Popayan: Passing through Popayan

Making my way down from Medellin to Popayan ended up taking up the whole day as the early morning bus I wanted at 730am was full so I had to wait til 9am. Did I mention that I'd planned on doing the overnight bus last night but after checking out of the hostel and arriving at the bus station at 10pm or so I find the bus to be fully booked so end up spending £10 in taxi fares just for a tour of the city ending up right back where I started. To add insult to injury I find that someone had slipped me a fake 20,000 bill (about £5 but a lot of money here) so end up having to argue with the taxi driver as I wasn't prepared to give him one of my bigger bills and for all I know it could have been him. Eight hours later and I'm in Cali where I change for a smaller bus for another 3 hour trip to Popayan. Was kept entertained by chatting to the ayudante (bus conductor) who was a huge Beatles fan and just wanted to know about Liverpool and had I been to see the all the places where the Beatles played. I walked into a very cool hostel called Hostel Trail and surprise surprise bump into Imar a fellow Brit that I knew from the hostel in Bogotá. Seems there's a group of them heading to San Augustin tomorrow which was my ultimate destination so looks like it will just be a bed for the night and I won't be seeing much of Popayan.

28 Aug 2007