Casita

Sorry it´s been so long since I last wrote, but it takes ages to move into a palace, and even longer to perform the necessary house warming functions.

The move happened suddenly after I returned from Cartagena. I´d spent a great couple of days with John and the others, and even managed to get hold of pancakes on the Caribbean to make up for my Shrove Tuesday disappointment. This was thanks to Colombia´s best restaurant chain, Crepes and Waffles. The story of the company is quite heartwarming - a single mother down on her luck had the brainwave that crepes and waffles can both be made from the same batter, so she started her first branch. Now they´re all over Colombia and she is a multi-millionaire. Despite this phenomenal success she has never forgotten how she started and still employs only single mothers in all her branches.

It was sad to see John head off. We arrived in Bogota at about the same time and, along with Nicole, found work together at the Brewery. Now he is heading off to England to make good use of his two-year work visa to earn enough to buy a place in Colombia and settle here. We had a bit of a look around Cartagena, but were told by an estate agent that there was absolutely nothing available within the city walls for less than a thousand million pesos - which is about a quarter of a million quid. This seems an awful lot over here - but on British prices is it really too much to live in one of the most beautiful, cultured, atmospheric places in the world? I´ve never been so impressed by a town.

No sooner did I arrive back in Bogota than a message reached me that we had taken possession of our mansion, and that my help was needed to move stuff in. I rushed there as slowly as I could and was just in time to carry some cushions. I can´t remember if I described it before, but it is a quite amazing colonial house right in the very heart of the old town. There are two large courtyards, the one at the front surrounded with columns and the one at the back containing a basketball court. You can´t play a full game on it because a small garden has been planted in front of the far hoop, but this attracts humming birds, so it´s not all bad. The living room is gigantic, with stained glass windows, a baronial-style stairway and a granite fireplace with lions and heraldic devices on it. It´s also got a billiards room, but unfortunately the table was taken by the last owners. My bedroom is at the front of the house overlooking Monserrate. I think it used to be a ballroom. My bed looks very small and odd plonked in the middle of it.

We were lucky to find the place. Dave and Jess spent almost the whole month I was in England traipsing around the city looking for somewhere, but without success. Then Jess started chatting to an old English hippy bloke who she studies Spanish with at the National University. ¨Oh,¨ he said, ¨I´ve got a couple of little places you might be interested in renting for a while . . . ¨ He´s got more than that, he seems to be buying up the whole of Candelaria. He´s got plans for restaurants, cultural centres, hotels and all sorts. The amazing thing is he probably only needed to sell one of his places in England to buy all this. I think he paid about seventy or eighty grand for our palace. He´s had problems though, after all, estamos in Colombia. I won´t give the whole sorry tale of how he got ripped off, suffice to say the story started with ¨So I´d given this Colombian friend of mine, who I´d known for ten years, power of attorney over my finances. . .¨

As soon as we began to move in guests started drifting over. For some reason the place seems to be particularly attractive to the English, and more and more have been coming out of the woodwork. It can be a problem though - we got our first complaints from the neighbours after a game of cricket in the rear courtyard. To be fair some of the players were being a little over-enthusiastic with their appeals. And anyway, it was never leg before wicket.