Bogota has quite a few cyclists. Eventhough there are many cycle paths, riding a bike here still is a precarious affair. Pedestrians and cars don´t seem to pay any attention to bicycles. On sunday mornings though, several roads in the city are closed for all motorised trafic. Tens of thousands of Colombians use this opportunity every sunday to take over the roads.
Today was a quiet day for me. Had the time to arrange some stuff and find a new hotel in a nice neighbourhood: La Candelaria, where I encountered this wall with grafitti. If you click on it you can view an enlargement of the whole wall and not just the detail.
Today I felt a lot better, so it was a rather productive day. Above another Ex-childsoldier of the FARC with her daughter. Again it´s dificult to picture her in the stories she tells. 
Today we went down to the Llanos, the lowlands of Colombia. I was still quite sick, so the 3 hour drive down the winding road was a nightmare for me. We got up at 4am after a miserable night with hardly any sleep for me. We met several ex-guerrillas again and interviewed a kidnapping victim as well. 
Today I was very sick, I think I brought a flu virus with me from Caracas, so I spent most of the day in Bed. Jeroen managed to do most of the work anyway. Luckily he managed to bring this guy to the place we`re staying so I could take his photo. If you`re wondering about the background... Yep, we`re staying with the nuns in a catholic guesthouse. Quite comfortable and cheap :-)
Our first ex-guerrilla fighter / childsoldier, that deserted from the FARC a few years ago. On the right, her father that always supported her and the FARC in their activities.
View from my window here in Bogota. We arrived today and it´s COLD!! and rainy and dark! A little naive, but coming from Caracas, we didn´t realise that it might be a little cooler at 2600m altitude... and it´s the rainy season...
My office space in Caracas, with roommate Sabine. (The only small place in the appartment!)
My first diploma in Spanish!
To ease the boredom of taking the same route every day to and from my Spanish class I decided to take my camera out. Just two pictures here that I took from my speeding, and sometimes not so speeding "Camioneta" (Minibus).
OK, I forgot to take a photo earlier today, so just a quick one before going to bed. The skyline here looks as great as ever.
Doreen, in front of one of the cabins we stayed in for 2 days at Boca de Uchire on the coast of Venezuela.
Just after sunset on the beach of Boca de Uchire. It doesn't look so nice, but a few clouds are actually quite welcome on a tropical beach!
Truck with supermarket trolleys at a truckstop in Boca de Uchire in north Venezuela. We were on our way to a nice weekend on a quiet beach.
Girls in front of a shop in El Hatillo playing with their mobile phones. Yep, I was there again, not that the place is so interesting, but is was an excursion of my Spanish school, so I thought it would be good to practice some Spanish.
And more Chavez. This time at a press conference together with Tabaré Vázquez president of Uruguay.
Boring day, too much studying Spanish, got a test tomorrow. This is the living, seen from the balcony.
My first Chavez picture. President Chavez raised the new flag of Venezuela today. Instead of 7 the flag now has 8 stars representing the states. Also the horse in the coat of arms now runs towards the left instead of the right... On the other side of town the opposition held a demonstration waving thousands of' "old" flags with seven stars.
Another metro station. They seem to play an important role in my existence at the moment. I have to take the metro every day to get to my Spanish class. Besides that I also have to take a minibus. In the morning going down is no problem. Coming back in the afternoon was more of a problem today. I got onto a bus that seemed to have the same destinations behind the windshield. It's not easy to decipher when the thing is speeding at you. Well it brought me to a whole new area of the city I hadn't previously seen. When it got really raunchy I got of and jumped on a bus going in the opposite direction. That one took another totally new route that brought me to a metro station 2 stops down the line. So I had to backtrack by metro and try a new bus again. This time I got on the right one that got me home all right.
Waiting in the new terminal of Madrid airport for my flight to Carqacas after a 24 hr dalay. (I wasn´t as tired as the man in the picture though).
After a 4 hour delay of my plane from Amsterdam to Madrid I had to spend the night in the Spanish capital. My connection to Caracas had left long before. So I had the chance to spend a nice evening in town. This is the subway....
