Hail!

The rainy season got underway today with a sudden clap of thunder and a fall of giant hailstones. This soon turned to sheets of rain which steadily filled up both of the patios, forming large pools in front of and behind the Palace. These began to grow and eventually the front lake began to spread into the Blenheim Suite (the living room), soaking the carpet. I had been worried that the Palace would leak, but apart from a few drips on the stairs we seem to be reasonably waterproof. Dave and Jess bravely dealt with the lake problem by rolling up their trousers and attacking the drains with bread knives. Amazingly this worked, and with a loud gurgling sound the waters began to subside. Now, for the next few months, life will be very different in Bogota. Umbrellas will again become indispensable items, and wet shoes a fact of life. In a way I'm quite looking forward to it - it was during the rainy season last year that I first fell in love with this place. The showers have the effect of washing the pollution out of the air and guarantee a daily show of rainbows that arch over the city and frame the green mountains beyond.

I'm also hoping that the rain and floods might help to stem the constant flow of visitors we have been receiving here. Hardly an hour goes by without somebody arriving at the door, which is nice, of course, but can get a bit much. The weekend was a case in point. Folk started turning up in twos and threes on Friday night, and before we knew it we had a full-blown party going on. We were all a bit bemused, because none of us had invited anybody. The same thing happened on Saturday, and throughout Sunday, when we had a roast pork dinner (with apple sauce, stuffing, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese and gravy). There was no let up in the evening either. It was gone midnight and I was watching a film with Chris when the doorbell went. Standing there were two girls we know from the neighbourhood who announced that they were a bit tipsy, and just happened to be passing, and could they have a glass of wine or something? Naturally, we invited them in and had a pleasant chat for a few hours about the ghosts of the Candelaria. To be fair the girls earned their visiting rights with the bizarre and delightful assertion that their flat was haunted by the ghost of a 1970s hippy, called Fred.

At the moment we have a well-known author here interviewing a former child soldier who joined a paramilitary death squad after being rejected from the army because of his height. He wanted to enroll in order to avenge the death of his aunt, who was killed by guerrillas. I can't name the writer, because as soon as he finishes his book he will need to leave Colombia and never come back. He's been interviewing a few of these former killers here this week, charming fellas the lot of them, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am having them as house guests. I'm also beginning to question why he wants to do the interviews here, rather than at his luxury three-storey penthouse apartment in the north of the city. He says it's simply because his subjects all live in the south and the Palace is a good central meeting point. Hmm.

Sam has finally managed to emerge from his shamanic trance and has picked up Bruno. He said he didn't get to meet his 'power animal' or experience any particularly interesting visions. "The place was full of goddam hippies," he said, "and they all had their heads right up the asses of the shamans. These fat little dudes were sat around surrounded by gorgeous girls who were worshiping them. I gotta start a cult." He said the main effect of the drug was to induce vomiting. "It was like a symphony of puking, going on all around - bwah! bwah! bwah! You're supposed to vomit out all your negative energy, or whatever, but I just couldn't puke. The last night was horrible, I wouldn't recommend the experience. Too many hippies."

At the moment I'm entertaining a vain hope of having a quiet night tonight, but Wednesday in Bogota is a sort of mini midweek weekend. It's often busier than Friday and Saturday night, and going by experience the doorbell will start to ring at any time.

Aha! Right on cue; there goes the door. Let's just hope it's not another reformed murderer or a hippy from the spirit world. Whoever it is, I think I'll let them get rained on for a bit before I let them in. Ha!

Rat-rat-ratting

We've been looking after Bruno this weekend because his master, Sam, has been off taking ayahuasca (a potent hallucinogenic mushroom) with Amazonian shamans. They've traveled up from the jungle with their bags full of the stuff and are administering it to Bogotanos in some woods near the city. His thinking was that a visionary experience would provide him with some inspiration for his painting. I'm not sure it worked though; we spoke to him yesterday to ask when he wanted to pick up his dog: "Oh, right, hello," a weak voice croaked, "I'm sleeping. In a deep place. Can you keep him another day? I'm just . . .er . . . ok . . . yes . . . thanks." He didn't sound too happy about the whole experience, but then you never know what you're going to see when you peer into your soul under the stewardship of a wrinkled old cove in a pointed hat whose job is to hit you with a handful of feathers every now and then. Other people I've spoken to about taking the stuff describe moving encounters with their 'power animal'. Without exception these spiritual totems are creatures like panthers or wolves, the sort of animal that you'd be happy to show off to your friends. But what of those who end up with guinea pigs or Shetland ponies as their guides-to-other-dimensions? Maybe that's what happened to Sam; perhaps he was disappointed to discover that his inner being was inextricably linked to hedgehogs or flamingos or something. We'll find out later.

Whichever way, I'm sure he'll be glad to be reunited with his real power animal - a small, exceptionally greedy tan and white Jack Russell terrier called Bruno Diaz. He's already proved his worth here by keeping the inner-city rats at bay. On Sunday morning I found him running round and round the oven in a state of high excitement. Using the international language of terriers he told me, quite clearly, that there was a rat hiding underneath and, with my help, he might be able to catch it and and call down savage vengeance upon its small furry head. But something was going wrong; every time he stuck his nose under the oven he would leap back with a yelp of pain and confusion. At first I thought we had come across some sort of super-rat not afraid to sally forth into the jaws of death. Then I remembered, the cooker wasn't earthed, and a dog's cold wet nose is a splendid conductor of electricity. Our landlord, Peter, did try to sort it out last week, after we'd all had several shocks. He ran yards and yards of cable from the cooker, up the wall, across the ceiling and out the door to some sort of gas pipe in the patio. "It's rather a bodge-job," he said, "but it should work." It didn't, as Bruno discovered. Eventually, after Chappy and I had poked broom handles into the gloom the rat wandered out and trotted off across the patio. Bruno either didn't notice, or pretended not to - he just stood, quaking, staring at the oven. I think I should send the results of this accidental experiment to a medical journal of some kind. It would be the final proof of the value of electro-convulsive aversion therapy if it can quash a Jack Russell terrier's inbred enmity towards rats.

riot pictures

I have Little Dave to thank for these pictures, he recognised some people at his hostel who had also been caught up in the riots. So, I'm not sure who took these pictures, but all credit to them.

This next one shows the line of traffic cops who faced off with the demonstrators. Shortly after this picture was taken they wheeled round and speed off down the road. The crowd cheered and ran off after them. Only to be met with . . .
. . . these fellas. By this time we'd already headed up the hill to get out the way. But when this line of Robocops began to charge we found ourselves at the head of the fleeing mob.
The riot police here have remarkable uniforms. The designer must have been one of three things: an expert in bodily protection; a science fiction enthusiast or a sado-masochistic leather fetishist.
I didn't see any of this; but quite a few banks and shops were smashed up. I like the way the torn poster in the window is still displaying the V sign.

The Palace

My attempts at taking pictures of the palace were terrible failures. The rooms are so big it's impossible to get them all into one shot. But then Chris did something clever with his camera and got the following pictures of the front room. To give a sense of perspective and proportion, the dog in the foreground of the first picture is a particularly large Jack Russell.

it's a riot!

Tear gas really isn't that bad, considering the alternatives. But exposure to the stuff when you've got a cold anyway can be really messy. I'm hoping that the curry that's on the go in the kitchens will help matters.

Along with Jess, Dave and a chap called Little Dave (a traveler from England who, I think, is destined to always find himself in the company of another Dave and so have to be qualified as 'Little') I'd headed out to see if the flea market was open. All the centre of town was cordoned off and, apart from thousands of soldiers and riot police, was largely deserted. I wish I'd had my I-Spy book of Colombian armed forces on me, I'm sure I could have ticked off every battalion and regiment.

Everything had stopped for the visit of George Bush, who, we knew, was due to sweep into town at any moment. I'm still not sure if we saw the presidential motorcade, there were several over the period of about an hour. Eventually we realised that there was no way that the fleamarket would be open, being as it is on the main drag. Having got so far we decided to keep walking and call over to my old flat to say hello to Sam. As we got to the Bull Ring we could see that there'd been some trouble. The road was full of bits of brick and there were dozens of tense-looking riot police around. These chaps are some of the best equiped I've ever seen. They wear the sort of full-cover body armour that Batman would be proud of and the rest of their equipment would be just the ticket for the Terminator. Quite a fearsome bunch when they're ready to go, but if you spot them off-duty with their helmets off they are just jolly laughing lads seeing through their national service like everyone else.

We had no other way to go than through a line of these chaps and up the hill towards La Macarena. Dave headed the other way to go and visit his baby son, unsure if he would make it through the security ring to the south. As we walked through the police line some looked at us a little askance, but they didn't seem to mind that we were heading towards a crowd of rioters. These had gathered a few blocks up, on the edge of a very pleasant little park. We stood to watch a while as there seemed to be what football comentators call 'a carnival atmosphere'. There was a thumping beat from several drums and many demonstrators were picking out a salsa rhythm with whistles. Just as I was wondering how they ever remembered to bring them an old chap came up with a whole bunch and offered us one for a very reasonable price. I almost bought one out of respect for his entrepreneurial spirit.

At about this time a phalanx of motorcycle police roared up to the crowd and came to a stop just before the front line of the cheerfully jigging mob. There were a few catcalls and a big increase in whistling, but nothing else, and after a few minutes the biker cops swung round and headed back the way they came. The crowd took this as some sort of victory and, with another increase in whistling, streamed off after them. Despite my relative lack of experience in rioting, I got the distinct impression that they were being led on to some sort of trap, so I suggested that we head up the steep slope towards the Pimp's Penthouse. We'd got about half way up when there was a whistling roar behind us and the whole mob began racing up the hill behind us, followed by the Robocops, who were now backed up by armoured vans with water cannons. We started running at their head, and because I was back in my old neighbourhood, I led the way down a quiet street. The mob followed. Again, we turned a right, and the mob followed, but this time coming from both ends. It looked for a moment like we were going to be caught right in the middle of the action (by this time a few rock throwers had arrived) but another cry went up and the protest moved back to where it had started after having run round the block. By this time we were all exhausted - we've all got the same chesty cold since living together and running up hills at nearly 9,000ft through air misty with tear gas is never easy. Particularly not when you're laughing so much you've stomach cramps as well. We made it to the old pad and relaxed on the balcony with a coffee.

Now I'm being called to work my magic with a sag aloo - potatoes with spinach. It's not usually a very spicy dish, but I'm planning on extra chillie to try to clear my tubes.

Cartagena pictures

I'm writing this in the comfort of the palace kitchens, where we are now online. I can't spend too long on this as I have to go to the dentist. I had my first appointment yesterday with an English-speaking Hungarian who had been recommended by German at Platypus. His practice was in an unmarked apartment on the eigtheenth floor of a residential block. His wife let me in and I spent about half an hour flicking through old magazines in his living room. Finally he took me through to his consulting room, which seemed to be part of his kitchen. We had a bit of a chat and he told me that he fled to Colombia with all his family because of the Hungarian revolutions of the 1950s. I didn't like to question his choice of safe haven - but I've never heard of anyone coming here to escape political violence. He made a lot of disapproving noises as he examined my mouth and ran through what needed to be done. At this point I realised that because the chair was right up against a wall he'd only been able to check one side of my mouth. I craned my head round and said: "What about all these?"

He then betrayed how long he has been in Colombia by making their national noise of suprise and horror, which sounds something like "oo-weesh" and added to the list of things to do. At this point he told me I needed a temporary filling straight away. I was expecting this as I have had two fall out recently. The first was back in England when I was eating a cherry drop and going too fast over a speed hump. The second was during lunch last Sunday, just as I was explaining that the treacle tart I'd made shouldn't be so sticky. I was expecting to be injected, but instead he just told me to hold my tongue to one side with his mirror and started to drill away at my molar. "Don't worry," he said as smoke started to issue from my mouth, "this is only a very little drilling." At that point the phone rang, so he pushed his drill into my other hand and went to answer it. I was lying back on the chair trying to cool my tooth with my tongue while he stood at the phone for a full minute saying: "Allo? Allo? Con quien? Who is there? Allo! Allo?" He eventually gave up and came back to me, imparting the fairly redundant information that there was nobody on the line.

Anyway, back to Cartagena. Isn't annoying that whenever you take a picture of an interesting door you always get a gorgeous bird walk into the shot?

This little alley runs alongside the city walls, built to keep out pirates like Sir Francis Drake.
It's a colourful place, Cartagena.

I'm really not sure what this shop keeper was thinking with his choice of mannequin - particularly in a town where all the girls are so slim.
Ah, that would be it; a tribute to Botero.





This is the view from the city walls. In the distance you can see the new town. Just along from here is the Colombian branch of Cafe del Mar - the legendary Ibiza chill-out bar. It is a great place to relax; with the Caribbean on one side and the old town on the other. The DJ plays his LPs in one of the watch towers. We only stayed for one drink because we thought it was horrendously expensive - almost a quid and a half a pint. Oo-weesh!

Everybody at the palace has spent all week recovering from the housewarming, but hopefully this weekend should be more sensible - and all thanks to George Bush. Because he's coming to Bogota on Monday, there's a complete ban on alcohol sales all weekend - what's known here as a Ley Seca, or Dry Law. On the other hand, experience tells me that these attempts at calming the populace usually backfire where gringos, particularly the English, are involved. We have already had a stream of visitors asking if they can store booze here . . . so it could turn into another palace-bound weekend like the last one. It may be just as well, because we're only a block or two from the Presidential Palace the whole place is crawling with soldiers and American spooks. There have even been tanks spotted in the neighbourhood. So perhaps it might be wise to keep a low profile. Being searched is never very pleasant.

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.

Cartagena

I´m writing this in the town that is widely accepted to be the most beautiful in the western hemisphere - Cartagena de Indias. All around me brightly-coloured buildings are huddled together within the ancient walls that bristle with cannons pointing out over the still, blue waters of the Caribbean.

Despite these pleasant surroundings I can´t help but feel annoyed and thwarted; I totally forgot it was Pancake Day on Tuesday. It´s the third year in a row I´ve done that. It only dawned on me the next day, when I noticed that about half the people in Bogota had ash crosses daubed on their foreheads. I have to admit I found it quite unsettling, a bit like that film about bodysnatchers from outer space. Chris and I were walking down Septima and noticed a freshly-daubed stream of people emerging from a church, so we decided to investigate. The queue of people waiting for their cross was moving remarkably quickly (the daubers were slapping the stuff on like Zorro with his sword) but it still stretched all the way down the nave. It´s a good job Jesus was killed all that time ago - because it would have taken ages to draw a little picture of an electric chair on everybody´s head. The oddest part of the event was the choice of music. For some reason they were playing a panpipe version of Carly Simon´s Nobody Does it Better - the theme, I think, from The Spy Who Loved Me. It was certainly an odd choice, but Chris and I agreed it was the least strange part of the whole thing.

It was while walking through the crowds of becrossed people that I decided to book a flight to Cartagena to meet up with Australian John before he leaves the New World for Spain. Along with Jess and Chappy, he should be arriving at the hostel here sometime today.

I got here last night and turned in early so I could get up early and take photos of the town before it got too busy. It really is a lovely place. It was founded in 1533, but not much of that age remains because of the attacks by English Pirates, including one by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. Unlike some of the other raids he agreed not to destroy the town in exchange for a ransom of 1,000,000 pesos, which was a lot of money in them days, y´know.

I had been warned by friends in Bogota that the street vendors and hawkers were a real problem here, and that I should be prepared to exercise a great deal of patience. However, I didn´t have any problem, because I have discovered the secret of invisibility. One simply needs to walk around with a supermarket carrier bag and nobody notices you. Not one single sunglasses salesman, money changer, guide or beggar approached me, unless I had my camera out of the bag. Even then, I could just pop it back in and they would lose interest in me and wander off to pester somebody else.

Oh, here are some of the words for the cross daubing song. It almost works as something "a-bit-like-Jesus-really", but not quite:

I wasn't lookin' but somehow you found me
I tried to hide from your love light
But like heaven above me
The spy who loved me
Is keepin' all my secrets safe tonight

Oh, oh, oh.

Miss Colombia

Yes, I did miss Colombia while I was England. And I missed Miss Colombia; Sam bumped into her on Monserrate (the monastry on the mountain overlooking Bogota) shortly before I got back, which says a lot about my timing. He was with his brother who had been visiting for a month. He arrived full of filial concern for his little brother living in such a dangerous place (even though he is from Beirut) but had the scales fall from his eyes and left as a new apostle of this wonderful place.

It does seem to convert people, Bogota. Many of my friends here arrived, like me, for a few days before deciding to stay for much longer. Others, like Jess from Cornwall, Middlesborough Chappy and Swedish Marcus, go home and then find that they miss the place too much, and come back.

Even though I was missing Bogota, my time in England went all too quickly and I didn't get to see half the people I planned to. I spent a nice couple of days with my sister and her family, even though it seems that my main role as an uncle is to be a punchbag for tiny fists.

That all seems a long time ago now as I sit in the common room of Playpus writing this entry. I'm not staying here, I just popped in to hook up on the wireless internet. I'll be staying at the Pimp Palace in the Sky for a few days before moving into what can only be described as a palace with Jess, Hitchen Dave and American Chris. The new place is right in the middle of the city and boasts a billiards room (with full-size walnut table) two courtyards (one a basketball court) and a baronial style granite fireplace festooned with lions and heraldic devices. My bedroom will be the upstairs ballroom. I know this sounds a little indulgent for someone on a budget - but it's cheaper than my last place and comes in at about twenty quid a week. I'll get some pictures up on here as soon as I can.

Now I have to pluck up courage and make a dental appointment. While I was at home I lost a filling eating a cherry drop while driving too quickly over a sleeping policeman, and living in a place where everyone's gnashers are white and perfect makes me constantly aware of how decrepit mine are. If I ever do meet Miss Colombia I want to be able to smile back at her with at least some confidence.

Picture post

I've finally got round to developing the pictures from my film camera, so here are a few of them.Above is my home, the Croft, covered in snow. Just three days before we'd been sitting in the garden drinking gin and tonics in the sun. (By the way - if you look upwards from the apex of the conservatory to nearly the very top of the trees behind, you can see a small speck. That's the magpie nest I mentioned in my last entry.) Next are the rocks at Shakira, just down the hill from Philipe's vegan farmstead. This is where he comes to drink his home-grown coffee every morning. The view from here is amazing - far, far below the Rio Magdalena cuts through green hills, that have twelve waterfalls cascading down them. The following are some of the monsters that litter the countryside all round San Augustine.

This is the racing butterfly that came and landed on me while we were walking around one of the archaeological parks. I wonder what happened to the other eighty-eight of them?

This is the pleasant little guest house we stayed at in San Augustine.

Ah, back to Shakira. This was taken from near the rocks where we were sitting in the first picture. I somehow managed to miss all of the waterfalls. That's Chappy on the horse. He's from Middlesborough, him, like.

I think the next four pictures were taken around Salento when we went to visit the coffee finca.

This is the main square in Salento. You can see the mists rolling off the mountains to the right.

Here is the night-time view from the cabin in Taganga. What is incredible is that absolutely nobody in the village pays for their electricity. Everybody just hooks a coat hanger up to the power lines.

This is the beach at El Cabo, in the Tayrona national park, where we spent New Year.

This is Pershore Abbey covered in snow. It once extended to about where I took the photo from, but most of it was knocked down in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monastries. It was all supposed to be demolished, but the people of Pershore had a whip-round and gave the wrecking squad £400 to leave the part that remains today. The butresses were added in 1911 to stop it falling over. I've always thought they make it look like a puppy sitting up waiting for a biscuit.

This is one of my favourite pubs, The Fleece at Bretforton. It's an incredibly historic place - it has one of Englands largest collections of pewter plate and there are designs painted on the hearth tiles to stop witches coming down the chimney. One of the last stories I wrote for the Evesham Journal was my eye-witness account of it burning down. It's since been immaculately restored. My cousin Andy is getting married to Eleanor there in June.

The Weather

Coming home for Wassailing was quite momentous - aside from the hundreds of quid I spent getting here. Last year I left Blighty on Wassail night, so coming back for this year's celebration should (you'd imagine) be the chance for some introspective and insightful words about how I have trundled my way through the dozen months in between. (What I've learned, how I've grown, n'all that.) But that doesn't come easily to me, so instead I'd like to talk about the weather.

I woke up this morning to find the world covered in a thick blanket of snow. I won't describe it - just try to imagine everything covered in a thick, white, cold blanket and you'll get the idea. I was very excited - it's the first proper snow we've had in this part of England since the early eighties; when Dad used to tie our sledges to the back of his car and drag us round the lesser-used lanes of the Cotswolds.

It's a shame really - for the past few weeks the weather has been unseasonably warm. The birds have been flying around collecting twigs for nests, squirrels have been emerging from their winter hidey-holes and I've even seen a couple of butterflies. Of course, they're all buggered now, poor sods. Apart from the magpies that is. Last year they nested in a birch tree by the tortoise enclosure, so Dad poked their nest out with a stick (for those who don't know - they are terrible predators of song birds). But now they seem to have learned - they're building their nest at the very top of the tallest poplar tree in the garden. But they'll probably be buggered too after this weather.

The weather on Wassailing night was very pleasant. It was the middle of an English January in the middle of the night, but we all sat outside quite happily. I suppose we all had our cider anoraks on to keep us warm. For those who don't know; Wassailing is about opening a new barrel of cider and then thanking the trees for their bounty. It's a complex ritual, involving several guns, some toast and a virgin. It all went very well, and I have high hopes for next year's apple crop.

My last week in Bogota was unusually warm. Even though I'd just come back from the Caribbean coast I still managed to get sunburnt on the few occasions I left the house. It was a particularly pleasant night when I went to a wedding with Dodgy Dave, from Hitchen. We arrived about three minutes late, and as English people we were worried about being tardy. As we walked in Dave was approached by a stunning bridesmaid in a scarlet dress who told him he was was best man. "Why did nobody tell me?" he asked. She giggled and pinned a rose to his chest.

Later in the evening I won my first ever dancing contest. All the single men at the wedding had to grab a girl and shake their stuff in front of a crowd of baying aunties. I shook mine, and by common consensus my ridiculous wiggling won me the bride's girdle. I was genuinely shocked - all the other fellas were doing all sorts of salsa things and I was just being very silly. But the aunties had their way and I was victorious.

After the wedding I headed on to a friend's club where he was celebrating David Bowie's birthday. I milled around for a while making disparaging remarks about boss-eyed paltroons before going home.

Next thing I remember I was at an airport near New York, and it was snowing. Nothing like British snow, of course, but I appreciated the effort.

And now I'm in writing this in the study of The Croft. It's a good place to pretend to be an explorer. As I look around me I see Nubian swords, ostrich eggs, dried starfish, Ethiopian birthing stools, stuffed birds and one of those fish that sing 'Take Me to the River' when you bark at it. Oh, there it goes again.

John & Nicole Picture Special

I have been taking pictures recently, but on a film camera and I haven't had the chance to get them developed yet. In the meantime here are some pictures taken by John and Nicole, which are probably a lot better than anything I have waiting on my films.


Their pictures start on our horseride in San Augustine, about ten minutes after I fell off my horse, while attempting to clamber on. As you can see I have mud on my knees and a sheepish look about me.
The countryside around San Augustine is absolutely lovely. The picture below was taken from an ancient archaeological site called Shakira (no relation), where figures have been carved into a pile of rocks on a hillside. They must have been bored. The site is actually bounded by land belonging to Philipe, he wanders down to have his morning coffee contemplating this view. You can't see in this picture, but from the rocks you can see twelve waterfalls cascading down the hills in every direction. It's amazing that this picture missed them all.
This is Popayan, which I think is the most elegant town I have visited in the New World.
Again, Popayan.
This is how the Indians in the south of Colombia dress. In the north the Tayrona Indians are completely different - they dress all in white with pointy hats.
The countryside around Salento was even nicer than around San Augustine. But everywhere you go in this country there are amazing vistas.
This is the old chap at the coffee finca we visited.
And these are his grandchildren. Really, they must wonder about the one on the left. It's about six years since they opened their farm to foreign visitors . . .
As well as the coffee, Salento is also the place to go if you really must see the tallest palm trees in the world.
This is up in the slums of Medellin. Just incredible how happy everyone was up there.
This is the cablecar that travels over the city.
Nicole will probably hate me for using this picture - but it's the best shot of the view from our cabin in Taganga. And that pose is great.
This is the beach at El Cabo, in the Tayrona national park.
The picture was taken from here, were we camped. You can see just how far those coconuts would fall before landing on your head. I never knew such terror could lurk in paradise.
The threat of instant death brought out the hedonist in everybody.