Popayan

Photos! Don't look down this bridge, breakfast time, the church at Las Lajas, Popayan at night, all of us around the car!




Well, now that we are out of Colombia we can tell y´all that we heard guerilla fighting alongside the highway. Crazy. Apparently guerrillas will fire single shots at soldiers to harrass them, and soldiers retaliate with machine gun fire. That pretty much sums up the pattern we heard while riding to Popayan. I looked up news online later and found out that guerrillas had killed a police officer in a town not far away that same day...So, we´ll never know exactly what happened - Eric has thrown out a jackhammer theory - but it was rather sobering to have a tiny inkling of what Colombians have to deal with in their own country. The amazing thing is that we didn´t feel at all unsafe despite that episode. Colombians are just such wonderful people that it´s hard to imagine that the guerrillas, paramilitary and narcotrafficers are also Colombian considering the horrible things that occur.

When we arrived at Popayan we called Johnson, the man who had pulled over on the highway and invited us to stay at he and his wife Nelly´s home. He met us in front of his car dealership and led us down the block to an enormous, beautiful house. We were invited right in, and Johnson gave us little breads and Coke to snack on. Nelly arrived soon thereafter and we met everyone including their daughter Merian and their two dogs Osley and Aker. We had a lovely time chatting about our trip and talking Colombian politics, but we´ve been sworn to secrecy about the latter!

That evening we went out in their 1950 Willis for a night trip of the ciudad blanca. It truly is a beautiful city, and Nelly whisked us around showing us all the sights in the main plaza, including the mayor´s office where she works. To end the evening we were treated to hamburgers at a little roadside stand because, ¨Colombian hamburgers are so good!¨ And they were :c)

It is hard to sum up our stay with Nelly, Johnson and Merian (and Ampara, Edwin, Aker, Osley!) Eric would like to interject here that it is easy to sum up his relationship with Aker, the 4 month old German shepherd puppy: dog diarrhea outside his door every morning. But back to the point, this family was just unbelieveable. Not only did they open their home to us, but they went out of their way to make us feel comfortable, show us around their city, and fill us to the brim with new and delicious regional foods. They even invited us to travel to Medellin with them to meet their two other children and other family members! Unfortunately we felt like we really needed to keep riding, but it would have been a lovely trip. One day we decided to do something for them, so we made breakfast for lunch. We cooked up some delicious french toast with blackberry compote, potatoes and greens and bacon - it was a hit! All in all we stayed for 4 nights, learned how to salsa at their discoteca, drank lots of yummy coffee made with raw sugar cane, talked and laughed for hours and left with an even deeper impression of what Colombian culture is all about. Mil gracias!!!

After Popayan we really began to use our legs. Too much, really. We seem to have unlocked the mystery of the Andes - up for 40 kilometers, down for 40 kilometers. Repeat. Colombia has had, for the most part, great roads, but this section of highway was rather atrocious. It´s redeming factors were beautiful views, 50 cent papayas, $6.00 hotel rooms, and potable mountain water. We had the honor of staying with 2 more families on our way out of Colombia, both of which began as an invite to put up the tent but ended with us sleeping warm and dry in their homes. Oh! At one home we had homemade coffee. As in they cultivated it, harvested it, dried it, ground it, and served it to me in a cup. Brilliant!

So we fiiiiiiinally reached El Santuario de Las Lajas, our last stop before exchanging all of our leftover pesos, and we spent two nights hanging out in the little town. Las Lajas is a rather spectacular cathedral built into the side of a gorge, natural rock creating it´s altar wall. It is quite the hike up and down and around the grounds, and my calves are still sore! I declared our day off to my day on - bring on all the Colombian food I could stuff myself with. Mini potatoes, thick slabs of bacon, ice cream, corn, coffee, chorizo, Pony Malta (malted soft drink - heart!), corn pastry, corn bread, soup, rice and beans, etc. We blew through a ridiculous amount of money, but I was thoroughly satisfied!

Ta daaaa!!!

PS We crossed into Ecuador today!!! And, like all border crossings, it was super rainy. Why oh why? But now we are toasty and dry in a little hotel in San Gabriel (turns out we landed, by chance, in a really cute colonial town). Tomorrow we are going to a bread festival. Yay!

PPS We´ll get photos up one day...we´ve got some good ones!