Sunday, 22 August, Bogota

I´ve been writing more in my notebook, but thought I´d just take a few minutes to blog. I leave Bogota in a few hours to go to Peru. G, who I met last year in Lima is picking me up from the airport and I am excited to see him again - and to be met at an airport!

The last few days in Colombia have been nice. I stayed for two nights in the city of Tunja, which has a city centre dating to the 1500s. It also has European things like cafes and trendy bars, though I still had trouble finding anything other than Colombian food and pizza laden with meat. I spent a lot of time walking around because, though the streets, like everywhere in Colombia, are numbered sequentially, I kept getting lost. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone, starting out on one street and magically ending up on another.

I spent yesterday in Villa de Leyva, a very popular spot with Colombians and foreigners alike, though it was (nicely) not crowded as I expected. This is a bigger, wealthier Barichara, a whole white-washed town. But the houses and hotels are much grander and the arts and crafts are of a much higher standard than elsewhere in Colombia. I ate pasta, drank red wine and spent 250,000 pesos on an artwork that I fell in love with and now have to carry around with me.

In Tunja, I took myself to a cafe-karaoke bar, and after a song in English came on and I could join in the singing, my neighbours began to talk to me (in English and Spanish) and I even sang a few songs (Sound of Silence, Hey, Jude, No Baby Don't Cry). This was a lovely night. Yesterday, I felt like my old Australian self. Happy to be alone, reading and enjoying good food, wandering beautiful streets.

But more later. I want to get to the airport nice and early.