Popayan

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. 

Change Of Plans

“There's something happening here 

What it is ain't exactly clear 

There's a man with a gun over there 

Telling me I got to beware 

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound 

Everybody look what's going down…”

Buffalo Springfield

We seem to have screwed things up in Colombia, maintaining our practice of causing chaos everywhere we go. Bearing in mind we are in Cauca Department and the town of Morales is about 15 miles away when Kika our landlady mentioned some dead policemen over tea yesterday afternoon we sat up and took notice. 

We are not in the habit of worrying about our safety in the ordinary course of life on the road but this is not ordinary. Peace talks have broken down and driving to Medellin puts us in the middle of a firefight Bummer. Kika: 

Her husband Anwar, below. They have a secure location here where they have lived for seven years so we are quite safe. 

If this post seems melodramatic forgive me; things are melodramatic at the moment. We are too old to take stupid chances so here we are in a full service campground waiting for our last  Amazon packages to arrive by the end of next week. 

If the war grows we will leave for Ecuador 250 miles away. If calm prevails we will complete our tour of Colombia with a visit to Medellin. For now we will plug in, turn on Starlink and walk Rusty on the trails he loves.

Not a difficult place to pass some time and stay safe. 

Last Day

I had a morning to myself which meant I could hang out and do nothing while Layne went to the Tuesday market in Silvia. 

Rusty got his walk and I did a kitchen clean with sunshine pouring into the van. It felt like a bright fresh sunny spring morning. 

What a great garden to have to myself with all the campers gone to market. Myself and Rusty. 

The gardener was out mowing the copious quantities of grass. 

Across the fences I could see in the distance a farmer shuffling his cows separating them into two fields and they kept him running. 

Meanwhile in Silvia the overlanders were living it up. 

Layne sent me this picture of Veronique from Montreal eating some of the best rice pudding. That was kind of Layne because she brought none home saying there were no to go containers. A likely story as I am very fond of rice pudding. Join with me in enjoying the photo. 

I washed our dishes in the campground sink to save our own water of course. But I also got to stand in the beautiful morning sunshine. 

Rusty follows me around so because I don’t like to disturb him I sat around for a bit enjoying the cool morning air. 

Dishes drying in the sun; dog napping also in the sun. 

We got some new neighbors from Germany in a pop top Iveco expedition truck, Martina and Gerhardt. They are driving south like us so we will expect to see them on the way and for that reason it was especially nice we found them so approachable. 

Malika our Moroccan landlady, fluent in Arabic French English and Spanish which is lucky as we all show up at La Bonanza in our own weird flavors. 

Tomorrow we are taking off for a road trip around central Colombia with a couple of days in Medellin. We want to road test GANNET2 before we leave Colombia and we want to check out the last piece of this fascinating country we haven’t yet visited.