desde Parque Nacional Puracé hasta Cali

After taking in a bit more taxidermy at the Popayán natural history museum, we lit out again, for Puracé National Park. We caught a little bus that took us 12km past the place we wanted to get out and then clambered into the pickup truck of a nice guy named Javier, driving back in the direction we had just come. One thing we have learned on the road is that, except for the most far flung of places, transportation works itself out. The buses down here are almost invariably on schedule, and when there is no bus there is a camioneta or taxi or passing motorist to get you further down the road. Maybe it is because we are in maximum flexibility mode but getting where you want to go just isn't a problem.





Puracé is in the Colombian páramo, the high altitude wet grassland. It is cold and wet and windy and very beautiful. We camped for 2 nights in Pilimbalá where we met Carolina and Ishmael, a very sweet couple from Cali, and all hiked up to the base of Volcán Puracé our first day. The trail was pure mud in places and thick bog in others, the landscape mounds of lichen and moss and cactus-like plants with fuzzy leaves. Everything was very green or brown and very wet and we decided not to make the ascent of the volcano since the trail up was pure rutted mud and the crater obscured by clouds.






Our next day we caught a camioneta down the road to San Juan where there is a trail to remarkable sulfur springs. The landscape is reminiscent of natural history museum dioramas of prehistoric times, all boiling pools and bogs. We hiked for a bit in the area, and as the rain came down decided to take our sodden selves back to Popayán and continue on to Cali.








Leaving Popayán the next morning, Mike realized he had lost his camera and felt fairly sure it was in the taxi from our hostel. We offloaded from the bus and became known to pretty much everyone in the terminal as the frantic gringoes trying to find the cab driver who had dropped us off. The police took care of our backpacks as we called cab companies and walked up and down the line of seemingly hundreds of cabs that came and went out front. A very sweet police officer, Cristian, took us to review the security camera tapes on which we could see ourselves getting out of the cab but nothing to identify the car. At last we spotted our guy hanging out in line, chatting with another driver. Mike fished his camera out of the front seat and I embraced everyone.


In Cali we stayed in a pretty hostel, the Casa Agua Canela, where there is a ferocious little kitten, and went off to see the best zoo in Colombia. The live animals were much more fun, and not less violent than the taxidermy at the Popayán natural history museum. We saw one bloodthirsty little monkey reducing a baby chick to a ragged bloody pulp.


















We spent much of the day at the zoo, and then walked into town along the river that runs through the city. We visited the historic section and took in Calle Sexta and its giant neonlit salsotecas. And the next day we hit the road again, for the Zona Cafetera and a little place called Sevilla.