How I Ended Up Here

You have been reading about confinement, food, and what it feels like to be locked in a hotel room. But I have not yet told you why.

Here is the short version.

In 2019, I travelled to Bogota, Colombia. I went to practise my Spanish. I was recently divorced. I needed distance, perspective, and something to focus on that was not my own life coming apart.

The trip changed something in me. Not in the dramatic, cinematic way that travel stories usually claim. More quietly than that. Bogota got under my skin in a way I did not expect.

This initial visit to Colombia is in the book. It’s quite a read.

Two weeks after I returned to the UK, I met Laura. Online. A language exchange. She wanted to practise her English. I wanted to keep my Spanish alive. We talked. Then we talked again. And then we never really stopped.

By 2021, WhatsApp messages became nearly every day. Occasional video calls across time zones, broken conversations patched together in two languages, and a slow, stubborn refusal to let distance win.

But we had never met.

We tried Mexico first. It did not go to plan. That story is also in the book, and it is worth the wait.

So Bogota seemed to be the only option.

Colombia was on the UK government's red list. Travel was not illegal, but the consequences were severe. Fly to a red list country and you faced a mandatory hotel quarantine on your return. Ten nights. Supervised. At your own expense.

The cost was £2,285. The flights were routed through Madrid because the direct London–Bogota route had obviously been cancelled. The paperwork nearly filled an entire folder.

We both agreed the cost was secondary. The chance to see each other, to find out if our connection could survive reality, was worth any price.

So I went.

The week in Bogota was everything we had hoped for. The bond we had built through a screen was just as real in person. The connection was not imagined. It was confirmed.

And then I flew home. And the airport treated me like a biohazard with a passport. And then the hotel door shut behind me.

That is where the diary begins.

Day 0 drops next week. Subscribe so you do not miss it.

Andy Candler