Well, just got back from a long weekend in Utica, Colombia. Colombia celebrated a bank holiday this year on the 12th so it was an ideal opportunity to take a 3hour drive from Bogota to Utica, Lina's childhood home. Utica is a small town, nothing to do really but relax, enjoy a beer in the square at night, walk, go rafting or horse-riding, swim or have the most hilarious train ride I have had so far.

The picture shows the Utica 'train'. Now legend has it that a real train used to run to Utica, but unstability in the country and lack of financial investment in maintenance meant that it fell apart. However, the locals can now convert a motorbike engine a bit of wood and metal into a train, hey presto, a set of 'mini-trains'. I doubt the engine is more than a 200cc, but attached to a relatively light frame it still managed to take us along a somewhat decrepit track at a fair pace, enough to think about what would happen if it came off the rails. Although the carriage in the picture is not identical, the one we were on had a frame to hold the raft on the roof and just enough room on the seats for a folded spare raft, the lifejackets and about 12 people. Yes, all pulled by a little 200cc motor. I am impressed at the technical skills to put something like this together. its never going to be a Bentley or Rolls Royce, but hey it works! I have got to do the trip again but this time with video!!

Aside from that Utica is warm, hot really and has an amazing array of plants, birds, butterflys, bats, vultures and I am sure animals (not that I saw any wild ones). We tended to relax, have breakfast, wander around, lunch, wader around taking photos and have dinner, a beer in the square at night, all this only really broken up by a walk for a few km's through the town, white water rafting (grade 3) - we only lost one person (overboard, since rescued) and having dinner of choritzo and arepas in the square.

Admittedly the mosquitos got their fair share of me, I still have a number of lumps and disappointly we didn't get to see bats sleeping, but hopefully next time. Compared to England the wealth of landscapes and ecology over here is beath-taking, not to say that England suffers, but there does seem to be such a range of beauty over here its amazing......ok, I take the point that Colombia is a lot bigger than the UK!

On the way back unfortunately Lina's brother left their stuff in the footwells and as it was a slight older car it was targetted and broken into during our lunch break. A pity really as if the stuff had gone into the other cars we may have been ok. The screwdrivered the door and cut the alarm, all under the watchful gaze of the parking attendents, who actually admitted seeing them but decided that the alarm going off and someone going to the front of the car popping the bonnet and disactivating the alarm wasn't somehow suspicious. I am returning with Lina's dad tomorrow to see what the restaurant will do about it. If not expect to see a marked blog warning others of the 'carelessness of their staff'. Luckily....for me I was ok, despite leaving my SLR camera, bag of stuff etc in the boot and leaving it unlocked.

Then to end the day its returning via the twisting, hilly roads back to Bogota, now because the roads are good and you get some slow, and not so slow vehicles, everyone wants to overtake all teh time in order to try to gain that extra 5minutes. I am going to try to upload one video showing a near miss, but this seems to be a regular event, everyone is in such a hurry to return!! Still, no accidents on our side but did see a motorcyclist being stretchered off the road poor chap, hope he made it.

Otherwise take care, drive more sensibly and check out if I have managed to upload the video!! (Although i have had to degrade the quality somewhat as the uploader was struggling!).