Well six days in, I guess it's time to kick this thing off. The flights from London to Bogota via Atlanta were fine, can't really say more than that! We began our acclimatisation to Latin America with some Mexican fast food during the lay over in Atlanta. So cultured...

We arrived in Bogota late evening and safely made it through customs without any body cavity searches or other such horrors. Easing into life as travellers, we, erm, got a cab into the city. The idea of a bus at that time of night did not appeal. The bulk of the journey was through a pretty unremarkable seeming modern city, no gang warfare or blazing gun battles between the police and the Farc! As we reached the historic old town area of La Candelaria we had our first taste of the colonial South America we were expecting. It was approaching midnight by that time and the streets were essentially deserted - a little disconcerting to be honest, especially as the cab driver seemed to have no idea where he was going. Getting lost would not have been a good start to the trip, but at least he didn't drop us in the middle of no-where at the mercy of the few shifty seeming characters hanging around!

The hostel was really a basic hotel - flat screen TV and ensuite facilities so no issues there.

Over the next couple of days we hit the tourist trail the city. How to descibe Bogota? Vibrant and positive would be two words. To give you an idea of the mind set, there are some 150 universities in the city - young Colombians have set their sights well and truly on the future. Faded grandeur is slowly being restored. Architecturally the city is a crazy mix of Spanish colonial, a lot of art deco, skyscrapers...and quintessential British. We took a bike tour and turning into an area that looked like a home counties village was certainly not expected!

The highlights were the mixed architecture, the friendly people, the Botero museum (a Colombian artist with a distinctive "fat" style plus lots of other artists' work including Monet, Picasso and Freud), a cathedral built into a former salt mine (at Zipaquira, an hour or so's bus ride out of the city), and of course the cycling tour through the city centre where the rules of the road have yet to be written. We also visited the gold museum and took the cable car up to the top of the 3,152m Monsserate for views over the entire city.

The lowlights were the dizziness caused by the altitude, cold showers in the (otherwise fantastic) hostel, seeing a pack of vultures devouring an Alsatian by the roadside, and bars selling two different types of beer mixed in one glass. Individually great beers, together like drinking day old leftover beer (not that I'd know, ahem). Don't fall for the gimmick!

All in all, a fantastic start to the trip. The one thing we shied away from was the duck foetus shake energy drink. I'll stick to Coke thanks (pun intended).