see llanera music training schools and that kind of thing. In Maní (Casanare), I once arrived at the house of culture and they were teaching classes to 25 little boys on how to play the cuatro. That makes me proud. On the other hand, for the middle peasant, I think the feeling of helplessness is still very great. Many of the people you meet on these tours are people of a certain age. And they tell how the kids have had to go somewhere else because they don’t have opportunities there.
Q. Do you have any thoughts about the country after all this?
R. We have to learn to value our cultural diversity. We Colombians have not done that. What makes us different often polarizes us. We should feel united by that diversity, instead of feeling separated by it. Those fights between cachacos and costeños, between uribistas and petristas. We even fight over where the best arepa is from. It seems to me that it is a mistake to think of something that identifies all Colombians other than diversity. We must learn to value it.
Q. Now that you have achieved this goal, what will you do?
R. I am planning my retirement for next year and have several goals in mind. One is a book called A tour of the names of the towns of Colombia. Explains the history behind the names of the municipalities – the toponymy -. I classify them, for example, into indigenous names, names of Spanish heritage, towns with Italian names, towns dedicated to the Virgin, to the saints, to other biblical places such as Jericho and Jerusalem. I already have 78 pages written and I had contact with an editor. So, my idea is to take a trip through Colombia, but focused on toponymy. And another thing too, there are 40 municipalities that cannot be reached by land. I have already visited many of them before, but I lacked the evidence. So my plan is to go back and take my photo in front of the church.
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