Popayan

We ended up staying two nights in Popayan, as it's a nice town and it gave us a chance to relax a bit, and also to catch up on the Internet and get my hair cut.

It has a couple of museums, my favorite definitely being the Natural History Museum that had amazing insect and tropical bird displays - the tropical insects really are totally mental, and as for the sword-billed hummingbird, well lets just say that I don't think I'll ever run out of things to add to my list of 'things to see and do in my life'.

Our second day in Popayan happened to be Halloween, and these guys really get into it here, far more than at home anyway. Even at breakfast (in a great little cafe serving local corn patties with melted cheese called arepas) all the staff were dressed up, and by late afternoon the whole town was literally swarming with dressed-up and made-up kids. They have the cool tradition here that all the kids go not from house-to-house, but from shop-to-shop looking for 'treats'. This way they end up with tons of sweats of course, but even still we saw lots of cheeky wee scallywags repeatedly coming into the same cafe. It was also a bit cheeky I thought of parents bringing their new-born infants around looking for lollipops and sweets that the infants could no sooner eat than do a handstand - a good example of basic human nature though I suppose, a free handout being seized apon by one and all.

So after another great, but too huge(!), dinner of local food (a thick maize soup and gorgeous fried pork), we were too wrecked to check out the Halloween festivities in the town, and besides we had to get up at 5am for our bus to the famous site of San Agustin.