Bogota

After hearing mixed reports about the countries capital Bogota I was in two minds on whether it was worth a visit. Stepping off a long bus ride at the wrong city bus terminal resulted in a very expensive taxi ride to the Sayta hostel which had very good reviews on trip adviser. It turned out the hostel was dead, the weather was cold and the city did not appear to have much happening, so I decided on the spot that one night would be plenty for this destination. A friendly local who had married a Russian bird and opened a restaurant just down the strep served me a delicious Borsch soup, Colombian street food would have to wait until the morning.

The one must thing to do if you only have one day in Bogota is the bike tour, run by mike and costing $35, it lasts around 6 hours and checks out some of the city's highlights. We started with another run down of the city's violent history, namely the attack on the Supreme Court of Justice in 1985 in which members of Pablo Escobars funded guerrilla group in an attempt to destroy evidence of an extradition order and a following military raid left half of the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead. The city also boats a thriving collection of local art works sprawled across previously blank wall space.

We the pushed on to a colourful fruit market where they had the biggest avocados I have ever seen! We got to sample plenty of the local produces, opening my eyes to a whole variety of fruits that I had never heard of let alone got to try. A hasty ride through an area of drug and alcohol abuse where we were reminded to keep very close eye on our belongings and to ride fast (to avoid people surrounding you) we made it to the legal red light district, just in time for a massive downpour.

The only thing left to do for the remainder of the wet afternoon was to reside in a local coffee store, complete with its own roasting room out the back, where we sampled one of Colombia's specialities.