A novel of intrigue and revenge set along the Camino de Santiago, NORTHERN SPAIN
Talking Location With … Frankie Chase: COLOMBIA
13th October 2026
#TalkingLocationWith ... Frankie Chase, author of Bad Winner: COLOMBIA
Colombia, the country that inspired my twisty adventure thriller BAD WINNER
BAD WINNER sees protagonist Bea catapulted from a suffocating life in England to a terrifying freedom over the other side of the world. Looking back, I wouldn’t say I chose Colombia for the destination so much as Colombia drove the entire novel. The country got so deep under my skin, I was itching to write about it.
My favourite stories transport me – I read and write page-turning plots set to vivid, outlandish backdrops – so journeying between mountains, jungle, Caribbean coastline and desert, I felt like the book was already half-written there in front of me. I just needed to piece it all together, which is where the people came in. Locals, expats and travellers alike were complex and captivating, each with their own story to tell. We befriended a lot of generous eccentrics – people willing to give us a ride, a sofa for the night, an invite to their family party – and the real adventures happened when we went off-grid. You could get super remote if you had the time and the grit, and we were there indefinitely, so after days by bus, boat, 4×4, we’d arrive caked in dust, head thumping and skin crawling with bites… in paradise. Here are a few of my favourite lesser-known idylls…
Lush jungle town San Francisco in Chocó (where you’ll find Bea hiding out in BAD WINNER’s prologue) was an accidental discovery. We were bound for Capuganá but delays meant we missed the last boat and had no phone battery to investigate alternatives. A good thing, because it’s unlikely we’d have picked – or even found – this remote jungle town without power or reviews. It had been a two-day sleepless journey; we stumbled off the boat along an overgrown path and were ushered into a wonky wooden hut suspended over the water. Our host’s insistence alarmed us initially but we were mesmerised by the jungle cove beneath. I’d never seen that kind of setting – such rich emerald greens, creeping vines, mangroves and untouched white sand – no humans or buildings for miles. The boat left and the light was fading, so we stayed, and thankfully found our host’s intensity more childlike than threatening. He cooked us local cuisine and refused to let our basic comprehension of Spanish get in the way of his storytelling, which was particularly animated in the shadows from the candlelight, over the screeching cicadas and croaking toads.
Cabo de la Vela remains one of the most strikingly beautiful places I’ve ever visited. Out of cash in this disconnected paradise, but wanting more than the couple of days the guidebooks recommended, we hitched a ride two hours across the desert to the nearest ATM and back. The menus were limited – we risked a very fancy kind of malnutrition from our 100% lobster diet – but the desert dunes rolling into roaring ocean captivated us for a week. We stayed in hammocks on a hostel’s roof, rocked to sleep by the wind, then got a lift out on the flatbed of a truck. Propped up on bags and wrapped in scarves, we watched a 360-degree dome view of the night sky – looking beyond the stars into the abyss, we felt blissfully insignificant.
We stayed several days in Getsemani before realising it wasn’t the main Cartagena! Turns out we’d dodged a bullet – we found main Cartagena shiny and expensive. Getsemani was colourful and rough round the edges, and its golden plaza came alive as the sun sank. Locals chatted and danced alongside gringos, all drinking rum-spiked jugos and syrupy aguardiente while bands played. We stayed in the room of an old couple’s son who’d recently flown the nest; they parented us with relationship advice and cookery tuition, then showed us their huge home-made poetry anthology illustrated with cuttings of pornstars and pin-up girls.
Minca was another breathtakingly beautiful spot – this time in the mountains. We struggled a couple of nights in an eco lodge, freezing in a damp, lopsided tent, then moved in with the town’s baker. This witchy Mad Madam Mim type spent her days making and delivering cakes; by night she’d give gossip for wine. Inside her home was incense and trinkets galore, but the real peace was outside. I spent hours reading and writing in a rocking chair, gazing out over hills that rolled down to twinkling Santa Marta and into the ocean beyond.
There are so many more of these to discover; Colombia is as vast and diverse as an entire continent. And it is safe. The most volatile element was our romance, and the only villains I was shaking off were mosquitoes and ticks (take my advice and resist cuddling stray kittens!) but this magnificent country is the perfect place for twisty, thrilling adventure.
Frankie Chase
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