Perched at 2,600m, this modern, sophisticated and progressive capital city with an educated and stylish population welcomed us with grace and passion. The elegant colonial architecture in the historic centre of La Candelaria where we stayed is shadowed by the glittering towers of finance in the north but both of these areas look away from the ramshackle barrios of the south. Bogota is the seat of political and financial power and its residents would argue that it's Colombia's cultural heartland.

To get our bearings of this sprawling city, we took the sketchy-looking funicular up the 3,200m Cerro de Monserrate . Despite the low clouds rolling in, we had some great views across Bogota and visited the church on the summit before catching the cable car down.

Bogota is home to a number of excellent museums. 'Museo del Oro' (Gold Museum) houses 34,000 gold pieces from all the major pre-Hispanic cultures - we took a guided tour of its main highlights and couldn't help noticing the extremely thick vault doors. We had another dose of 'fatty art' at the 'Museo Botero' and were not disappointed. Before leaving Bogota, we popped in to the 'Museo Historico Policia' to see Pablo Escobar's gold-adorned Harley, the jacket he was wearing when he was shot, a blood-stained roof tile from the event, as well as an array of guns, uniforms and medals. However, probably the most surprising artifact in the collection was an Essex Police badge!

We wanted to get out of La Candelaria so joined an excellent bike tour to explore further afield. Interesting sights included a tropical fruit market, a redundant bull ring, professional street art, a micro coffee producer, urban parks and Bogota's red light district (but no stop here!)

We embraced Bogota's Saturday night fever by heading to the upmarket 'Zona Rosa' to pull some shapes on a particularly slippery dance floor.

For a break from the city we caught Bogota's excellent 'TransMilenio' to visit the pretty town of Zipaquira. The highlight here was the hauntingly beautiful underground salt cathedral. Originally born from an old salt mine dug straight into a mountain outside the town, the cathedral is 75m long, 18m high and can accommodate 8,400 people. It is accessed by walking past the stations of the cross which are all carved from salt rock and pleasantly illuminated.

Once again the allure of cheap Colombian air travel prevailed, so we flew on the country's equivalent of RyanAir to Cali to save on a 12-hour bus. From Cali we caught a bus to Popayan, 3 hours.