You'll be happy to know that operation cross the border part two was successful - I arrived in the border town of Ipiales a few days ago. Hurrah!
My emergency passport made the crossing a little more interesting. The Ecuadorian guard interrogated me for 10 minutes as he thought it was a fake passport - I pretended I couldn't speak Spanish and in the end he gave up. The Colombian guard hadn't seen an emergency passport before so called over all the other guards...just so they could have a look!
I spent the night in Ipiales and visited Santuario de Las Lajas, a magnificent Gothic church built inside the canyon of the Guáitara River.
I jumped on bus to Popayan and settled in for the 8 hour journey. Unfortunately we had two full police searches, where they took everything out of the hold and looked through it. Each one took an hour so we were 2 hours behind schedule. This conflicted with the driver's dinner time so he decided to stop the whole bus by a restaurant to have some food. Everyone else joined in too. We arrived 3 hours late, well after dark, at 10:30pm.
I've recently got round to signing up to couchsurfing. For those who don't know, the idea is that you get in contact with locals who either give you a place to stay for a few days or meet up and show you around their town, or both. I thought I'd give it a try and met up with Mani, who showed me around Popayan the next couple of days. He introduced me to some local food, told me all about the town and we went out drinking in the evening with his friends. I was surprised that I didn't run out of Spanish words over two days of conversation. I was less surprised that I can't Salsa dance. I need to learn how to do that.
Popayan is a small chilled-out town in the Southern countryside with some beautiful colonial buildings, nice parks and great food. If you've read the blog before you're probably bored of hearing about colonial buildings. Luckily there was a nice colonial bridge - built so the priests could walk from the rich South part of the town to the impoverished North, to give blessings to the dying who had some sort of plague.
I also wandered up a large hill to the three crosses that look out over the town. Nice view, but they could do with a lick of paint.
I jumped on bus to Popayan and settled in for the 8 hour journey. Unfortunately we had two full police searches, where they took everything out of the hold and looked through it. Each one took an hour so we were 2 hours behind schedule. This conflicted with the driver's dinner time so he decided to stop the whole bus by a restaurant to have some food. Everyone else joined in too. We arrived 3 hours late, well after dark, at 10:30pm.
I've recently got round to signing up to couchsurfing. For those who don't know, the idea is that you get in contact with locals who either give you a place to stay for a few days or meet up and show you around their town, or both. I thought I'd give it a try and met up with Mani, who showed me around Popayan the next couple of days. He introduced me to some local food, told me all about the town and we went out drinking in the evening with his friends. I was surprised that I didn't run out of Spanish words over two days of conversation. I was less surprised that I can't Salsa dance. I need to learn how to do that.
Popayan is a small chilled-out town in the Southern countryside with some beautiful colonial buildings, nice parks and great food. If you've read the blog before you're probably bored of hearing about colonial buildings. Luckily there was a nice colonial bridge - built so the priests could walk from the rich South part of the town to the impoverished North, to give blessings to the dying who had some sort of plague.
I also wandered up a large hill to the three crosses that look out over the town. Nice view, but they could do with a lick of paint.
Other than that, I managed to reschedule my flight, even though I'd already missed it - thankyou Avianca! So I'm now in Cartagena, on the North coast. Time to search out some beautiful beaches! Will report back with my results in a few days. Chao chao!
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