Dropping 15 degrees in temperature and climbing 2600m in altitude, I flew from Panama City to Bogota and immediately felt the difference, particularly at night when jeans, t shirt, hoodie and jacket were in order and even slight inclines raised the heart rate. We found a small eatery to take in some local cuisine and watch the England football match that was happening, Colombia is currently hosting the under 20 World Cup and they're taking it very seriously. I had a look on the BBC website and couldn't find mention of it so I'm not sure if anybody at home is aware that it's even happening. The food was more impressive than the footy, reasonable game but England drew 0-0 with Argentina. The group of us from the hostel consisted of a German guy, half German half Scottish guy (amazing accent when speaking English!), a Finnish girl, and Israeli guy and I. We bought a bottle of the local liquor to try, Aguardiente is what I would describe as a harsh aniseed based drink, not really that nice - not a patch on a decent black Sambuca! We then tried to learn various phrases & chat up lines in Hebrew, to little avail, and then got so cold we had to go to bed!

Spent the following day seeing what Bogota had to offer, and to be honest, it seemed to me, not a lot. Went to the Museum of Gold, which has hundreds if not thousands of gold artefacts, but all seemed a bit disjointed and I wasn't really sure of the relevance of a lot of it. The city itself isn't particularly pretty and I'd soon covered the main sights. The highlight was a trip up the cable car to Monserrate, a church sitting on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was breathtaking - not only due to its altitude of 3150m, but the view of the city is stunning and makes you realise just how big Bogota is.

Following advice from the Scottish German chap, I then headed north to a small town called Villa de Leyva in the Colombian highlands with Robert, a Catalan who had been staying in the same hostel in Bogota and who was heading the same way. The journey there was spectacular and I had high hopes for Villa de Leyva. When we arrived at the hostel, although we had booked, they'd overbooked the dorm and therefore offered to give us a private twin room at the same price instead, I even got a double bed - result! We bumped into a couple of Catalan girls that Robert knew and the 4 of us went up to the thermal springs just outside the town as dusk was falling. The thermal spring was essentially a naturally occurring hot tub, and after plenty of cold showers over the last 9 weeks was a perfect temperature. The pool was lit by candlelight , the sky was starstudded and the mountains surrounding us were lit by distant lightening, not a word of English was spoken and I was in a very happy place. It's fair to say that I had a moment, it was one of the highlights of the trip and I wanted to capture the magic for a rainy day but sadly my mind is the only instrument I had to record it.

The following day we headed out on foot to find the blue pools, which we did, although what we found were 2 small ponds that weren't that blue really - check out the picture! Still, the walk up there was nice, it was good to be out in the countryside after the traffic ridden Bogota.

The annual kite festival takes place in Villa de Leyva in the middle of August so many of the town's kids were avidly practising their kite flying skills, and it was great to take in the atmosphere in the Plaza Mayor (reportedly one of South America's largest plazas, strange for such a small town!) and watch them hard at work on the kites.

On my last day we walked up to the mirador overlooking the town which after the terrible directions we'd been given, ended up being somewhat 'off piste' and through waist high ferns, some sort of prickly leaved plants and over boulders. But the challenge on the way up made the arrival at the mirador all the sweeter. The view was spectacular and my rather scratched and bleeding legs were evidence of the arduous ascent. Thankfully we found the path to go back down which was infinitely easier!

I then set out on my longest journey to date, over to Medellin, which had to done via Bogota, coinciding with Friday evening rush hour and a football match. I tried to get to an England or Colombia match but unfortunately was never in the right city at the right time. As far as the England matches that was a let off, in their 3 group matches they managed three 0-0 draws and were knocked out by Nigeria 1-0, I certainly didn't miss many goals! So the journey, traffic inclusive, ended up being 18 hours in total. I had planned to be in Medellin for the weekend for a couple of reasons, it was the finale of the Flower festival on August 7th, and had the reputation of being a good party place, both of which seemed like a good place to spend my birthday. The city itself is nothing to get excited about - the best view of it was on the bus on the way in as you approach from the mountains and see the city nestled in the valley and spreading up the mountain foothills. The nightlife was, in my experience average, we ended up at what felt like a school disco, but I think I was probably unlucky in that I didn't meet anybody who knew the city well and just ended up going to the wrong places. The flower festival was running late and as we were waiting near the end of the procession route, didn't really see anything until about 5pm. The festival is a celebration of the tradition of the farmers from surrounding towns bringing their flowers into the city, and amongst floats and performing artists, scores of people carry enormous disks of floral arrangements on their backs. I don't know about tradition, it looked more like an endurance test to me! There were thousands of people watching and I didn't really have a great view. That was until I was invited to join the ice cream seller and his friend the beer seller standing on the giant cool box they had. This made the event for me, and in fact at one point it seemed like we were more entertaining to watch to most people around us than the procession itself. I was adorned with a Nacional football shirt (the local team) by one of them, and was doing my bit to sell beer as well. I must say that my whole trip is constantly being made more fun due to my ability to communicate in Spanish and I still maintain that it was the most valuable part of my degree. Thanks Dad! Medellin was fine, but as with most of Colombia I feel like I've missed the point somewhere, everybody had spoken so highly about the country and I was feeling decidedly underwhelmed by it all. Maybe Cartagena was the place to change all that.....

The next major lesson of the trip was to come the following morning when I got in the cab to go to the airport for the short flight to Cartagena-I couldn't bear the thought of a 15 hour bus ride after the journey to Medellin 3 days earlier. On the map of Medellin the airport was about 5 miles from my hostel and as it was an internal flight only needed to check in an hour before the flight. However when I got into the cab, the taxi driver asked me which airport I was flying from, ah, there are 2 airports in Medellin and it seemed that mine was the one that was out of town. In fact, 45 minutes out of town. I've never cut it so fine for a flight, and having checked in only 30 minutes before the flight was due to leave, I did not expect my luggage to arrive in Cartagena with me. Fortunately, I think the 20 min delay on the flight helped, and both my luggage and I arrived in an incredibly hot Cartagena - the perma-sweat was back! Cartagena is a far prettier city that Bogota or Medellin, the old town at least, and whilst it is really touristy and fairly expensive for Colombia, there was something about this place that I really liked. The fourty-odd degree heat made wandering round the walled city hard work, but enjoyable never the less. Colombia were once again playing in the sub20 world cup against Costa Rica and I watched the match at the hostel with a couple of Colombians and 20 or so non Colombians, and we all celebrated the Colombian victory. We then watched the end of the Mexico v Cameroon game which was interesting, the winners were to meet Colombia in the next round and all the locals were cheering on Mexico, they desperately wanted to play them in the quarter finals. Mexico won the penalty shoot out to set up quarter final clash with Colombia.

The next destination was Taganga further north towards the Venezuelan border. I got to go diving again here, not quite as good as the diving I did in Utila, but still really enjoyable once again. I was with a couple of American girls that I met in Cartagena and we decided to spend a day in the Tayrona National Park. The destination was a series of beaches that were between 45 mins and 2 hours walk from the car park through tropical rain forest. No sooner had we arrived at our beach then the rain started, but fortunately it was only spitting and we still managed to sit and read. The beaches were stunning as the mountains of the Sierra Nevada rise up directly from the shore, it really feels a long way from civilisation. We packed up and set off for our lift back - we'd decided not to stay overnight in the hammocks, preferring the comfort of the hostel beds, and the first flash of lightening was quickly followed by heavy rain. Torrential rain maybe a better description, and determined not to miss our lift, we waded though streams and mud back to the car park. It felt like we were re-enacting a scene from Lost or something, and making it back in time became something of an endurance test. We wouldn't have been any wetter had we jumped fully clothed into a pool and the hour long journey back to Taganga was in a rather steamy bus.

I had been toying with the idea of visiting the coffee region as I still felt like I'd missed out on something of Colombia, but the buses involved made it a 4 day excursion or to fly was really expensive, so instead I opted to forgo that part of Colombia and head for Ecuador. This meant a return to Cartagena, and having procrastinated on the decision about the coffee region, and the rocketing flight prices, I ended up spending another couple of days in Cartagena. This gave me the chance to try one of the strangest experiences of my life, bathing in volcanic mud. The mud bath is at the top of a 20m high mound of mud and consists of dense mud that you float in. The bath is 2300m deep so you can't touch the floor, and are naturally buoyant in it, but not totally in control of the movement of your own body. In the 'pool' are local men providing massages to really get the mud into your skin. I asked one of them if when asked as a child what he wanted to be when he grew up if he'd always aspired to rub mud into bikini clad women and semi naked men, he declined to comment! Another guy with an interesting occupation was the chap who wiped you down with his bare hands as you left the 'pool' to remove some of the excess mud. We then went to the lake to rinse the mud off, here women vied for the opportunity to bathe you, included whipping off your bikini top and bottoms too if you weren't careful, whilst kneeling in the murky water. I don't think I've been bathed by someone else for about 30 years. All in all, it was a good experience, albeit it rather bizarre in many ways, but I'm glad I did it, and was a nice end to my Colombian trip.

I did not dislike Colombia, and I think the people are the friendliest locals I have come across on my travels so far, but perhaps it had been overhyped a little and it never really quite met my expectations. The locals all ask how I like Colombia, they are incredibly proud of their country and are keen that tourists leave with a positive view and spread the word, Colombia is not the dangerous, drug baron crime capital it used to be. It's beautiful, diverse and very welcoming, and even though it's not the favourite place I've been to, I would still highly recommend it as a place to visit.

In fact for a short while it seems that it was a safer place to be than Manchester City centre, reports from home caused the first tears of my trip. I've seen so many people throughout Latin America who have nothing or are living below the poverty line that the scenes from home make me so disappointed that the social unrest amongst people who have, relatively speaking, plenty can cause such behaviour. The second tearful incident occurred listening to a Radio 4 podcast of Tarik Jahan, whatever background, race or religion we are, his courage and composure should be a lesson to us all. To the people involved in the riots and looting, I am ashamed that we have something in common, however I refuse to be ground down by negative people and remain a proud Mancunian.

And now the ninth country is calling, Ecuador, with the Galapogos Islands and the Equatorial line becons. Time seems to be speeding up now that I'm over half way in the trip, and Rio still seems like an awfully long way away, I really need to put the miles in now!