More of Popayan then on to Pasto

We liked Popayan a whole lot and ended up spending 10 days there. Our first 7 days were in a hotel right on the central park and the last 3 days we went to a hostal, not because we were broke but Nancy needed some books, and we wanted to visit with other travellers of which there were many.

The hostal was pretty new and really quite lovely. This is the main reception area.
Here is one of the two computors that are available for use.
The lady in the middle is the co-owner, from Scotland, and 25 years old. Her name is Kim and we liked her a lot as did the other hostal guests.
And the other co-owner and the partner of Kim is Tony. Also well liked by all who were there and also 25 years and from Scotland.
He is Mike, from London Ontario, who is a brick layer until he has enough money to travel. He too is younger than any of our children but we spent a lot of time visiting with him. Nice guy.

This is Eddie, a Scot that we met first at the hostal in Salento and here he is again. He is pretty laid back and not ready to go back to Scotland any time soon. We have mentioned in a previous blog about the fact that the buildings in the center of the city need to be whitewashed in preparation for Semana Santa. We see many brushes, rollers and brooms to achieve this task and occasionally we see this. . It is 1/4 inch nylon rope, looped many times, tied together and then frayed. This type of brush just keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter until the job is done. The same project only a different building.
A pretty street after a mornings walk.

We had to go pretty high in the mountains, over the clouds and through lots of rain. We just love the green countryside and this year may be a bit more green than usual as there is more rain than normal.
We see things like this often from the window of the bus. Here they are stacking wood to dry and good luck on getting it to dry. It could be for sale or for personal use and no chain saws in sight.
Here is a partial photo that is suppose to show a place in the road that had caved in and lost 1/2 of the road. We were glad we were not driving on it when it gave way. This was caused by the excess of rain they have had this year. Sometimes we see landslides the other way, they slide onto the road and we went through one section where they had had to clear a path through a slide so traffic could continue. It is the Pan American highway and it must be kept open. Ron gets to choose what bus we ride and and this time his choice was not very good. We were right in the back seats, quite cramped in this very crowded mini bus. The trip was 5.5 hours long.
If you make the photo larger you will see small trails leading to the farms on the hillsides.

Tomorrow we are on our way to Ipales in Colombia and will cross the border into Ecuador and hope to make it as far as Otavalo before we run out of steam.