Hasty

Man i really hated Colombia and everyone in it for a couple of hours there. However, now i´m all holed up in this belter hotel with a wee sunny patio and pure nice dude behind the desk with the unpleasant taxi business of last night behind me i feel a lot better about things. That impudent fellow had the temerity to leave me his card in case i wanted to hire him by the hour for tours of the city! Beat it, mate. I´ll post his number up later in case any of you fancy a spot of Trans-Atlantic prankie action. Bastard.

BUT i just went out for a walk round Bogota and it´s amazing. I went to Juan Valdez, which is a big coffee chain, and had a massive tinto (black coffee) and a donut for a quid! There are men in uniforms with guns hanging about everywhere, even at the coffee stands, but the hotel is right in the middle of the business district and there are loads of banks, so it must be becuase of that.
All the buses are clapped-out yet weirdly space-age looking van type things, painted lots of different colours with chrome trim and sometimes with the Virgin Mary on the side. They look like transport vehicles from a 1960´s sci-fi TV show (apart from the old V.M), and beside these are horses and carts, trundling along the streets beside millions of irate yellow taxis and kamikaze motorbike messagers. The houses are strange small cottages with terracotta tiles on the roofs, and all the gardens are full of flowers. Even the hedges are made of some plant that looks like normal hedge material but spattered with yellow flowers.