Popayán - The border crossing from hell and relaxing in heaven

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The border crossing from Ecuador to Colombia was the most strenuous, long and annoying on our trip. We left Otavalo in the morning to catch a bus to the border town of Tulcán. This was the first time we actually had to stand in a long-distance bus but most of the local passengers got off after a while so we could sit and "enjoy" the rest of the most ridiculous film that we saw on our bus trips: "The good, the bad and the weird". It was some sort of a Korean fantasy western and it sucked big time.

Anyway, when we got to Tulcán after three hours, we were greeted by rain and a huge queue in front of customs where we had to get our exit stamps. The queue barely moved which was mainly because people kept cutting the line and the group in front of us just multiplied by the minute. The whole procedure of getting the stamps hardly takes a minute, so it is just really nerve racking to spend hours in a queue for a lousy stamp. As always, I got really aggravated due to the complete lack of logistics and order and felt like invading Ecuador and forcing the "German Ordnung" on them. When we finally had our exit stamps, we had to walk over to the Colombian side and get the entry stamps, the rain hadn't stopped so on top of everything, we got soaked on the short walk too. But all hail to the Colombian customs, we got our stamps within half an hour and took a "collectivo", a mini bus/taxi, to the bus station in the Colombian border town of Ipiales. It took us around three hours to cross the border and I can just salute the European Union and the fact that we never have to go through these border crossing procedures here.

Our daytrip did not end there, we were set on spending the night in the town Pasto which is 1,5 hours from the border. After a quick lunch of the oh-so-familiar rice, potatoes and salad, we sat on the next bus. We actually planned on going straight to Popayán but every single travel information we got told us not to. This is what the Lonely Planet said about travelling to Popayán from the border: "Avoid night buses as bandits have been known to attack these even when they're traveling in police-guarded caravans". Well, an armed robbery is something we did not want to experience on this trip or ever really, so Pasto it is. It was already dark when we reached the Koala-Inn hostel and we just went to bed.

After a great breakfast of pancakes and fruit salad, we were on the road again and the six hour bus ride to Popayán would be THE worst bus ride we ever experienced. I swore at other bus rides before on this blog but this one really was THE WORST. The bus driver had a severe deathwish and it was quite close a couple of times that he would have taken us all with him. We were on a narrow serpentine mountain road, he drove like an insane person, he was super fast, he passed by other trucks in turns, he had to give way to the oncoming traffic last minute, we were both scared shitless. I took a video that tries to capture the moment, you can at least relive how much the bus moved up and down. <a href="

we arrives in Popayán, not safe and sound but unharmed. We stayed at the Parklife hostel (http://parklifehostel.com/) right on the main square in the city center and it was one of the nicest places we stayed in. It is run by a Romanian-Spanish couple and has lots of charm, the kitchen area actually shares a wall with the cathedral next door. At this point in our travel, Grim and I had become very tired of traveling and sight-seeing and socializing with other backpackers, so we just didn't. We spend most of our days in Popayán in bed, interneting or watching movies. We just left to get some food and luckily, Popayán is an UNESCO gastronomy city. Yes, that actually exists. We tried some local food and really enjoyed the empanadas with peanut sauce and cheese-filled cornflour balls which you can buy at every street corner. The most disturbing culinary incident happened when we bought a variety of sweets at a pastry shop and one of the things we bought turned out to be sausage. WHY?

Popayán actually is a pretty city with lots of colonial architecture, whitewashed houses and old churches and on one of the food hunts, we did a little sight-seeing and visited the bridges "Puente de la Custodia" and "Puente del Humillades" from the 18th and 19th century, both right next to each other, both still in use. This blog entry is fairly late, so when we were in Popayán it was actually close to christmas and the main square was decorated with lots of lights. Quite cheesy for my taste and with the warm weather, neither Grim nor I were really in the christmas mode but it was still nice to look at.

While eating ice cream. 😊

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