I have been looking at the weather in Bogota for some weeks now and it is always without fail, 14c and raining. Night time is 9c and raining. I booked myself on to a Graffiti Tour before I came so after the night flight and a quick shower I went down prepared for the next monsoon to try and find the meeting point. It's a free tour of the older area of Bogota, La Candelaria, where every door, wall and surface has some sort of graffiti on in protest of the old violence and drug lords. It's also where graffiti artists from across the world can come along and do their thing so I expect some of the pictures are worth thousands.

I was a bit worried as my sense of direction is not the best without being jet lagged into the bargain - walking from Victoria to Fleet Street and ending up wandering around Battersea in tears springs to mind. I did have my trusty compass keyring with me but then got a bit panicky by someone's throwaway comment yesterday (mentioning no names) about being south of the equator so North is really South. I expect it was a wind up but not being blessed with common sense when it comes to working things like that out, I got more and more confused and headachey. Anyway, I did a trial run VERY early and found it practically opposite where I'm staying. Thank goodness I was by myself, as fretting over getting lost in a park which ended up being the size of someone's back garden is a little embarrassing.
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where her monkey pals were. This sort of programme is on a par with '16 and pregnant' or '40 children with 20 women' which of course I rarely watch and then only if University Challenge isn't on.
For the next two and a half hours a group of us wandered around the old part of Bogota led by an Aussie pointing out various graffiti pictures. These are everywhere and are a mix of stunning paintings, cartoons and political slogans. We were led by a brilliant guide who talked about the history of street art as well as explaining each picture and going into Colombia's social and political issues. Most of them are pictures representing the right wing guerrillas displacing people for the multinational corporations and of homeless people who were burned to death by the government in social cleansing. There are also pictures against the Roman Catholic child abuse and ones on animal rights. We were told that even today the people have to do the paintings in the daylight for protection against police violence and that a lot used to take drugs to make sure they stayed awake at night when the vigilante government groups used to social cleanse the streets. I expect the walk around the area tomorrow will pass a lot of them again but the stories behind them made a real difference. Banksy Dismaland here I come!

After an amazing tomato soup and a carafe of red wine in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the next stop for me was the Botero museum which is an art and sculpture gallery full of paintings of jolly, juicy bottomed people. I have been very excited about coming here, so did my usual bit on the plane of falling asleep for 10 minutes, then waking up thinking oooh, only another 5 hours to go. This usually happens most nights in the summer when I spend from 2am onwards thinking, ooh, only 2 hours until the chickens start squawking and waking the whole street up, and so only sleep in 10 minute bursts.

Thankfully it was worth the lack of sleep - I loved the Mona Lisa! Much better than the one in Paris.....lots of pictures to have a little giggle over plus other paintings by Picasso, Dali etc. I know we are coming here tomorrow so only did one floor but saw the things I'd been waiting for. I did a first of getting the audio guide and walked back to the hotel feeling very worthy but of course got very lost in all the winding cobbled alleyways.

I love this place! Cote D'Ivoire is a distant memory........