For all its beautiful colonial charm, Mompox still has a quirky personality.

And like most small towns, Mompox is too small to hide the eccentricities that reveal themselves while wandering its dusty streets.

For me, there’s a lot of aimless walking while traveling. It is a necessary part of discovering a new place and fuels travel’s inspirational flames.

Distilled to its essence, travel is about saturating the present with amazing, cathartic experiences, a jumble of sensory overload and serendipitous occurrences.

You know that amazing photo you saw or took that captured a beautiful moment? The one that whenever you see it sends you back into the experience? That is every moment of travel.

If you are open to it.

The mundane becomes interesting. The ugly, beautiful. You are forced – if only for a second – to become an optimist and see the good lurking beneath the bad

The photos below capture textures and moments in Mompox. Like the vendor selling his wares on the street or a precariously leaning house or the portrait of a woman parading and shouting through town who still wanted her photo taken.

Each of these photos takes me back and hopefully brings you along to experience Mompox’s quirky charm.

(If you’re reading this in your Inbox, be sure to click on the above headline to view the photos.)

And for more photos and stories about Mompox, click here.