Some people say travelling alone gives you freedom. Bollocks - try travelling without a budget, that really gives you freedom. And so it was I bought me a plane ticket and made an unplanned jaunt north for a square go with the FARC. Ignorance is bliss, and I closed my ears to mutterings in the media about border conflicts, guerillas, drug barons and the like. Having said that, such bravado was put to one side as I shamelessly begged for safe passage through Bogota from a friend whose parents live there. Really wouldnt want to come acropper on my first day! Flew up to Caragena, a cracking 17th century colonial fortified port city with most of the original buildings surviving almost unchanged in hundreds of years. Apart from a trip to a volcanic mud pool I
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