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"facebook dialogPinterestInternational dating website AmoLatina offers \"romance tours\" to single men; this collage shows some of the women who have participated in the program.\n\nInternational dating website AmoLatina offers \"romance tours\" to single men; this collage shows some of the women who have participated in the program.\n\n\"Respect for the girls disarms them\u2014they're not used to it. Be funny and humorous. And power tip No. 3? Don't lock in too early on any one girl.\"\n\nIt's a sweat-through-your-statement-shirt Saturday afternoon in Medell\u00EDn, Colombia\u2014the former murder capital of the world. Dave, a stocky ex-nightclub manager from Liverpool, England, is preaching to a crowded bus of single men. They've traveled from Europe, Australia, and the United States to meet single women, maybe even marry them. Dave is the dating coach at AmoLatina, a subsidiary of Anastasia International, an international online dating portal that includes AnastasiaDate.com, AmoLatina.com, AsianBeauties.com, and AfricaBeauties.com. Once a romance-tour client himself, Dave's all lovable swagger and rogue British charm. It's easy to see why the men around me have bought into him and his power tips.\n\nWe're en route to a dating party organized by AmoLatina. Our minibus peels off a busy highway and into the parking lot next to an unassuming club called Dulce Jess Mio. We head inside and take in the Latin-village decor that's oddly punctuated with wall-to-wall Christmas lights and large, grinning porcelain pigs. It looks like the kind of place that celebrates New Year's every night. (And every night at midnight, it does.)\n\nThe music starts. Reggaeton\u2014a fusion of Latin hip-hop, dancehall, and salsa\u2014echoes through Medell\u00EDn no matter where you go. Its pulse is the hypnotic \"dem bow\" beat: a mesmerizing pattern that never ceases.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\n  A taxi lets locals out near the club called Dulce Jess Mio.\n\nWomen begin arriving in groups of three and four, spilling out of bright yellow taxis. We see glimpses of halter tops and jeans, outfits keenly hugging voluptuous figures. The youngest, smiles lined with braces, are in their early twenties. The oldest look to be in their mid-forties and strut toward the club with less giggle, more purpose. Photographers have been hired to capture the women as they enter the club, blinding flashes lighting up their faces in front of an AmoLatina sponsor board, which reads: bringing the world together.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe phenomenal growth of online dating over the past two decades shows no signs of slowing. It has skyrocketed from a curiosity in the late 1990s to a $2 billion powerhouse in 2011. Anastasia International, most famous for arranging meetings with Russian women, was founded in 1993 and has more than 240 employees, working in offices from Maine to Moscow to Medill\u00EDn. They run regional websites in Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. The company boasts that nearly one in five of its customers ends up either married or in a \"lasting relationship\" after attending one of its Eastern European romance tours. It also claims that the number of men joining has more than quadrupled since 2005\u2014and that sign-ups by Russian, Ukrainian, and Latin American women have tripled.\n\nHere's how it works on AmoLatina: Select one of 27 countries (the parent company works with 113 nations in total) from a drop-down menu, then identify the traits you would like in your ideal partner: age, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and even English-speaking skills (which range from \"fluent\" to \"beginner\"). If a profile piques your curiosity, you pay for an online introduction. Fees range, based on whether you want to send translated messages to the women, have roses delivered to their doorstep, or go on a guided tour in their hometown to meet them. Of course, you can always forgo formalities and book a tour without doing any preliminary browsing. Most customers travel to meet as many women as possible in one particular city.\n\nThe participants on this trip paid $1,595 for a package that includes accommodations at a four-star hotel (the Hotel Dann Carlton Belfort Medell\u00EDn), in-house translators, and access to hordes of women at two \"socials.\" The central office of the romance tour is housed in a spacious hotel hospitality suite, with open windows overlooking downtown. This is where clients set up dates with women they've spotted on the website or at a social.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\nThe guys on my trip range from 26 to sixty-something. Aggie, a hulking, cheery real-estate executive from Los Angeles, appears to be about 30. He's already befriended Mark, a six-foot-five undertaker from Boston. They make for a boisterous duo. Steve, from Omaha, is a grandfather and a widower. Joe, a middle-aged divorc\u00E9 from Boston, works at one of the world's biggest tech companies and resembles Jon Lovitz\u2014right down to the billowy polo he's wearing. Joe is brash and self-deprecating but softens when he talks about meeting a potential partner. Many of the men on tour in Medell\u00EDn have experienced heartbreak, betrayal, and loneliness. Some pine for a wife and children. A minority are \"players\" who expect a tangible return on their investment. So says Dave, who confesses to taking a group of men to a strip club\u2014which doubled as a brothel\u2014in Bogot\u00E1 a week earlier.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\nToday, Dave's job is part cultural concierge, part cheerleader. The latter proves vital. For many men, booking this tour isn't without emotional consequences. The process forces an admission of defeat: that they still haven't figured women out. Dave is a counterweight to these insecurities, a quippy, encouraging ally.\n\nWho are the women, then? Quite a few come from the poorer parts of Medell\u00EDn\u2014like Comuna 13 and La Iguana\u2014and many are single mothers. \"The girls want to get out of the country,\" says Howard, a 57-year-old agricultural entrepreneur I met on the plane and who, coincidentally, married a Colombian woman a decade ago (though not on a matchmaking tour). Having traveled regularly from San Diego to Colombia to court his wife, Howard had the opportunity to see the tours evolve over the years. \"They have looks, they're beautiful,\" he says. \"But if they hit 25, 26 . . . the boat has left the dock. They're too old for Colombian guys.\" For these gals, the appeal is simple: free drinks, free food, and the chance to meet a foreigner serious enough about love to pay for it. Throughout my trip, several young women would complain about Colombia's notoriously unfaithful men.\n\nOne tour participant, passing through the hospitality suite, stands out when I first see him: Jack (his name has been changed here at his request) doesn't hesitate to introduce himself. He spent years as a ballroom-dance teacher and continues to take African-dance classes. His chest is accentuated by a tight black T-shirt, which is tucked into green chinos. His arms are circled by tattoos; a black trucker hat hides bright turquoise eyes. The underside of his hat reads: make your own luck.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\n\"American women,\" he sighs, \"are not very nice. I've suffered.\" Jack has a golden tan that comes from having lived in the American southwest for two decades. His voice sings with theatricality and sweetness. It is a shock when he reveals his age: 52. He looks at least a decade younger. Probably because he weighs the same as he did when he was 20. Or maybe because he scrubs his face with sea salts. Jack has been burned\u2014by a dancer from California. She moved in with him and ended up sleeping with a friend. He hasn't dated in the four years since. After trying Match.com, he discovered AmoLatina.\n\n\"I'm not very tall. I don't have much hair. And those things really do matter: First impressions matter,\" he says. \"If I go to a bar, especially a crowded one, there's going to be a lot more men than women.\" Larry, my AmoLatina chaperone, nods in agreement. \"And I'm a small guy. I want to sit in the back, in the corner, against a wall.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBack at Dulce Jesus Mio, it doesn't take long for the dozen foreign men to find themselves blissfully surrounded\u2014by approximately 150 women. The team of translators gets to work, dragged from table to table by the men, in part to bridge the cultural divide. Assertive women, meanwhile, begin to edge out their rivals: cornering men on the move and grabbing translators for clandestine conversations. The guys are outnumbered 10 to 1. It is a rare moment for them; they are the commodity.\n\nAguardiente\u2014firewater\u2014the potent, ouzo-like Colombian liquor, begins to flow. Jack entertains a table of women, emphasizing his points with flourishes of the hands and then listening to the responses with distinct intensity. The fellas are engaged with two, three, or four women at once. The scenario is rousing a swagger that many of these guys had lost years ago (or maybe never even had).\n\nI seek out an interpreter for my interviews\u2014it is clear to all that I am a journalist\u2014and meet Laura, a petite translator. As the club grows humid, I'm introduced to two women: one 22, the other 30. The younger says, via Laura, that her ideal man is tall, white, and at least 20 years her senior. It's their first time\u2014they heard about it on the radio\u2014and, with muffled giggles, they ask to be introduced to some of the Americans. \"I want to meet a man who can dance!\" says the older woman. I tell them they should meet Jack, who is still diligently engaging with a table full of girls. I promise the two an introduction later.\n\nAfter meeting several women, I notice a familiar pattern: Every conversation, every interaction, every brush of the hair and sustained glimmer of eye contact is communicating a strong sense of desire. Sure, it's the M.O. of a regular dude on the prowl. But being in an entire room of women who feel that way? It feels alien.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\n  A 21-year-old model named Marisol has become the ambassador of AmoLatina after winning a beauty contest in 2011. She dreams of working in London and studying engineering.\n\nLarry, my chaperone, seeks me out. As part of AmoLatina's push for glamour and legitimization, the company hosts an annual beauty contest. Last year's competition was syndicated on Univision\u2014the United States' largest Spanish-language TV network. The winner, a 21-year-old brunette named Marisol, is making a publicity appearance at the social. She's pretty, in a quieter way than anyone in the room. Like most of the women here, she doesn't speak a word of English. In the aftermath of her contest win, Marisol was bombarded by requests for dates. She tells me her modeling schedule was too chaotic, in the polite way most beautiful women say they're too busy. Her requirements in a man, I learn, are humble: that he is respectful and committed to being in a relationship. She implies that neither can be assumed when dealing with Colombian men.\n\nThe social is three hours old when I catch up with Jack again. Grinning, he tells me he won a prize in a dance competition. More important: He's met a girl.\n\n\"The woman I'm dancing with, Patricia, she's beautiful,\" Jack says. \"She has her own business, she's well-groomed, she's sexy as hell, and she's reserved, which I like. But introduce me to those other girls! It'd be rude not to.\" We head back inside, and the two women from the start of the night cross the dance floor. They want Jack. He tells me five more minutes, but when I come back to his table, he's left. So has Patricia.\n\nLater that night in Parque Lleras, the party district of Medell\u00EDn, I meet a 22-year-old named Santiago who is a friend of one of tonight's translators. He had no idea that anything like it existed until now. \"It's not normal in Colombia,\" he insists, aghast. \"It's not normal anywhere.\" Another young man, loosely connected to the tour, chimes in: \"I see the women who come in. They are looking for husbands, a man that can take care of anything. They are looking for a green card. There is no love in that room.\"\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe phone rings early the next morning. I wake up with a jolt. It's Jack. He wants to meet by the pool and tell me about the night before. Jack lies on a sun chair and recounts what happened at the social: how he had almost overlooked the coy Patricia and kicked himself once he met her. At 32, she is 20 years younger than he is. Already enamored, Jack tells me about her job and, shyly, her breasts. He had taken her, and seven of her friends, out with a translator. \"I told them to order whatever they wanted,\" he says. \"I paid for the bill. I paid for the taxis home. I paid for everything.\"\n\nHe and Patricia have plans to meet again tonight, over dinner in Parque Lleras. \"I don't want to be a playboy,\" he says. \"I want to have a love of my life. So here I am.\" I can't shake the feeling that Jack is immensely vulnerable.\n\nWhile he is out with Patricia, most of the other men are on a group date. They're partying on an open-air chiva bus\u2014a rural vehicle repurposed as a nightclub on wheels\u2014and climbing mountain ranges to take in the spectacular, light-sprawled valley that is Medell\u00EDn. Several of the men, dates in tow, chuckle when they see the bus's four steel dancing poles. As we take off, our toothy driver flicks a button to start a high-powered smoke machine. He flicks another, shooting neon-green lasers across the bus. Dave and his AmoLatina coworker Lisa dance around the poles and each other. They dole out shots of aguardiente, but men several times their age refuse with polite grins, immune to the seduction of smoke, lights, and booze. Boston Joe sips a Coke, arms crossed. He's sitting alone, gazing blankly.\n\nThe younger tour members, though, are in their element: Going drink-for-drink with the guides, grinding on their dates, and belting out barely remembered song lyrics with comical conviction.\n\nA little after midnight, the text comes in: PARTY IS IN ROOM 1410...\n\nThe bus party is over and the half-dozen couples are back at our hotel. Translator Laura and I snatch a bottle of Chilean wine from the corner store\u2014we'll need an offering for entry. The door swings open. It's the aftermath of a boozy soiree in Aggie's suite, and his last two guests are stumbling out as we stumble in. All that's left of the party is Aggie, his date, a half-dozen bottles of Grey Goose, and a tiny bedside radio blaring reggaeton. Sensing that we are intruding, Laura turns to leave the room, but Aggie insists we stay. He pours us some vodka and explains that rain foiled his plans for a pool party. Then he starts talking L.A. Clippers basketball, reminiscing about Blake Griffin's nasty, iconic dunk on Kendrick Perkins of the Oklahoma City Thunder. His date, Tiana, remains expressionless but unwaveringly pleasant. Her body may be in the same room as we are, but she's absent in every other way. It's after 2 a.m. when Laura and I leave, and Tiana is still sunk into the couch.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\n On the bus: The partying continues the day after the disco. Note the dancing poles, mirrors, and colorful lights in the background.\n\nI see Howard from the plane the next night and describe the scenario. \"Some girls have no hope,\" he says. \"They start thinking, 'I'm sitting here and doing nothing, or I'm sitting at home doing nothing.' The life has been squeezed out of them.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOn our final day, Colombia reveals her sultry charm. I forget about Pablo Escobar and nose candy and the kidnappings I've read about and start to see a city of immense cultural wealth and enchanting, hospitable people. Plus, the country is a gastronomical joy: A punchy seafood ceviche elicits daydreams weeks after I return home. Today the sun is high, the air is crisp, and markets flow through Medell\u00EDn's veins.\n\nLarry, Jack, and I sightsee. We search\u2014fruitlessly\u2014for a place to play tejo, a fading national sport that combines lawn bowling with explosives. We take in Medell\u00EDn from a mighty height, riding to its highest point in a panoramic cable car. As we sit, suspended a hundreds feet above the city, Jack is more certain about Patricia than ever. \"She's my sweetheart,\" he tells us. \"It's absolutely unique and special. It's the way she makes me feel, it's the way I make her feel.\"\n\nFor a younger man, such hasty proclamations would be warning signs\u2014a young adult straining for significance. But this is Jack, and it's hard to qualify. Whether it's Jack's affirmations or Aggie's vodka-soaked fantasy, the tour has stirred something in each of the men\u2014fleeting vignettes of what they want most in life. \"I'm anticipating tonight more than anything,\" Jack says. He's planning to spend every minute of his last evening with Patricia in the hotel.\n\nA few hours later, before Patricia arrives, I introduce Howard and Jack over some rum in the deserted hotel bar. Despite spending the better part of 12 hours with me today, Jack only now reveals that Patricia has two children. He's looking over to the lobby, distracted. \"I don't want her to show up early and me not be there for her,\" he says. \"Wait, is that her? I have to go check.\" And with that, he leaves, his bright eyes charmless for the first time.\n\n\"He's running out there to go find this girl, and I'm sure he's in love,\" Howard says. \"But he's committed his heart so early. She's got a couple of kids.\" Would the father stoop to exploit the situation by using the kids as a way to get money? Howard has seen worse.\n\nWhen we depart Medell\u00EDn at 7 a.m., the sun yawns through the plane's windows and reality regains its hold. The night before, I saw Boston Joe and Aggie\u2014drunk on aguardiente\u2014wandering around party central in Parque Lleras looking for a bar called Sunrise. They asked the locals, but it was 12:15 on a Wednesday morning and they were out of time and out of girls. For all the promise of life-changing love\u2014even marriage\u2014the men depart exhausted, hungover, and a little more than $2,000 poorer.\n\nAggie keeps to himself during the flight. Mark, the tall undertaker, is hidden in business class. Meanwhile, Boston Joe is finishing his ham and cheese. Wiry-haired and furrowed-browed, he looks more exhausted than the others. He rests his head on the seat in front of him as we drift across the clear Caribbean Sea.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI didn't see Jack again: I later learned that he and Patricia had ordered room service, stayed up all night, then checked out at 4 a.m. so he could catch an early flight. In the weeks after the tour, they took their relationship to Facebook. She communicated through discreet messages, posting a series of pictures of herself\u2014around her house, in her bedroom\u2014and tagging Jack in them: a sweet, clunky sort of \"Wish you were here\" for the social-media age.\n\nfacebook dialogPinterest\n\nA few months later, I call Jack. His voice is surer than I remember. Since we parted, he's gone on another AmoLatina tour, this time in Costa Rica. He met Mariana, a perky 21-year-old with chestnut eyes, but decided she was too young to commit to. Patricia still wants Jack to come back to Medell\u00EDn. He tells me that he's not sure.\n\n\"I'm definitely attracting younger women. It's a wonderful affirmation,\" he says. \"I'm grateful to the tour\u2014it's kind of like a playground for a straight guy. Having a broken heart was hard, but I'm more confident than ever.\"\n\nDave, the dating coach, fills me in on Aggie's journey: \"He was asleep during our cultural orientation. The parties in the room . . . He converted his suite into a discotheque! He said that he wants to come back, and that he wants to do it the way the other guys are doing it. He realized that he wants to do better.\"\n\nThe last time I'd spoken to Boston Joe about his luck on tour, he told me that a woman he met at the social had stood him up at the 11th hour. After organizing the date and booking a translator, he ended up with only an e-mail address. \"Come on,\" Joe grunted. \"What is that?\" Unlike many of the guys on tour, Joe knew without question what he wanted. He told me over and over: \"I'm not here to get fucked. I want a partner. I want to meet someone. I want another child.\"\n\nFor most of these men, the search continues. For some, it has already stretched decades long\u2014with no mile markers and no guarantees. Can love be found in a 21-year-old in a kitschy South American club? That's a gamble men will continue to take. These tours, romantic or not, bring hope: that a 2 a.m. Google search, a sip of aguardiente, a whisper in the ear of a Colombian translator might inch him closer to Her.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\n*Adam Baidawi ([@adsb](https://twitter.com/adsb/)) has written for the international editions of GQ, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.*"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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