Honda, Colombia

It's pronounced without the 'h', as comes naturally to any Yorkshireman. The clean English 'h' sound (eg in 'her' and 'him') has no place in standard Spanish, although you do hear it in some parts of Latin America.

Honda is a small town about six hours' bus ride from Bogotá. It doesn't contain any foreigners at all, or at least it didn't until I showed up. None of the hotels inspired any confidence, so I had to settle for a 5-bedroom villa with a private swimming pool. Also I encountered several surprisingly good restaurants. I didn't find any interesting beers, but I did at least manage to get Stella Artois rather than the local common-or-garden lagers.

All this luxury and face-stuffing is costing me thousands and thousands and thousands of Colombian pesos. Fortunately, the Colombian peso is about 5,000 to the pound right now and so it still works out quite nicely. I use cashpoints operated by a local bank called Davivienda because they don't charge any fees. The most you can withdraw in one go is 400,000 pesos, ie eighty quid, and honestly it's hard to get rid of the money no matter how much you eat or drink. This is a vulgar subject on which to dwell, but let's be frank: there's a reason why I've come here rather than spend months meandering around Switzerland or Norway. Exchange rates matter. It's also helpful in terms of personal security, because my pockets never need to contain more than about thirty quid and so I can take a relaxed attitude to the prospect of being mugged.

At the time of writing, the temperature in Bogotá is 19 degrees C, and yet here in Honda it's all the way up at 33 degrees C. The two cities are less than 100 miles apart as the crow flies, but the climate varies due to the difference in altitude: here I'm only 229m above sea level, whereas Bogotá is at 2,625m (and that's before you go up another 500m in the cable car). This close to the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead at midday, and it's hard to find any shade. Fortunately I've been able to cool off in the pool. Thank you for your concern.

It's just a short one today, I'm not staying here long. Back on the road again soon.

Honda sits on a very muddy part of the Magdalena, Colombia's principal river.
It flows for just short of a thousand miles.

Catedral Nuestra Señora del Rosario

A typical roadside cafe in rural Colombia.
The buses stop at places like this so that passengers can refresh themselves.
By pure coincidence, it also means the drivers can have a fag...
...and sell off-the-books spare tickets to local randomers for cash.

Private villa and pool. It's tough out here.

Obviously I'm not going to dignify this as an Edd vs Food.
The crisps known in the UK as 'Walkers' are called 'Lays' in the USA and Europe.
Here they're labelled 'Margarita' as you see, with locally tailored flavours.
Some of them are 'onduladas' which effectively means 'crinkle cut'.

Edd vs Food #131
Beef and veg at Cuarenta Puentes (Forty Bridges), Honda.
A rare linguistic mix-up when ordering. I was sure I'd asked for chicken.
My suspicions were first aroused when they asked me how I wanted it cooked.
I didn't quite have the nerve to say "it's chicken, WTF are you talking about?"
So instead I just said 'well done please' and then they served the above.
It was lush though, so no complaints.

Bogotá, Colombia

This is my 250th blog post. Quite the milestone. So I thought I'd push the boat out a bit.

It's the first time I've been outside Europe or North America since 2015. I had a meander around South America back in 2012, but that started south of here (in Ecuador) and then progressed further south. This was always unfinished business. Perhaps the crucial change since 2012 is that I've learned to speak Spanish and so things are going to be a bit easier for me this time round. Indeed two of my UK-based Spanish tutors, Alejandro and Leonor, are colombiano and colombiana respectively. Hi guys. 

I'm going to be subjecting myself to total Spanish-language immersion during the whole of this trip: everything, absolutely everything, that I say or hear or read or watch will be in Spanish. If people try practising their English on me then I'm going to pretend to be Hungarian and feign incomprehension. Even my diary is going to be in Spanish until I get home. The exception is of course this blog, which will continue in English, and I hope you all appreciate the sacrifice I'm making.

I've been surprised at how few other foreigners I've encountered. Inevitably you see tourists at the top of the cable car and in the main city centre plazas, but I've generally been the only foreigner on the buses or on the streets, even in the posher and richer barrios. As such I've also often been, and this is a novelty for me, the tallest person in sight.

Which brings us to the thorny topic of personal security. Here there are many barrios into which one does not go at night, and some barrios into which one does not go at all. Lots of drug cartels and paramilitary groups and so on. Sometimes there are armed police and indeed armed soldiers on every street corner, and it's an interesting question as to whether that's reassuring or not. I tend to think it is, if only because those police and soldiers are never going to see ginger gringos ("gingos"?) like me as a threat. 

And it's easy to overstate the dangers. The dark days of the 80s and 90s are long gone. There are at least half a dozen US cities with a higher murder rate than Bogotá, and I've spent time in all but one of them. The exception being Cleveland, Ohio. (I'll get there eventually.)

All joking aside, I love Bogotá and I love Colombia and I wish I'd come here sooner. More to follow.

Cable car view, coming down from the Montserrate mountain to the east of the city 

Panorama photo looking east from the top of the mountain

View to the north

Sunshine after the rain, just round the corner from my apartment

Bogotá cathedral overlooking the Plaza de Bolivar on election day

Looking west towards the mountains in La Candeleria

Hurrah for affordable countries...
...where you can stumble off a long-haul flight and straight into an airport hotel like this, for not much money at all.

Edd vs Food #130
Rice, meat, beans. It doesn't really matter what it's called or where it's served.
And all meals are improved by putting a fried egg on top.
This has been proved. By science. 

Madrid, Spain

 ...again.

Madrid is my happy place. This is my fourth visit. When I emerged from the metro at Tribunal for the short walk to my apartment, it almost felt like a homecoming. To be quite honest it felt more like a homecoming here than it did when I got off the ferry in North Shields at the end of my last trip. I wonder if I'll end up retiring to Spain one day? I doubt I'll be able to afford Madrid, but I could happily settle for one of the smaller towns around Valencia or Alicante. 

I spent a whole month here during my six-month Spanish Lockdown Odyssey of 2020/21, and I think those are the memories that will always linger: autumn leaves, quiet streets, half-empty bars, no tourists. Things have obviously livened back up a bit since then, and sadly those fire-sale accommodation prices are but a distant memory, but I can't complain. I'm staying on the border of the Chueca and Malasaña districts, where pretty much every door opens into a stylish little bar or cafe, offering tastefully subdued music and agreeably inexpensive alcohol, and full of well-behaved beautiful people (who have the good grace not to complain when I walk in).

Disappointingly I have once again failed to synchronise my visit with any footballing action, either at Real or Atlético. Also disappointingly, the craft beer revolution appears to have suffered a final defeat here. The bottle shops have less on offer now than they did back in 2017, and you can spend all night trawling round city centre bars without ever finding anything independent or locally-brewed, or indeed any IPAs at all. There are still a few places for determined beer nerds but you really have to hunt them out.

So what can I bore you all with, if not with football or beer? I'm on the road again now until Christmas. I'll think of something in time for the next blog. 

Plaza Mayor.
Hastily capturing the one brief bit of sunshine since I've been here.

Almudena
Europe's largest cementery.
Those things in the middle that look like houses - they're not.
Every "window" is a grave, lined up like sleeping capsules in a Japanese hotel.

Looking south over the Arco de Triunfo from the Faro tower.
(Faro means 'lighthouse')

Uncle Pepe's Bottled Andalusian Sunshine, at the Puerta del Sol

On The Street Where I Live
(Calle de San Vicente Ferrer in Malasaña)

From the memoirs of Laurie Lee ('Cider With Rosie'), who walked across Spain in 1934.
Obviously the reference to licencing laws, ie British pubs kicking everyone out at 3pm on a Sunday, is out of date.
Otherwise, it's still basically true today.

Edd vs Food #128
Posh pasties at Empanadas Malvón
They do a special deal when you buy three at a time. It was an easy choice for me.
The mushroom, vegan and BBQ ones all ruled themselves out automatically.

Edd vs Food #129
Late brekkie at Cerveceria Rayal, near the Plaza de España.
Sometimes I think it's worth coming to Spain just to get tortilla in the mornings.
This one was perfect: a little crispy on the outside yet still runny & eggy in the middle.
Not like the imitation ones you buy in UK supermarkets...
...which are basically just potato and hard-boiled eggs mashed together.