We caught a direct bus from Villa de Leyva to Bogotá with Tijs and Jacqueline but weren't allowed to all squeeze into a single taxi so had to split at the Bogotá bus station. On hindsight we can see that our taxi driver took us the long way round so we paid much more than we should have. Bogotá (at 2,600m) was the coldest place we had visited so far; so as planned we spent one of our two days there shopping in one of the capital's large shopping malls for warmer clothes.

On our other day we went on a graffiti walking tour in the morning. We were shown around some of the best street art in the old La Candelaria area (where we were staying) and also the more political art in the city centre. Graffiti has really been accepted in Bogotá to the extent that the city's oldest building (at 500 years) was allowed to be painted. We learnt about 'Plan Colombia' which aimed to reduce drugs but went off the rails somewhere (an understatement!) and ended up in the killing of 3,000 - 15,000 civilians (depending on which source you read). As one of the metrics for success was the number of guerrillas that were killed so homeless and indigenous people were kidnapped and dressed up in Che Guevara T-shirts before being shot. This only stopped in 2012! We were told it didn't make the Western news although we have recently found some international articles online.

We took so many photos on the tour - much more than I thought we would take in the otherwise almost ugly city. But Bogotá has a cool, young and edgy side to it which, if we had stayed longer, could have made us appreciate it a bit more. After the graffiti tour we caught the cable car up the Monserrate mountain to get a fantastic view of the sprawling city below. The last things of note we did in Bogotá were to visit the impressive Gold museum, see two llamas on leads in the main square (it goes without saying that Katy was very excited) and to go out for a great Italian evening meal with Tijs and Jacqueline which included a very rich chocolate cake at the end.

Simon