The Indigenous Markets of Sylvia

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Day 732 (31.03.09)

We spent the morning visiting the market in the town of Sylvia, a little over an hour away from Popayan on the local bus. Every Tuesday this small town plays host to a big market where local indigenous folk come down from their remote villages to stock up on all their requirements for the next week. Purely there for the locals it makes a great place to go and see local life in full flow. The people from the area attend the market in their usual traditional dress and we had a great time wandering around and watching the shopping and socialising in progress. After a couple of hours we made a move as we were headed to San Augustin that afternoon trying to pack in as much as possible in our last few days in Colombia.

Despite it being relatively close to Popayan, it takes several hours to get to San Augustin as the road is pretty bad. Unsealed and narrow for most of the way it makes for a painfully slow journey (that's painful and slow!) as you bump along in a little bus. The scenery was pretty good though especially in the latter stages where the valleys began to fill with low lying cloud and the sun set over it all turning the clouds pink and orange.

We were very glad to arrive as we pulled into town just as it got dark and tried to head for the hostel we'd had recommended to us, Casa de Francois. Having got a little lost a couple of times we eventually arrived in the pitch black to the friendly welcome of Francois. The hostel, perched on the hill just out of town, is really lovely having mostly been built and decorated by Francois himself and we were glad we'd kept looking. We settled into our room and then played some cards with Vic and John before going to bed.

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