Bogota turned out pretty similar to Cali - its probably a good place, but we were there on the wrong nights. Mondays in Bogota turned out to be like an extended Sunday - everything is closed or closes early. We tried to go local for food, in La Candeleria (the historical district), but gave up after finding nowhere good open and hopped in a taxi to La Zona Rosa, the upmarket area. We got food, but it wasnt cheap, and we went looking for an Irish bar that has its ...

Cali turned out to be a tad underwhelming, but that's probably not the city's fault either. Plenty of people we have met hyped it up to be a great town, but we picked the wrong days to be there. We arrived on a Sunday, which is always bad, because everything is closed, except in Cali's case there is a mall (called Chipichape) which was open. That was pretty much the only thing we had to do all day, so we went there to catch the Copa America final, in which Urugua...

Banos was great. The rafting we did was class, down some grade 3 and 3+ rapids. There was quite a bit of falling out of the boat, although some might have been on purpose. We had planned to get some cuy for dinner that evening, but we can only guess that the cuy restaurant is only open Saturdays cause it wasn't open Sunday or Monday. So no guinea pig. Yet. Instead we got a three course meal plus coffee for a grand total of $10 each - can't argue with those kind ...

Population: 45 million Area: 1.14 million square km (13 times bigger than Ireland) Currency: Colombian Peso (1000 = €0.40) Timezone: GMT -6 hours Capital: Bogota Population of Bogota: 8.3 million

I think I could start every blog entry with "it's been a busy few days", but it's true. Mancora was good, chilled out and practically Spanish-less, but good. We ended up with a posse of Irish & English people (hence the lack of Spanish), some beginning their trip and others ending theirs. The first full day was overcast, so we got a game of 5-a-side on the beach. The second day we saw plenty of sun, and in typical Irish style, we both got burnt. I also att...