WELCOME TO BOGOTA!

Well, end of first day, actually not the end of first day as it's nearly 7pm and I've got around another 3 hours of work to do before I can go back to the hotel, ho hum! Still, means I'll get some time off to go sightseeing.

The city is pretty mad, the general idea of the road seems to be to drive as fast as you can in no particular direction and swap from lane to lane regularly. There are very few green men to tell you if you can cross and the kerbs are several inches high. I think the way to do it is to just jump off the kerb and hope the cars stop. There are zillions of little yellow taxis zipping around and they don't seem to stop unless they have to.

The hotel and embassy are in the north of the city and everyone at both is very friendly. I've had a wander around and thoroughly investigated the contents of the local supermarket! Contrary to reputation, the area is very safe, the embassy say you're probably in more danger in London! There are certainly loads of security guards in all the buildings and, at night, on every corner with a dog (although the labrador I saw last night seemed to be only interested in sleeping and didn't look very scary!)

Last night there was the most amazing rainbow, people were even coming out of shops to look. I had a walk around and there were people selling all sorts of things on every corner and, which seems very common here, there are loads of people selling mobile phone calls. Yes, I do mean mobile phone calls, people have mobile phones on chains on a box by the side of the street then people pay a small amount of money to make calls on them. Phone calls seem to be very expensive in Colombia so I guess many people can't afford their own phone and there don't seem to be many payphones, it's very interesting.

En-route to Bogota en Air France

Well, here I am revelling in Affaires classement en Air France! There’s no first class and I have only one previous Business Class flight to compare with, but this seems very very good. I am currently on the second leg of my day’s journey to Bogota, Colombia.

My big adventure started at 4am this morning, not such a good time to start an adventure but at least the taxi turned up on time-actually, 2 taxis, one to take me to Heathrow and one to take Ruud to Gatwick, surely Air France could have designed their schedule better so that we could have both flown from Gatwick! I had to fly to Paris to pick up the flight to Bogota and the Gatwick flight did not get me there in time. The flight from London was pretty non-descript although I got to use the Air France lounge where the coffee was nice but the croissants were cold-see how high my expections are already! The breakfast on the plane was awful, hard bread and Nescafe-my coffee-snobness hatred of instant coffee is well known!

The London flight was half an hour late and a huge queue for security at Charles de Gaulle meant that there was no time to experience the lounge there so I shall have to save that experience for the return journey!

I have a huge seat which goes up and down and backwards and forwards and even has a wibbly massage bit. It makes almost a bed so I have already had a half an hour nap but I found myself rather too excited to sleep. It has build in Sennheiser headphones and a reading light and you get a little baggie with toothpaste, comb and special ear covers for the headphones! I have my own little area courtesy of seatguru.com telling me this was a good seat-it certainly is. I also have my own personal pop up TV on which I can choose what a want-I’ve already started on Angels and Demons. The seat even has a power plug so I can use my laptop all the way, glad I remembered to put an adaptor plug in my hand luggage as Boeing don’t stretch to a UK plug!!

It’s around midday French time so they’re serving lunch-a little early for my tummy but it is very good, a little tablecloth on your very big pop-out table and proper china and full size cutlery. Salmon starter, followed by fish, followed by pudding and cheese and biscuits. Nice salmon, very overcooked white fish and nice pud! The bloke next to me is already on his second glass of red wine but it still being mid-morning UK time and very early Bogota time I’m managing to resist the lure of alcohol!

Am finishing this off now as just landing at Bogota...amazing, flying in over a plateau with mountains either side, I don't know what I expected it to look like but it wasn't this!