Blogs from Pasto, Colombia, South America

25th March - Pasto #heygo http://www.heygo.com The Carnival Museum consists of two spaces, in one of them the history and its reason for being are narrated through a documented photographic record, where it is possible to become infected with the allegory of the carnival. Another of the spaces of the Museum is the exhibition of the works that represent the carnival, here we saw the puppets of the old years. It was so colourful. The Black and White Carnival is one of the most symbolic Colombian festivals, reflecting the cultural traditions of the region. It was declared a Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2009, and every year it brings together tourists from abroad and locals from across Colombia. This carnival takes place between the 2 and 7 of January in Pasto. However, a Pre-Carnival ... read more

Aujourd'hui nouveau réveil matinal pour suivre le Tour des Flandres. De toute façon la météo n'est pas bonne (nombreuses averses) et ça ne vaut pas le coup de monter à la Laguna... Je décide quand même de prolonger d'une nuit histoire de me reposer, de découvrir un peu la ville et d'avancer mon blog. J'en suis déjà à mon 5ème pays en comptant l'Argentine et je n'ai toujours rien publié... Si je veux publier quelques posts avant mon retour en France, il serait temps que je m'inquiète. Le souci c'est que c'est un méli-mélo avec les photos (entre celles qui sont sur mon téléphone portable, celles qui sont sur mon appareil photo et celles qui sont sur ma clé USB...) et il n'y a pas toujours d'ordinateur dans les hostels pour charger le tout sur mon ... read more

We wound our way down the hillside city of Yuramal and along some gorgeous scenic roads. We came upon a memorial site in Don Matias situated by a waterfall which was impressive. There's a large catholic religious presence here with grand churches in every town and plenty of crosses and images of Jesus everywhere. It was only a very short ride to our stop at Medellen so we stopped off at the BMW dealer for coffee and a look around the mall along with lunch. We then headed to our hotel guided by a nice chap from BMW who guided us through the traffic to our hotel. We went out with Deane for drinks and dinner and in the meantime there was yet another great thunder storm. We got back to our room dry albeit a ... read more

The last two blogs have been less about my actual travels, instead focusing on various social facets you might encounter while on the road. But I like to mix things up a little, and in the end this is a travelblog, in fact this is theTravelBlog, so I feel I should write about my actual trip every once in a while too. So here is my 'bloggie blog' post as I like to call it. T'is a tale about my last ten days in Colombia, a story about Southern Colombia, about broken shorts, and broken shoes and things falling apart in general. About me forgetting my book in one hostel and waiting for it in another. It involves mountains and rivers, tombs and statues, rain and sunshine, jungles and waterfalls and travellers met and lost. It ... read more

I will rush through the next few days rather quickly in the interest of catching up a little (I am still over 3 weeks behind). I was intending to get to Otavalo by the weekend (it was a Wednesday at this point), as Eryn was leaving the following Tuesday. I will be going though this region again when I come back from the north coast anyway, so I decided I could leave a lot of the side activities until then. I did briefly check out some of the cities along the way though. From the previous entry, the central church of Manizales. I have become rather churched out at this point, as every single town has several rather impressive ones. Still cool though. The condor represents some major saint. From Manizales I headed to the Salsa ... read more