Somewhere in the north of Bogota - Friday, January 11th

After a 40 minute rest at the airport Daniel, a friend/relative of our office cleaner Carlos arrived. He seemed to be around my age, long swept back hair and reactive lenses that permanatly bathed his eyes in darkness. His English was good and we hit it off well.

It transpired that he had studied English in Bournemouth for two months. His reasoning being that it was cheap and quiet. I could find no fault in his logic.

Despite my total lack of McSleep I was rearing to go into town. It quickly transpired that Daniel was not a good driver at all. In fact he was quite nervous on the road. This wasn’t helped much by the fact that he had never driven the car before - He had borrowed it from his dad. Or that the car was so small it could be attached to a key ring. Then the heavens opened, as it does in the tropics. The rain was so heavy that the windscreen might as well have been made of cheese. I started to pray quietly.

Once we were in town and everything was a bit more settled we did a driving tour of the centre. Daniel had studied Colombian history around the mid 20th century and was no shrinking violet to pedantry. By the end of our driving tour I knew most of Colombia’s history dating back to the dawn of man. I also knew about the difference between all Latin American types of music and the corporate occupiers of many of Bogota’s office buildings.

We stopped at a restaurant where we both ordered Pollo Egipto. Or Egyptian chicken. While it wasn’t revolutionary, it was pretty darn tasty.

His girlfriend Katrina joined us. A fiercely independent minded women who had studied in France for a year but freely conceded that they were scum of the earth. I corrected her by saying that it was really Parisiens but it turns out they had an even more special circle of hell reserved for them. Despite her passions, she did enjoy speaking French and we did so until Daniel’s sighing became so audibly loud I thought he was having a panic attack.

After a long walk we settled down to Chicha, a local alcoholic drink made from fermented corn. The bar was only lit by single candles on each table which lent the occasion a dash of ceremony. It was much stronger than it tasted and made meeting Daniel’s aunt (my actual host) a bit of a challenge. Thankfully her daughter was on hand to translate. However the cat was let out of the bag a little when I revealed the only word I had learnt since arriving was Chicha.

We then decided to hit a Colombian ‘Salsateca’. Like a disco but full of Colombians. Obiously. When we arrived we were seated on a terrace overlooking a live band. We chose a local drink with a name that I confess was never of much concern to me. It tasted like Sambuca’s evil Colombian cousin and always gave you a hangover that held on with two hands. 

While Daniel and Katrina were going at it like gangbusters I was busily looking around to see how the hell to dance to Colombian music. To me everyone was just shaking their hips in the fashion of a paint mixer. Thankfully an older gentleman had noticed that I was the only gringo in the club and decided to teach me salsa. He had a handy learning aid in the form of his wife and we were all systems go.

As the night went on the bands changed and Daniel helpfully informed me which region they were from. Unfortunately I was too inebriated to really pick apart the subtle differences. Part of me wanted to show Daniel a live Morris Dance as retribution. The one act that did stand out involved a man dressed as an elephant cavorting with pretty much every member of the audience. It tuned out the elephant man was in fact a gay pride panto character called Manominio (I think). I was quite happy to hear this explanation from Daniel as the excessive self-tugging of his trunk was tickling my curiosities.