Six months down, six to go!

I can't believe it's been six months since I hopped on my rapidly rescheduled plane and touched down in Santiago de Chile.  Time has gone so fast!

During these six months I've travelled five countries, seen some amazing sights and met some awesome people.  I've stood in the middle of the World's largest salt flats, looked out over the mystical Incan city of Machu Picchu, stood on the furthest point from the centre of the earth and run out of money...but had it replenished it again! My father has been keeping track of my movements on this map - it looks a bit like a map from a carry-on film - and I can't believe I've managed to do so much stuff!

It was time for a re-jig of the ol' backpack. After unpacking everything, I have discovered that my pack has Tardis-like qualities - all of the below fits inside (with a bit of jumping up and down).

The last few days I have devoted some time to finding out about Colombia's main export, responsible for many a sleepless night. Not cocaine...coffee! I've been staying in Salento, right in the heart of La Zona Cafetera, on a plantation owned by a Colombian/English couple.

I also played some more Tejo and bumped into a friend from work, Keke, who is also travelling around South America. Small world!

Salento is located in the centre of some truly beautiful countryside. Myself and Reed (from the US) caught an early jeep to the Valle de Cocora for a bit of hiking through the mountains. We headed off and found ourselves following a river, with some interesting crossings.

After a short climb we arrived at a hut selling hot chocolate and cheese. There were also loads of humming birds zipping around all over the place. I took about 200 pictures with my camera's high speed burst mode. The result? Two average pictures of humming birds - I will not be giving up my job to become a photographer.

The best part of the hike was the last part. As we wandered down the valley we rounded the last mountain and were stunned to see green fields peppered with 60m high wax palm trees. I've never seen anything like it in my life, it was like stepping back in time to the Jurassic period.

The next day I took a tour of the coffee plantation. I didn't know there were so many steps to producing a good cup of coffee! I also didn't know that coffee grows in a kind of berry form. You pick the berries and remove the skins with a machine that squeezes the berries.

Next up the beans from inside are washed to remove natural sugars and dried in the sun. They are now good for 18 months and this is how they are generally sold on the market.

After you receive your coffee beans you roast them in a big drum. This dictates how much caffeine the coffee will have in it. More roasting reduces the caffeine level, but people generally like their coffee bitter which requires more roasting.

After that the coffee is ground up and made into a tasty cup!

The picture below shows, from right to left, the different stages the coffee plant goes through.

Next stop is Cali, the home of Salsa. Watch out dance floors of Colombia!

Nice views from Salento.

 There is more than one way to cross a bridge!

The view from the top of the mountain in Valle de Cocora.

Fresh coffee brewing away.

Bogota!

I expected to spend about two days in Bogota,the capital city of Colombia. I leave tomorrow, after my twelfth day in the city.

It's all about the people! I first met up with my Swiss-German friends Fabian and Matthias, who I'd met in Peru. Drinks were (of course!) in order, so we headed out for a big night (along with new friends Lucy, Tom and Lise). It was Thursday, apparently not a big night in Colombia - we doubled the head count of every bar we entered - but the drinking games had worked and we were drunk enough not to care.

Anyone who has ever traveled with me will know that I have the odd ability to always wake up early in the morning, no matter how late (or in what state) I went to bed. It is a gift and a curse...I never get enough sleep, but at least I have time to visit things. This usually involves me wandering around a museum or park with a big hangover, trying not to throw up on people or fall onto important monuments. The lucky winner this time was the Museo del Oro, or gold museum, which holds the largest collection of pre-Hispanic gold in the world, some 5,500 pieces. I was particularly interested in visiting because this is where much of the gold found in Ciudad Perdida has ended up. It might have been the hangover, but after seeing over 5,000 pieces I came to realise that my main interest in gold is owning it - and then trading it for something more exciting, like a surfboard, a hilarious clown, or a friendly tiger.

I then made a foolish mistake. I attempted to use the Colombian postal system. All I wanted to do was post a DVD of photos back to England. The clerk punched some stuff into the computer before asking me for...my passport. This kind of thing shouldn't surprise me by now, you need your passport for the most trivial transactions in South America, but I didn't have it on me. I trudged back to the hostel, still hungover, wondering whether I should start up a rival postal service where the only requirement to post something would be a postage stamp.

The others were getting up when I got back and I managed to persuade them to visit the Botero gallery later in the day. While they were getting mobilised, I made another attempt at posting the DVD. I triumphantly handed my passport over the counter and asked to post my DVD to England. Annoyingly, their photocopier had broken during the time it had taken me to return and they wanted me to go photocopy it myself. Even after asking six times, I was still not sure why I needed a photocopy of my passport to post a DVD. Before leaving, I asked how much it was going to cost to send. COP60,000 was the reply, about £25 for one DVD! And that was the cheapest option. Massive fail - I will wait until I get to Panama.

Fernando Botero is a Colombian artist who is famous for, according to Wikipedia,  drawing with exaggerated and disproportionate volumetry, accompanied by fine details of scathing criticism, irony, humor, and ingenuity. In normal person language, this means he draws everything as if it were fat. Here is his version of the Mona Lisa.

I'm not the world's biggest art fan but I like it when someone does something different and really enjoyed the gallery. Adding to my enjoyment was the fact that my hangover was wearing off, just as it was kicking in for most of the others.

The next day everyone was heading in different directions, so it was the last big night out together. This didn't quite go to plan - the six of us got split up into three groups! Myself and Tom ended the night in a nightclub on the 30th floor of a skyscraper, looking out over the Bogota nightscape, with some Colombian girls we'd met earlier in the evening. It was agreed that we'd won.

After an epic couple of days everyone went their separate ways. I'd decided to do some couchsurfing so put up an ad and got a few offers. One response jumped right out at me - it said "I can take you climbing", that was always going to be the winner. My hosts were Mandy and Guido from China! I have never met such friendly and generous people in my life. They really made me feel welcome and I have been staying in the spare room of Mandy's awesome flat for the last week.

We visited the Police museum, which houses lots of guns and Pablo Escobar's motorbike. This bike is now worth thousands, mainly due to the fact that it was decorated with solid gold "live to ride" plaques.

I also went up the Monserrate mountain, which borders the East side of the city - lovely views!

Next up were the salt mines at Zipaquira, working mines that have a large cathedral carved into them. The cathedral is carved from the black rock salt and features the 14 stations of the cross. The whole place is lit up with deep blue and purple lighting, which gives a spectacular effect. It reminded me a lot of the salt mines near Krakow in Poland. I guess salt miners are a religious bunch.

There is a great climbing wall in Bogota, which we visited a couple of times. It was awesome to get some climbing in, as it has been a while. This weekend we did some proper climbing with a few others at Puente Reyes! Great routes which you can pretty much drive up to, and for good measure there is a beautiful river running through the valley right behind the rockface. It is going to be hard to leave...

I also managed to get some salsa lessons in with Mandy's Colombian friend Michael, who is from Cali (apparently the home of salsa). I am still rubbish at salsa dancing, but a bit less rubbish than before! In an effort to repay their kindness, I have been doing some cooking. Mandy studied in England for a bit and mentioned that she misses curry, my speciality! Even though they don't really have all the spices you'd need in Colombia, I managed to pull off a pretty good Chicken Tikka Masala. I also made a full English breakfast - less difficult but just as tasty ;)

We had a big night out at a place called Andre's Carne de Res with some of Mandy's friends. I don't really know how to describe it - it starts off as a really awesome steakhouse and then turns into a kinda dancing club. There was also a band of ghouls and ghosts at one point, something which I was not expecting!

So, that's more or less everything I've done in Bogota! I leave tomorrow for Salento, in the middle of Colombia's coffee producing region. Bogota and the people I've met there have really shown me a good time. I will miss it all!

The hottest girl I've met so far!

The best food in Colombia - Lechona....

...which is suckling pig, pulled pork mixed with rice and spices, soooooo good!

The limited edition "gun guitar" in the police museum. Only four of these babies were ever made.

Confiscated guns in the Police museum. Imagine having to hide the one in the middle down your trousers!

Down the salt mine, they have a problem with water flowing in and eroding the salt walls. This could lead to a collapse of the mine and therefore the water is directed to a certain place. The water dissolves the salt and then deposits it out where it evaporates, creating this huge waterfall-like wall of salt!

The main square, with some pretty wacky buildings!

There just so happened to be a protest when I was wandering around the square. I say protest, but it was really like a party. There was a stage, a band, and people selling great food. The riot police didn't have much to do!

A nice church in La Candelaria, the old town.

Mandy is a die hard Liverpool supporter. I would not normally approve of this, but I guess no one is perfect. I survived the trip in the 666 car by the way!

I am just about to attempt to negotiate this huge overhang. It was not pretty.

San Gil and Villa de Leyva

I'm probably going to get disowned by all my friends back in England for saying this, but after so much sun and heat on the Caribbean coast it has been nice to spend some time in the cooler mountain region of Colombia.

San Gil is a lively town with lots of outdoor activities for those with a daredevil attitude. This would normally be me...if it wasn't for the fact that I met some great people who like to party. I started off innocently enough - I planned to enjoy the traditional Colombian game of Tejo. The maddest sport ever conceived...

You play on a lane with similar dimensions to a 10-pin bowling lane. At each end there is a pit full of soft clay, about 1 sqm, with a metal ring sunk into the middle. You are given a box of triangular paper pouches and each player has a large polished stone weighing about 5kg. One of the paper pouches is placed on the metal ring and the players stand at the other end of the lane. You then hurl the stone as hard as you can, trying to hit the paper pouch at the other end. I forgot to mention that the paper pouches are filled with dynamite. If you hit one, it creates an explosion and your team gets nine points. You can only play if you are buying beer (I'm not kidding). I went along twice and woke up with a hangover on each of the following days. Typical Colombia!

Aside from drunkenly exploding stuff, I went caving! The cave has a freshwater stream running right through it, cascading down limestone ledges and forming small underground waterfalls. Most of the trip involved wading or crawling through the water and at one point we had to swim through a small underwater tunnel. It was only about a meter long and had a rope to pull yourself through. When you got to the other end the guide would tap you on the head and it was safe to come up. I was so eager to get through that I accidently pulled myself past the guide and kept going. Just as I thought I was going to run out of breath, I was pulled up - much to my relief, three meters further than I needed to go. The highlight was the "mud slide" - a long stretch of muddy rocks which you can slide down, landing in a big pool of sticky mud! I had a great time!

I also visited the beautiful villages of Barichara and Guane. While walking through these tiny colonial villages, you get the feeling that life has not changed for hundreds of years.

Myself and Stephanie (from Holland) decided to walk the El Camino Real path from Barichara to Guane. This is apparently the route that Simon Bolvar took several centuries ago, when he was freeing much of South America from the Spaniards. The walk took us through some really magical countryside, with lovely vistas over the surrounding mountains and huge trees covered in grey whispering vines.

Once in Guane I tried the local speciality Hormigas Culonas, or fat-bottomed ants. They are toasted and made into a kinda paste. They taste exactly how you'd expect a toasted ant to taste. I will not be bringing any back to England...

Next stop was Villa de Leyva, a lovely little colonial village in the hills between San Gil and Bogota. On offer was walking in the countryside, eating nice food in the village and strolling the cobbled stone streets.

Unfortunately I managed to break myself in Villa de Leyva. It was all the hostel owners fault. He was giving me directions for a hike I wanted to do....

"Go left here, don't go right because that takes you up the mountain", he said. "Oh, maybe I can climb the mountain?", I said. "No, no one climbs the mountain, it's too difficult and there is no path".

Well I was obviously going to climb it after that!

I ended up chopping my way through a small forest and at one point the ground gave way and I fell into a small bush. Inside the bush was a broken, sharp, tree stump. This just happened to pierce my calf at the exact point where a large vein ran across the muscle. Lots of dark blood came out. I applied some pressure which made it stop but the three hour walk back to the hostel was less than enjoyable.

It swelled up so much the next day I couldn't walk properly. Luckily there was a French nurse staying at the hostel who had a look at it. She was less than impressed that my attempt at first aid amounted to putting two plasters on it (I didn't have a big enough plaster to cover it with one). Anyway, she did some stuff and over the last five days it's got much better :-)

So, I'm now in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. The weather is the same as in England - cold and rainy. Not sure how much time I'll be spending here then...

The boys at the Tejo club. The guy in the middle is the owner - he loved us because we bought lots of beer.

To celebrate not making fools of ourselves, we went to a bar for some drinks. They like setting things on fire.

The lads - completely sober, of course.

The church in Barichara.

Nice gardens at the start of the El Camino Real path.

How many Colombians does it take to paint a door....

Punto Azul, a natural freshwater swimming hole. Turns out it's very popular with the locals at weekends.

About six minutes before stabbing myself with a tree stump, I saw this amazing butterfly. I'm not trying to build some kind of reputation as a butterfly lover but you have to admit, it's pretty cool.