One advantage of always travelling to countries in West Africa is you know exactly where you are. You know where to go, what the people are like, what to eat and understand a bit of French. You pack a couple of T-shirts you wouldn't walk the dog in at home and off you go. You also know that some places you may be killed there but are less likely to be mugged. As Ween pointed out, I am much more likely to be robbed in Colombia than killed, and advised me to stuff ...

There are a lot of dogs wandering around here, all running loose, all very hairy and all very big. I read somewhere that there's a link between how a country treats their animals and how the people are treated. Think this has been blown out of the water as these dogs look a bit dirty but very well fed and spoilt by the homeless people. It's a bit surreal to see an Alsatian dressed in a dinner jacket with his front legs in the sleeves and one that looked like a St...

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 vio...

As a lot of you know, I decided on Colombia after watching a television programme of a woman abandoned in a jungle as a child and brought up by a group of little monkeys. No one believed her (except me) and she had gone back to try and prove where her monkey pals were. Choose a sticker or emoti 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 Unive...

Well, as most of you know, I have been going to Paris for the day for many months to see a Cote D'Ivoire exhibition in one of the museums with Kaye. I wasn't going to write a blog but this is especially for Kaye's mam. We booked this trip before we went to **** D'Ivoire and thought it would be great to see in a museum what we had seen in the country. We were very naïve at the time and funnily enough there were no UN , army blocks or flies hanging around Par...