Years ago Layne said she wanted to visit the White City of Popayan, a lovely university town in an Andean Valley in southern Colombia. I put a star on Google maps and we held it in our heads as destination. Well, here we are.
Yup, it’s white.
Perhaps we built it up too much but it’s a bit disappointing as a tourist destination. There’s not much there for us but we should acknowledge this is an important city in Colombia because it is the capital of the Cauca Department, and it’s not just a tourist backwater.
Layne had her eyes checked while I stopped by the Customs office and straightened out (I hope) a snafu in our import paperwork for GANNET2. I kept getting emails telling me the car had overstayed its temporary import; but it hadn’t because we had got a perfectly legal 90 day extension. All I had to do was get the customs people to connect the two paper trails. I hope I succeeded.
Then I got a haircut from a young Venezuelan immigrant living in Popayan with his uncle.despite my fear he would go overboard he restrained himself and I got a nice trim with no fashionable weirdness.
Selfies confuse me but rest assured I was smiling inside. Eye doctor done, check; customs done, check; and haircut completed, check.
Ironically while we were doing Useful Things in the capital of the Cauca Department guerrillas were blowing up police facilities across the department, not that you would have known here, and we only found out when we got back to the campground.
Chinese for lunch and leftovers for dinner. It wasn’t bad but to get in they have to unlock the padlock. We found the business of being locked in and unlocked out rather absurd but I suppose locals know more than we do, don’t they?
While we lunched two cops were killed and four injured in a series of bombings around the department. Cauca produces most of the coca leaves processed into cocaine for Americans’ drug using pleasure and peace talks with the government appear to have collapsed. Luckily they had to go boxes for our dinner back at the campground.
We happened by a rather well known pastry shop on our way back to GANNET2 after lunch. I started laughing when they offered us “communists” and “liberals” different cookies actually but I like the little ones filled with vanilla custard.
Compared to more tourist towns Popayan seems rather pedestrian. I’m not sure why but I rather suspect it does fine from government offices, the university and light industry. It may be painted white but it doesn’t seem to need tourists.
When we come back to Colombia we’ll give it another try and as we won’t have any expectations we may like it more.
Rusty enjoyed walking the streets well enough so there is that.
We drove home, an uneventful drive if you consider seeing coffee beans drying in the middle of the road normal…
You don’t have to chill meat around here apparently.
I call the campground dog Mischief but Rusty is warming to her.
No word yet on any more guerilla nonsense. I’m ready to do some driving.
