Smoke from somewhere up in the village rises to meet the clouds that are beginning to roll over the tree-laden but somehow perpetually chocolate orange coloured mountains that surround me - as though autumn has somehow found its permanant home in a tiny part of this ever lush green country. Forgive me - my poetic license must be approaching expiry by now! I suppose that the inability to interract sufficiently in the predominant language of the area pushes me into crevices of metaphor that would otherwise remain, rightfully, undiscovered. It's 1708 and I'm sitting in the bar of the hostel, listening to music that doesn't really fit the surroundings, electricity cables point my eyes towards the small bay that is Taganga. The humidity of the area is like nothing that I've ever known before. It's odd ... read more

OK, I'm going to try to make this one brief, largely because there's not much to say. I woke up very aware of the fact that I still wasn't 100% sure how I was going to make the next leg of the journey. A flight was an option as was the bus. I guess if you were reading the last blog carefully, you'll realise that I took the bus...You'll find out why in a minute. As usual, breakfast at the hotel was delicious if entirely untraditional. Arepa, bread, scrambled eggs with sausage. Set me up well for the day. I wanted to get some shots of the hotel and the surrounding area so off I trotted with my camera, first around the hotel, and then the area where I was staying - Cabecera. As I was ... read more

It's been a couple of days since my last update and there's a fair amount to fill you in on, so I'm going to do this update in two parts. I guess that the last time that I wrote I was enamoured with Villa de Leyva and its laid back way of life. It really would have been too easy to stay there, but on Monday night I was sitting in a bar on my own overlooking the square which was totally empty. There was a heavy thunderstorm and webs of lightning streaked across the sky - a silhouette of mountain etched into the distant landscape. Beautiful. I noticed that the lightning moved across the sky rather than heading towards the earth - is this normal? It was interesting to watch but that it was interesting ... read more