Our first impression of Colombia was arriving at Bogota airport at night, realising our transfer wasn't there, trying to withdraw some cash for a taxi and being given about half the amount we'd requested from the ATM without warning or explanation. Not a great start but fortunately it didn't take long for the country to win us over.

On our first day in Bogota we got an amazing introduction to the city by way of a cycle tour. It was full of Dutch people which I decided was a no-brainer since bikes were involved but we later discovered it's a theme in the whole of Colombia - the flights must be cheap :) The tour was supposed to last 4 hours but it actually ended up taking 8.5hrs because our guide was so incredibly enthusiastic and friendly. He took us to such national landmarks as the place he used to swim as a child and the library where he introduced his son to Tintin. We also got lots of proper history though and the tour was genuinely really interesting, definitely the best introduction we could have had to the city. Day 2 we went to the police museum, famed for having Pablo Escobar's gold-plated motorbike on display - Gerard and I had both pictured some serious The Only Way Is Essex-esque bling but the whole bike is not in fact gold, there are just a few gold logos on it. Slightly disappointing. Other than that we saw a lot of guns and learned that the word for handcuffs in Colombia is the same as the word for wife ("esposa") - funny b*****s. These were our main takeaways from the 2.5 hour guided tour which included a brief Spanish lesson and a cup of coffee in what appeared to be the staff room - by this point we were starting to recognise a trend of people being unnaturally friendly and had to make an effort to suppress our cynical London ways. After that we hit the gold museum (not much to report, there was a lot of gold) by which time we were all museumed out and unfortunately couldn't bring ourselves to push on to the Botero museum which had been on the list. We heard it was lovely though.
We struggled a bit with food in Bogota, it was an adjustment after being in La Paz where you could buy food from any old woman in the street and it'd be awesome. Our few attempts at empanadas and arepas were very disappointing but fortunately we discovered that, unlike Bolivia, restaurants here are plentiful and good. We even happened upon one with a Sardinian flag outside and, after some very tasty pasta, we got chatting with the owner and found out she's from Cagliari (where we bought our boat) - she even knows the owner of our favourite ever ice cream shop, small world!

Our next stop was San Gil, supposedly the adventure capital of Colombia, where we wanted to do some rafting on the Rio Suarez which apparently has some of the best rapids in the world. It was a lot of fun but not massively more extreme than what we've done before. Having said that it's dry season here, we're told it gets wilder in rainy season. We also walked the Camino Real, a trail between the villages of Barichara and Guane, which unintentionally ended up being a round trip thanks to bad timing with the buses. It was good to get some training in before our next venture though - the Ciudad Perdida (lost city) trek. More on that later.

A very cramped and unpleasant 12 hour bus journey took us from San Gil up to the Caribbean coast where we stayed in little fishing village called Taganga. Our first port of call was some diving, our first opportunity of the trip so far. We did 2 dives in the beautiful clear water close to an island just off the coast of Tayrona national park (I think it's called Aguja). It was amazing, we saw tons of fish and moray eels and it was good for me to get some more experience in post-PADI. Good diving has a fairly obvious correlation with good seafood and we had some very tasty fish in Taganga too - and more importantly, we FINALLY positively identified the fish we were catching and eating on the boat: it's some kind of tuna! We'd originally ruled out tuna because of the white flesh when we cooked it but apparently the brown stuff in tins is not representative of all cooked tuna - as evidenced by the barbecued bonita (a type of South American tuna) which the owner of our hostel whipped up for us one evening.

Our main reason for being in Taganga though was to use it as a base for the Lost City trek; a 4-day hike through the jungle to an old Inca settlement which was discovered in the 70s. You can do it in 5 or 6 days too but we were feeling cocky and short on time. The result was almost constant walking for about 7 or 8 hours a day. We had some neverending uphills, some cliff edges where the only safety measure was some plastic tape saying "peligro" (danger), a few knee-deep rivers to cross and one (small) waterfall which we had to clamber up and then back down again. The guide of course practically does the route in his sleep so he sped off each morning after our 5.30am start and we all hurried after him like little ducklings - it was hardcore! At this point you're probably thinking (as I was) that at least I might be working off some of the choripans but it was not to be - we were fed like kings, any spare moment that was not spent walking was spent eating. Sleeping was also better than expected despite the early rising, the first night trying to lie perfectly still in hammocks (actually the height of luxury compared to a baby we saw sleeping in a shopping bag that was hanging on a nail), and the bedtime stories about poisonous snakes and spiders. Thankfully noone in our group suffered any mishaps with the wildlife and, even better, we didn't hear about the mishaps of other groups (largely tick-related) until we were on the home stretch with only about an hour's walk to go before the drive back to civilisation. It was really an amazing experience though, more about the walk than the destination and we were lucky to get some great company for the journey (other groups seemed not to have been so lucky).

After getting back and spending about an hour in the shower, we decided to have a recovery day at one of the beaches in Tayrona national park. We ended up at La Piscina which was beautiful - the water is totally clear and the sand has specks of fools gold in it so if you stand in the wash and watch the water pick up the sand it glitters in the sun - really something special. It needed to be though, after 3 buses, a 1.5hr walk and 76,000 pesos in entrance fees it's probably the most effort we've ever made to get to a beach.

Next stop Cartagena!