Day 1 - The Prison Routine Begins

My breakfast showed up at 7:45 AM. The routine, it seemed, was going to be a knock at the door, followed by the discovery of yet another brown paper bag, but this time left on the floor.

The delivery person didn’t linger - by the time I looked in the corridor, they were already two rooms away. To the right, the corridor guard didn’t look up from his phone to see what I was doing opening my door.

Inside, the bag was a classic English breakfast: sausage, hash brown, baked beans, toast, croissant, yoghurt, and an apple. There was also a much-appreciated small bottle of water. For a brief moment, I felt a flicker of optimism - if this was how each day began, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

That feeling didn’t last long. A quick search of the bag revealed the absence of cutlery. I ended up eating with my fingers and a coffee teaspoon - a small but telling reminder of the ongoing disorganisation.

Checking my phone, I realised it was Sunday. The previous 24 hours, combined with the six-hour time difference from Colombia, had scrambled my body clock completely. It felt as though time had slipped sideways. I was going to have to find a way to keep my eye on the passing days, for my own sanity. I decided the day would be devoted to two things: resting and doing a little work.

The resting part came naturally. The working part, however, carried a trace of guilt. My fantastic boss, Dan, had readily agreed to my much-needed holiday - there had never been any question of that - but these additional ten days in a hotel felt like stretching his generosity. By this stage of the pandemic, we were all heading back into the office every Wednesday. These team-building days had taken on an odd sort of importance: a reminder that we were more than faces on a video call, that we actually had legs, and that we were all slightly different heights. Missing one or two of those midweek reunions didn’t matter, but missing a whole month felt significant.

To offset the guilt, I opened my laptop, worked through emails, and cleared a few tasks in preparation for the week ahead. It wasn’t much, but it felt like the right way to balance things in my guilty mind.

The second meal of the day was a cold mixed vegetable soup and a chicken panini. It arrived with a barely-there knock sometime around midday - I’m guessing the timing, because I only discovered the bag at 2:30 PM when I opened the door in a mix of frustration and hunger.

For a while, I’d even wondered whether the room next door - the one they had initially tried to put me in - had received my lunch by mistake. But that would have required a level of organisation.

When it was first delivered, I imagine it had been at least lukewarm. By the time I got to it, any heat had long since vanished.

Still, the disappointment was offset by a small but glorious discovery: cutlery, lurking at the bottom of the bag. I cleaned the plastic knife, fork and spoon carefully when finished, and tucked them away for future emergencies. I wasn’t about to be caught out twice in this establishment.

Along with the food, the weekly food form - identical to yesterday’s - was slipped under my door. The repetition, the sheer pointlessness of filling out the same answers again, was already grating.

I managed to do a little work and, at long last, took a shower. That small victory came with an unflattering realisation: I’d been in the same underwear since Friday!

My final meal of the day arrived at 6:15 PM. It was chicken curry and rice, with an unimaginable quantity of rice. To top it off, dessert was rice pudding. But crucially, there was cutlery again, which I washed and kept as an extra safety measure, along with the salt and pepper sachets. I was quickly learning to ‘play the system’ in this new experience.

By late afternoon, I was feeling less weary and, after three questionable meals, the idea of physical activity began to surface. I remembered a notice I’d seen during check-in that said guests could request access to the car park for a short daily walk and a breath of fresh air - fifteen or thirty minutes, I think.

But from my window I could see families with children and elderly guests already using the space, and it felt as though their need was greater than mine. Besides, after yesterday’s ordeal of simply getting into the hotel and my room, the thought of repeating the process just to stand in a damp car park held little appeal.

So, I resorted to walking up and down the room, circling the bed with the grim determination to rack up 2,000 steps before either collapse or sheer boredom set in. Somewhere between laps, my mind turned to the strange set-up of this hotel.

The sheer volume of plastic and polystyrene used for food deliveries was staggering - an environmental nightmare in the making. The complete absence of management or staff training might have been understandable if the facility were free, but at £2,285 it was indefensible. My Learning & Development consultant brain had kicked back into gear, dissecting the inefficiency. Oddly, it felt good to feel my mind working logically again.

Another small comfort came from remembering the juice concentrate I had wisely packed to make Bogotá water more palatable. One or two squirts into my water bottle transformed it, adding a splash of colour and flavour to the monotony. By the end of the day, I’d clocked 3,200 steps - a small but oddly satisfying triumph against confinement.

When I proudly reported this achievement to Laura, she thought I’d lost the plot. To her, it wasn’t exercise - it was the behaviour of a zoo animal. She informed me of the tiger she’d once seen, pacing back and forth in its zoo enclosure with the same glazed expression. The only difference, she pointed out, was that the tiger at least had visitors to look at.