If first impressions are lasting impressions, then I'm going to have a lifetime love of Colombia.

Through a small airplane window, from a middle-row seat I had my first glimpse of this country. It was of the lush green, rolling Andes being lightly brushed by pure white clouds. After landing, the relaxing thickness that is so common to countries in the tropics settled. We dropped of our luggage and then went for 'plantanitos' (I had a kind of taco type thing, except the flat 'shell' was not made of corn but of plantains - best described as large bananas). They were delicious, and the intimacy of the culture here was so quickly embracing.

The beauty of Bogota is not the jealous and constructed beauty of some grand European cities. It doesn't scream at you to notice it, but instead slowly lures you in and enchants you like a good Marquez novel. The medley of the modern and the colonial architecture, the soft colours of the buildings merging into the fertile green mountains that border the city, and the unique interfusing of a definitively tropical climate with the rare, refreshing air of a mountain town make this place unique. There are not many cities of 7 million people in which you can smell fern bushes from a busy downtown "Juan Valdez" coffee shop, and walk from a financial district into a mountain jungle in twenty minutes.

The Colombians here, with a mix of frustration and pride, tell me that people arrive here expecting to feel in the midst of a war zone, but within days are figuring out how to extend their traineeships. I'm already trying to find a way to come back.

From the city that's '2600 metres closer to heaven'...