Well Christmas was here and gone again for another year. As a predominantly Catholic nation though, Colombia does seem to celebrate Christmas far more than the UK now. The two or three weeks in the run-up to christmas seems to be filled to visiting friends and family and holding 'novenas' in everyones house, even on the 24th of December, although here the dinner is at midnight and everone opens their presents around 00:10 on the 25th. I think we stayed up until 5:00am that day, nice but put the body clock on hold for a couple of days after that.

We visited the christmas lights on Monserate a few days ago, this is the church on the hill overlooking Bogota centre where pilgrimages are made, some people crawling the few hundred metres up its steps to its summit as a pilgrimage or to offset sins, more detail found elsewhere on the internet. We took the easier journey of cable car at around 9pm to see the lights of Bogota. Its was looking good up until 1/2 way up the mountain when we passed into the fog layer, darned, no view of Bogota from the top then. We did walk around Monserate which has a church, shops, gardens and some restaurants and the fog made for some nice photos of all the light shows Bogota seems to put on. What also impresses me is that a lot of these lights are LEDs so super efficient. Going down from Monserate I took the opportunity to take a picture from the cable car but it did not turn out too great (see photo library).

The last few days have been a bit of a blur, study and just Blogging and emailing seems to fill the vacuum of the day, strange but the days are flying by. We saw some more 'ceilings of lights' in the town centre, very pretty and met a friend from england in El Corral, Colombia's equivalent of The Fine Burger Company' restaurant, although you can have a 'worldwide' choice of burger styles, although not sure that the 'Hindu' burger would have been too appreciated in india with 1/2 pound of good Colombian Beef in the middle!

We did get the opportunity to visit Cajica, a small town just outside Bogota with a bit warmer weather, countryside and sleepy small town atmosphere, not a lot happening here but very quiet. We saw the tourist train that runs on Sundays which we are hoping to experience, and we had a quick beer in one of the local cafes. Later we went for a late lunch at a popular BBQ restaurant in Sopo, however being late (3pm) mean they had run out of side dishes and chicken so we ended up with double helpings of beef and deep fried intestine instead. Now unless you are vegetarian I would suggest trying the intestine, it is cleaned and and actually tastes pretty good, getting over the phsychological barrier to eating this is probably your only issue. The yellow potatoes are gorgeous and not to be missed, the corn and sausage is good also, although be aware that it can carry hefty fat chunks, still it does make it taste great! The cooked plantain is normal great, sweet and tasty and the beef regularly good. (just realised I have the left-overs so thats my lunch today).

Otherwise I think thats it for 2008, hopefully more day and weekend trips in 2009 may increase the photographs and content. Wish you all the best for New Years Eve and into 2009.