Fin de Colombia

"Hello Jeremy. Welcome to Popayan."

I spent my last few days in Colombia in Popayan and Pasto...

Popayan is a classic colonial city. It is full of white-painted colonial architecture and churches. When I arrived, several parts of the city were quartered off by the police. This led me to believe that there had been trouble here involving the upcoming election.

I checked into my hostal: Casa Descanso (not to be confused with Casa Familiar next door which is apparently full of dogs). The hostal is inside a large house. It is furnished with 50´s era furniture and has that typical old person smell to it. I´m pretty sure my room was just a large closet, but, it had a window! Yipee! The window opens up into the living room. This place seemed quite familiar. As I was nodding off that night, I realised that the place was somewhat like the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. Now all I needed was creepy twins to appear in the middle of the night and blood to flow down the hallway!

¨Fresh towels!?!"

One night at the Overlook Hotel is good enough for me! The next morning I headed out to check out the sights in town. I had breakfast in the park where I was sure there would be some good people watching. As I finished my strawberry croissant some man sat down beside me on the bench. You can always tell when someone is looking at you, especially if they are about 3 feet away. All right, I will turn. I turned and this strange man was smiling at me. It was a Colombian version of Peewee Herman sans large shiny braces! He began to speak to me and so I figured I would see how far I could get with my Spanish. Once the extent of my Spanish dried up I would say ¨Yo no entiendo¨ ( I don´t understand) or ¨Yo no se¨ ( I don´t know). This did not stop Colombian Peewee Herman. He kept trying to speak to me. I think he may have asked me if I will be in Pasto in 3 days. Eventually, I had to just kind of turn away and drink my coffee in another direction. It was a nice park and I just wanted to sit there without beying bothered. He´s still staring at me isn´t he. I turned slightly and he grinned at me with his bracy smile. Well, time to head to Pasto! I packed up my bag and my erotic Spanish novel I had mistakenly boughten and went to the bus station.

In Pasto...

Apparently, people from Pasto are the brunt of many Colombian lightbulb jokes. Unfortunately, I didn´t have the chance to test this as my Spanish is still improving. There were two things i could do in Pasto: hike up the active volcano or go to the lake. This traveler from Germany told me he was just going to walk up to the top of the volcano. As it is an active volcano with lava flow on the side im pretty sure he met the same end as Arnold Swartzenneger in Terminator 1.

I didn´t feel like hiking so I decided to see what a Colombian lake is like. Another German and I took a collectivo ( a taxi or van full of random people) to the lake. When we got there it was raining like crazy and we hopped into this canoe-like boat with a motor on it. A man got in beside the motor and drove us towards an island. The canoe was taking in a lot of water but the driver didnt seem to mind. On the island we wandered around through this nature reserve. Lots of strange plants and trees. Looking over the lake from a clearing, the clouds and rain over the lake reminded me of BC. If it had not been for the plants, the lake could easily pass for one in BC! Afterwards we went into this house along the lake where we had the local specialty: trout. If I had known a Colombian look-alike of Tommy Lee Jones would be serving my food I would have brought some paper for an autograph!

The next day I made my way for the border and jumped on a bus to Quito, Ecuador.

¨Trout will be trout¨

Colombia Stats:

(#´s)

Lunches bought for me by locals: 1
Local rumbas gone to: 2
Overnight buses taken: 3
Overnight buses with crying babies in the next seat: 2
Travelers who told me about their experience with Russian Roulette: 1
Times chased by armadillos: 1
Amount of times Gringo Power worked: 1 +
(bypassed line for South American Games: Mens volleyball final)
Amount of surprise food eaten: 12 +/-

Number of soldiers seen: 1,000 +
Number of police seen: 1,000 +

Number of good looking Colombian women seen: 5,000 +++

(most random)

Sitting on the back of a mototaxi (motorbike taxi) and driving through billowing smoke on the highway. People just randomly burn bushes on the side of the road. As we drove through the smoke we slowed down as there were stopped cars ahead. There was a circle of people standing in the middle of the road. A man stopped his car and walked into the circle and put an aligator in a sack and casually got into his car and drove away.

(most friendly)

When it was one of my first days in Medellin, Colombia and I could barely speak or understand any Spanish. A girl from Bogota who spoke some English escorted me from the Metro to the bus terminal. She spoke to the ticket people for me because I didn´t know how to communicate with them properly. She got them to keep an eye on me and to let me know when the bus was leaving.

*honorable mention- hotel owners in Salento who took me out for food and taught me some essential Spanish