Tunja to Popayan

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After Tunja was a nightmare trip and one I would like to forget. First we had to queue for 4 hours to get the bus back to Bogotá as it seems the whole of Tunja was trying to do the same. It was like being back at Alton Towers queues snaking around for hours with no site of the end of the line, the only difference was there was no great ride to look forward to at the end! We finally get on the bus which took another 4 hours got dumped on the side of the motorway as the driver couldn’t be bothered going to the bus terminal, an hours walk down the motorway to the bus terminal, just arrived in time to get on another bus for 11 hours to Popayan arriving at 7 in the morning. 20 hours in total. We survived on an apple, orange and a bag of cheese puffs! As You can see a day to forget!

Popayan is also known as the white city due to the large number of white washed buildings and is classed as the most beautiful in Colombia. It is a very pretty city and easy to walk around taking in the many beautiful buildings, it has been a common theme for me to be writing about the buildings of Colombia, but it’s all true so many beautiful cities and buildings.

One of the local attractions of Popayan is Silvia this has a local market on Tuesday when all the indigenous groups converge to sell their produce. See the pictures for their indigenous dress. It was a great site to see even if I did get a few dirty looks trying to take some pictures. That’s one of the good things about my camera in that it has a good zoom so I can be that extra sneaky! I don’t know why they choose to wear little pork pie hats as their dress but it looked good and made them look very dignified.

One thing I will remember about Popayan is that I got to MISS the UTD Vs. Roma game in which we beat them 7-1. I couldn’t find anywhere showing it and had to settle for the replay of the goals the day after! Gutted!!!

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Photos

Traditional dress of the Silvia people.
At market day in Silvia.