I thought a lot about my first article for the Colombian Official Bloggers. Shall I talk about myself? Why I decided to settle down in Colombia? Maybe pick my favourite places? Surely after more than 2 years of extensive travelling in the country I can consider myself an expert. Those would be natural options, I could even make something interesting out of it. But no, not the first post. For this post, I would like to share an emotion, something unexpected that deeply touched me. After all, this is what Colombia is about.

To break up the bus trip back to Bogota from San Agustin, I made a stop into Neiva and the Tatacoa Desert for a couple of days. I visited the desert as a day trip from Neiva, the capital of the Huila district of Colombia. Starting off bright and early in the morning at the bus station in Neiva, I caught a collectivo bus to Villavieja. These buses don’t run on a timetable, they go when they’re full. It was recommended to me to go early so I wouldn’t have to wait too long and I only ended up waiting about 15 minutes. The trip to the town took around 45 minutes.

Recipe: Oatmeal Banana energy bars

There's a natural park just 30 minutes outside of Bogotá where you can enjoy one of Colombia's most beautiful ecosystems. It's called Chicaque and it was founded in 1990 thanks to private conservation efforts. The most suprising (and saddest) fact is that only 4% of Colombia's "Andean Cloud Forest", like this one, still exists. Over the years people have destroyed it to clear land for grazing and growing potatoes.