The road to San Agustin from Popayan was a bumpy one, as it is not paved.  It was a 6 hour bus ride of sharp turns, and a muddy road filled with pot hole ranging from 1 foot to 4 feet in diameter.  The driver did his best to avoid the pot holes, but this caused a lot of weaving around in an already curvy road.  I had heard the road was bad and made sure to sit in the passenger seat, so I was ok.  Along the way we stopped at this woman´s house and she brought everyone on the bus (20 people) cups of fresh starwberries and cream, which were delicious.  Near the end of the cup I found a black hair approximately 6 inches long.  You learn to not let these things bother you while traveling through developing countries.  We passed through a water reserve.  No one is allowed to live or build there so for 2 hours we did not see 1 person and or 1 home, just miles of swamps and lagoons.  After the reserve we stopped for lunch at a woman´s house.  (Busses longer than 5 hours always stop for meals, and if you are in rural areas it´s always at someone´s house).  The family feeds you (for around 3 mil) and lets you use their bathroom for 1 mil (1 mil = .50 cents).   When we arrived in Popayan, Caroline (pronounced Caroleena, the friend I made in Popayan) and I split up as we had made reservations at different hostels.  I stayed at a hostel called Finco de Maco, which was absoluetly beautiful.  It was located up a big muddy hill and overlooked the green mountains of San Agustin.  The owner, Rene, is from Switzerland and lives on the property with his wife and 3 year old daughter.  It was unlike any other hostel I have seen.  It looked like a farm and had a couple cows and horses wandering around.  One morning when I woke up I opened the door to my dorm (a room with multiple people) and a horse was standing right outside my door eating grass.  Here is the website to my hostel http://www.elmaco.ch/elmaco_english/tour-home.htm you can take a virtual tour, just click on finca el maco.  The first night I stayed in a dorm with a 50 something year old man named Marc from England who was a fashion desginer and abandoned his life to motorcycle around the world.  He started in Alaska and has worked his way down to Colombia.  Very interesting, cool guy.  There was also a 26 year old guy from England traveling through south america for 6 months and an Irish guy in his 30s doing the same.  The first night I was there everyone staying at the hostel had dinner together in the common area, which was tons of fun, just random people of all ages from all over the world having dinner together at a big, long table by candle light as there were no lights.  In addition to the guys in my room, there was a man named Tim who is probably 65 or 70 who sold all of his belongings to travel around the world indefinitely.  If you have seen the movie Into the Wild, he sounds just like Rainy (Catherine Keener´s old hippie boyfriend).  Tim is hilarious.  He told a crazy story of how this one time he was staying with this indigenous tribe in Mexico and took mushrooms with a shaaman.  I asked when this was thinking he would say something along of the line of “Back in my thirties when I was a crazy hippie,” but instead he said “back in december.”  I was laughing so hard.  Also, Tim is from Fresno, which is where I was born so we bonded over that, although I don´t remember anything involving that portion of my life.  There was also a 30 somethign year old man named Hans from Sweden, 2 guys in their 20s from New Zealand who were loads of fun, and a 20 year old couple from England traveling all over central and south america for 2 years.   The next day I met up with Caroline at her hostel and went on a 4 hour horseback ride through the mountains.  There were 7 of us on the tour along with 2 guides.  We were all in our mid 20s to early 30s.  It was nice to have a younger crowd.  I loved everyone at my hostel, but it was nice to be around kids my age.  The horses were crazy.  I was given a “tranquilo” horse but it galloped the whole time.  Don´t get me wrong, I loved it, but after hours on horseback your inner thighs get sore.  We wore no helmets.  The tour was through the mountains, valleys and farms of San Agustin.  The best was to describe how Colombia looks is that it is the way the world is supposed to look.  It´s so amazing.  The tour took us to archoelogical sites (this is what San Agustin is known for) to view 5000 year old stone statues made by the primitive tribes in San Agustin.  Many of them are anthropomorphic and others depict masked monsters.  Though very basic, there are over 500 of these statues, ranging in 3 to 21 feet high, scattered around San Agustin.  The tour also took us to some unbelievable looks out points.  The people in Colombia farm just about everywhere they can.  This includes mountains, as long as they aren´t rocky, so if you can, imagine gigantic, vertical mountains covered in everything from bamboo and pine trees to coffee bushes, banana trees etc.  Now, the farmers have to walk up and down these mountains to pick fruit and maintain their farms, so you see these specs of farmers with baskets around their necks picking coffee beans on these massive mountains.  I don´t know how they do it.   There was this Canadian girl on our tour who turned out to be this terrible high maintenance bitch.  The 4 hour tour ends at the Parque Arqueologico, which houses about 130 of the ancient statues.  Usually, at the end of the tour a woman brings everyone lunch for 5 mil ($2.50) which includes rice, beans, chicken or beef and soup.  This is a traditional Colombian meal and what I eat every day.  This girl is a vegetarian, so she was unsatisfied with the meal and thought 5 mil was too much money since she wouldn´t be eating the meat.  She spent the entire tour complaining to our guide about the food and then told him to just cancel the meal.  None of the rest of us knew she had done this so when we got to the park we asked the guide when the woman would be delivering the food and this is when he told us the Canadian girl canceled lunch.  Joe, an English guy, yelled at this girl for about 10 minutes.  We told our guide we did in fact want the lunch so this woman ended up bringing us food.  I haven´t read Everything Is Illuminated but I saw the movie, and for those of you familiar with it, telling a Colombian you don´t eat meat is like the scene in the book/movie where the main character tells his Russian guide he doesn´t eat meat.  They just don´t understand. The Parque Arquelogico was fun for the first hour, but after a while all the statues start to look the same.  I walked through the park with Caroline, a girl from Peru, an English guy and an Australian guy, and they were lots of fun so although the park was a bit boring, the company was great. That night I went back to Caroline´s hostel and we cooked dinner, veggie stir fry.  There were 4 hippies, one from Mexico, one from Fance, one from Spain and one from…I forget, trying to sing I´m Yours by Jason Maraz.  They didn´t speak great English and the song is fairly fast so I was trying to help them get the rythmn and pronounciate the lyrics.  It´s a good thing I´m such a good teacher.  I was extremely helpful. The next day Caroline and I went on a jeep tour which takes you to more archeological parks and look out points.  It was supposed to cost 25 mil ($13) but when the jeep showed up at Caroline´s hostel he wanted 40 mil, so she told him to screw off.  There was a Colombian woman at her hostel who told her she had a friend who could take us on the tour for 25 mil, so when Caroline and what was supposed to be a jeep showed up at my hostel it was Caroline, and this random Colombian man in his 30 year old beat up car.  I got in.  We then picked up a mother daughter couple from Bogota who was spending the weekend in San Agustin for mother´s day.  He took us all over town and showed us the sites, so it all worked out despite my original skeptisim.  Colombians are crazy drivers and this guy was no exception.  He was speeding around this corner on a dirt road and a truck was doing the same but coming from the opposite direction and we collided.  The two drivers looked at each other, shrugged and then kept driving.  I got the feeling this is a frequent occurance.  No one was hurt and the general conscencous was “hey no harm no foul.”  We also saw a huge bus almost crash into a 4 year old boy.    That night Caroline came over to my hostel and had dinner with me.   The next morning Caroline, Hans, Tim and I took a taxi to a city 45 minutes out of town to catch buses to our next destinations.  Tim and Caroline were going down to Ecuador and Hans and I were going to Bogota.  Our bus to Bogota departed at 9:30 am so I wanted to leave San Agustin at 8.  Rene (the owner of our hostel) called us a taxi, but the taxi didn´t want to drive up the muddy hill so we had to walk down with our backpacks to meet him, which took about 10 minutes.  Once we got to the bottom of the hill we waited 15 minutes for the taxi to arrive.  Nothing runs on time in this country.  Once we got into the taxi we told the driver (who looked to be 15) we had a 9:30 bus to catch.  As it turns out, taxi´s in San Agustin are not allowed to leave San Agustin without some sort of permit.  Now you would think since Rene called the taxi at 7:30 am and told him where we were going he would have taken care of getting this permit before he picked us up…but of course he didn´t.  We spent 30 minutes driving around San Agustin crammed in this tiny taxi with our huge backpacks trying to find our drivers boss to get a permit.  At 8:40 he finally got the permit.  Then as we were about to leave, his taxi broke down, so he had to spend 10 minutes trying to fix whatever issue there was.  I was so annoyed.  We finally got to the bus terminal at 9:25.  Hans and I ran to the Bogota bus and climbed on as we were leaving.  Their were people sitting in the first row so I told them (I had Hans tell them because he speaks spanish and i dont) that I needed their seats because otherwise I would barf.  After I kicked them out and settled in we started driving through the mountains and I immediately became sick.  It´s a 10 hour bus ride to Bogota so it was a nice bus, but the driver and assistant sat in the front behind tinted windows so I couldn´t see out front.  After 45 minutes I knocked on the door and had this kind old Colombian man who spoke English ask if I could sit up front with them.  Thankfully, they agreed,  Unfortunately, the assistant had to sit on the floor because I took his fold up seat.  After about an hour I felt better, went back to my seat and slept.   I just got into Bogota last night.  I´m doing my laundry for the first time today so I´m stranded in my hostel until it finishes because I have no clothes.   More in Bogota later… xoxoxo

Popayan turned out to be a bust.  I didn’t love my hostel, or more specifically the people in it and several of the sights or activities I hoped to do didn’t pan out for one reason or another.

Today I woke up early and ventured out into the city to do some exploring.  Popayan is called “the white city” because all the buildings in the center are white, not off white, not cream, but bright white.  I don’t know why this is, but it is quite a sight, blinding actually.  The sun came out and I found myself squinting because the combination of the sun and these white buildings was too much for my precious eyes too handle.  The city is a grid, so it is very easy to get around, but I still managd to get lost.  Somewhere around the center is an eighteenth century mansion that Generals used to live in and according to my book a must see, but I couldn’t find it, so I didn’t see it.  Also, there is a cathedral near my hostel that houses 2 mummies which were discovered in a 1983 earthquake underneath the cathedral, but for some reason they weren’t giving tours today, so I didn’t get to see the mummies.  I did make it to a vista, or viewpoint, which was lovely.  It sits at the edge of town, a big green grass hill with a statue of some war hero atop a wild horse.  I couldn’t find a path up the hill and after nearly circling it I decided to just climb up.  It was so vertical that I had to crawl up the side of the hill on my feet and hands, grabbing handfuls of grass to steady myself.  I received weird looks from the locals.  Once I reached the top I saw that there was a stone path from the road to the top of the hill everyone was walking on…oh well.  A little bit of sweat in already very smelly clothes never hurt anyone.  There were a group of high school kids dressed in private school clothes smoking pot, which was humerous.  The vista overlooks the entire city encapsulated by green rolling hills.  It was worth the climb.  I took a few pictures and then walked down…the stone path. 

It was only 11 30 I can’t find the colon key…or the paranthesis which is why i am writing this in italics so I decided to take a bus to the thermal springs.  The bus stations here are super hectic.  Upon your arrival you are greeted with the screeches of workers yelling the names of the different cities buses are departing to.  They get right up in your face and yell BOGOTA!!! MEDELLIN!!! CALI!!!  Being that I could not pronounce the name of the city I was going to, I showed them the name in my Lonely Planet Colombia book.  Everyone here is very helpful and outgoing, so after I showed a crowd of employees the city I needed to go to one of the men grabbed my hand, led me to the terminal, and told the person behind the glass window where I needed to go.  Then the person behind the glass window walked me to the bus I needed to take.  It turned out there was no bus to Coconuco, which was where I was going, only a taxi.  I thought I would be the only person in the taxi but it was full.  I sat in the back between two men.  It was 45 minutes to Coconuco up a winding mountain road.  I was dropped off on this small street, in this mountain town with not a single other tourist in sight.  School had just gotten out and there were crowds of school children in their catholic uniforms walking home.  Now according to my Lonely Planet, after being dropped off at the Coconuco bus station, which turned out to be a sidewalk, you take either a taxi or jeep to the thermal springs.  There were no taxis and there were no jeeps and nobody spoke English.  After 30 minutes of trying to communicate with the locals, who of course were very nice but didn’t understand a word I said, and trying to figure out how to get to the thermal springs, I gave up and hitched a ride back down the mountain to the Popayan bus station.  I was defeated and very, very upset.

I walked back to my hostel going…don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.  Once I returned I decided to just give up on Popayan and watch a movie in the media room.  I watched Babel…alone, which by the way is very good and I highly recommend it.  Near the end of the film a girl staying at the hostel walked in and sat down with me.  We instantly recognized each other but I was very into the movie so we didn’t really chat.  Once it ended we started talking and she told me she had been traveling with this guy she met here and has been dating for a couple months but that she was going to Peru now and he had already been there so they decided to go their separate ways I know thats a run on sentence.  As a result, she is very lonely and sad, to which I replied THAT’S SO GREAT I JUST SPLIT UP FROM MY FRIENDS AND I’M LONELY AND SAD TOO!  We hugged.  Even better, she is going to San Agustin tomorrow morning and so am I..  I was so happy.  We ended up walking around the city and then grabbing dinner together.  I have never been so happy to eat with anyone before.  Over dinner we remembered we had met in Salento on the jeep on the way back from the Cocora hike. 

So I’m happy to report that there is a silver lining to Popayan, the city of disasters and mishaps…I made a friend who is traveling to the same city as I am tomorrow, so now I don’t have to be alone AND she speaks Spanish, so yeah I’m basically golden. 

1) You can´t flush toilet paper down the toilet.  You have to put it in the trash.  No exceptions.

2) They kiss on one cheek.  I haven´t experienced it just seen it.

3) Motorcycles and cars do not yield to pedestrians under any circumstance.  I know this from experience.

4) Their napkins are inadequate.  Always to thin and small and never enough.  I´m constantly asking for more napkins.

5) Every time someone tells you how far away something is, it is always a fair amount further than they indicate.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 am to catch a bus (hour and a half) to Silvia with my Australian roommate and a couple from South Africa.   Silvia is the center of the Guambiano region.  The Guambiano people are Colombia’s most indigenous people.  They live in the mountains surrounding Silivia, speak there own language, use rudimentary farming techniques and wear traditional clothing.  Women wear long black skirts, bright purple poncho/shauls with hot pink embroidering around the edges, big black boots and black top hats.  Similarly, the men wear ponchos but wrap the purple cloth around their waists.  They look like the pictures from indigenous tribes in the National Geographic magazines.  There are several tribes, but in total there are approximately 20,000 Guambianos.

Every Tuesday they come down from their villages in the mountains and sell their goods at a market in Silvia.  It begins at dawn and ends at 2, which is why we went so early.  It is not a tourist market.  In fact, we were 4 of maybe 10 tourists among a couple thousand people.  We received a few stares being that we were the only white people.  The locals also sell their goods at the market.  Everyone gets along, trading and selling with one another.  I didn’t sense any tension.  Some of the Guambianos were quite friendly and spoke to us.  They are not at all shy or reserved.  Unfortunately, we could not take many pictures because apparently they smash your camera if you piss them off.  For the most part shoes, fruit, potatoes, raw meat, tools and clothing are sold.  We didn’t buy anything.  It’s not a market that caters to tourists.

I got a little motion sick on the way up, but I didn’t barf.

I have started traveling alone.  Lauren is flying back to LA for a wedding and will be gone 2.5 weeks, and Dave has a friend coming in for 6 days.  Of the 3 cities they are seeing, I have already been to 2, so I decided to venture out into the Colombian wild solo.  I wasn’t scared.  That’s a lie, I am slightly nervous.  Not so much for my safety but because I’m lonely.

Yesterday I took a 7 hour bus ride from Salento to Popayan.  I was told it was direct and that we would stop for food along the way, but I ended up having a connection in Cali and we never stopped for food.  During the first portion of the trip I sat next to a fat old man.  The seats were as wide as my lower back.  My shoulders hung off the sides, so as you can imagine there was not much room.  The second bus was much nicer and I got to sit in the passenger seat, across from the driver, which was fantastic because I didn’t have to sit next to anyone.  However, after an hour (there are always 2 bus drivers on board) the young bus driver took over driving and the old bus driver sat down on the platform in between my seat and the drivers seat.  He decided to take a nap, against my seat and within 10 minutes he was snoring and his head was on my shoulder.  His hair smelled rank, just dirty, greesy hair…on my shoulder…inches from my face.  I tried pretending like I was swerving with the bus so that I would (quote)accidentally(unquote) bump him and wake him up.

Note: i can’t figure out the punctuations on this computer, so I wanted to put accidentally in quotes but was just unable to do so. 

Anyways…I was unsuccessful and he slept on my shoulder for about an hour. 

I took a taxi from the bus station to the hostel.  Taxi’s are generally a safe bet, but just to be extra safe you always choose the weakest looking driver in case in comes down to a confrontation.  I chose a 70 year old man who was approximately 5’4.  I was confident in my abilities to take him down if need be, but luckily it didn’t come to that and he dropped me off at the hostel.

I am staying in a 7 person dorm.  There are 5, 20 year old English guys in my room.  They are nice enough, but pretty crass and annoying.  There is also a 42 year old Australian woman.  The hostels in South America attract people of all ages.  There are a couple families in my hostel, so a few kids are running around, but for the most part its people in their late 20s.

Being alone is tough…I feel very awkward, trying to make friends.  Also, my feet smell and there is really nothing i can do about it.  It does makes me pretty self conscious though.  I tried washing some clothes in my last hostel but they took too long to dry so I had to put them in plastic bags while on the bus and now they smell like mold, which is unfortunate.

A couple nights ago Lauren, Dave and I bought a big bottle of rum, some coke and drank with Enrique and Luis, the owners of our hostel.  Lauren did another short performance, which was lovely.  After getting a nice buzz we walked up to the plaza to hit the bars and check out the Salento night life with 2 other girls from our hostel.  Just a reminder, Salento is a sleepy colonial town known for its trout farm and coffee farms.  Naturally, Brady joined us at the bars.  We were the only white people.  Some guys tried talking to me but since I don’t speak Spanish the conversations didn’t really go anywhere.  We mainly hung out outside with Brady and just drank.  Around 1:30 Dave got tired and went back to the hostel.  The girls left before him.  Lauren and I hung out in the plaza until 3 am just talking about life and listening to a Colombian hippy play the banjo. 

The next night there was a concert going on in an auditorium down the block.  We knew it was a concert because we could hear the music blaring from our room while lying in bed…at 7 pm.  Very tired from the previous night.  Finally at 7:30 Lauren and I mustered up enough energy to go check this concert out.  It turned out to be a sweet ass show.  Everyone was our age, the music was good…30 seconds after we walked in the band finished playing, everyone applauded and the lights turned on.  Uggggghhhhhh.  Shows over.  We walked to this restaurant where we literally ate at every single day and got some snacks.  There was a couple there about our age who had been traveling around Central and South America for 6 months so we talked to them for a bit.  Then, about 30 minutes later we heard the music start up again!  Once again, we ran over to the auditorium and after 4 or 5 songs the concert ended…again…but this time there was no more music.  It is worth noting that the concert started at 2 pm and it took us 5 hours to go over.  Serves us right.

Buenas,

The main attraction in Salento is a hike through the Valle de Cocora and cloud forrest (a cloud forrest is a rain forrest at high altitude).  Since we are here during the rainy season, we were waking up every morning at 6:15 to check if the weather was good enough to hike that day.  Two days ago we finally saw some blue sky and decided to go for it.

In the mornings jeeps line up in the plaza to take tourists to the trailhead in Cocora, a 30 minute drive.  The drivers pile in as many people as possible.  When we left the plaza there were about 8 of us in the jeep, but along the way drivers stop to pick up students and workers heading to Cocora, so there ended up being 12 of us.  The locals either stand on a metal platform on the back of the jeep or sit on top.  The jeep in front of us had 17 people.  It was a bit unnerving.

We awoke this morning to heavy fog and light rain, so we decided not to hike through the Valle de Cocora today and hope it´s sunny enough to hike tomorrow.  Instead we took a tour of a local coffee farm.  I should mention that we made a friend…his name is Brady (we named him) and he is a local stray dog.  Last night Dave gave him some food and this morning when we left the hostel he was waiting for us at the entrance. 

Before the coffee farm we tried to hike down to the river, but it was too muddy and trying to trek it was a disaster.  I fell, of course, and was covered in mud.  After about 15 minutes of this we turned back and opted for the coffee farm.

Our hostel called the coffee farm to set up the tour and told us it was about an hour hike out of town.  Brady joined us.  The hike was actually an hour and a half, but was absolutely beautiful, even with the clouds and light rain.  We walked down a muddy path (not nearly as bad as the first) lined with thick jungle looking trees and also bamboo trees.  The views were spectacular.  The fog cleared a bit and we were able to see all the rolling green mountains covered in natural trees and also pine and other types of trees the local farmers have planted.  Dave told me these are the Colombian Andes.  A rolling river that originates in the Valle de Cocora cuts through the mountains.  Tiny farm houses of all colors, red, blue, yellow, pink sit against the green mountains and make for an amazing sight, but when the clouds roll in around the trees it makes everything quite eery.  Sounds of parrots, hundreds of parrots, that the locals call Loras fill the air and fly through the sky in flocks of 4 to 15, making their way from tree to tree.  When we would approach a tree full of parrots we would slowly walk up to it to try and get photos, but Brady kept running all around and scaring them away.  Speaking of Brady, on the way down the path was lined with barbed wire fence to keep cows inside their farms.  Lots of people have cow farms here and we saw dozens upon dozens of cows while hiking to the coffee farm.  Brady spent a fair amount of his time squeezing through the barbed wire fences and barking and chasing these massive cows.  I took a video and it´s hilarious.  There were huge puddles of mud which he also would run through and roll in.  Sometimes he would disappear onto a farm and ten minutes later we would see him jump from a property line about 10 feet high off the path and 20 feet in front of us and come racing back to join us. 

The coffee farm turned out to be a mom and pop shop.  Upon our arrival the wife informed us her husband, who usually gives tours, left to go somewhere and she was unsure of when he would return.  Apparently, this is common in Colombia.  Calling ahead to schedule a tour means exactly squat.  She told us to take a seat and wait for her eldest son to return.  She sent her 3 children, or grandchildren, ages 7ish to go find her son.  30 minutes later he arrived and the tour begun.  The family had 2 dogs chained up near the entrance to the coffee farm and Brady was intimidated so he didn´t want to pass.  A narrow, muddy, hilly, windy path through banana trees, avocado trees, orange trees, mandarin trees, lime trees, yuca trees, blackberry bushes and of course lots and lots of coffee plants line the trail.  As we started walking the guide told us to watch out for “deadly snakes.”  It wasn´t how I envisioned the tour beginning, but…whatever.  Not five minutes into the tour we looked up and saw Brady jumping through a barbed wire fence to come meet us.  He found a way around the guard dogs.  Our guide told us that he is constantly following tourists through town and always accomanying them on the coffee tours.  The tour was about an hour.  The family grows three different kinds of coffee beans, Colombian, Arab (the most popular) and one other kind but Lauren and Dave couldn´t remember.  The tour was in Spanish, so they had to translate for me.  The family who owns this farm, maybe 6 adults and 4 children, pick the beans themselves, wash them, dry them out, grind them all on their own, and remember it´s not just coffee beans, it´s also 7 types of fruit they´re growing, maintaining and trying to sell.  We saw all the steps of creating the coffee, from the growing to the grinding.  After the tour they gave us each a cup of coffee.  It was delicious.  I bought a bag of beans to send home when I get to Bogota, which is our next stop.  They rely solely on tourists buying bags of coffee and fruit as their income.  A pound of coffee cost $6.  During the rainy season, which is now, they get about 3 to 5 tourists a day, but not everyone buys coffee.  In the dry season they get around 20 tourists a day.  Their home, which I took pictures of and will hopefully be able to post soon, is built from bamboo.  They probably built it themselves, just tied bamboo branches together with rope.  The wife was doing laundry while we were there, which consisted of her soaking clothes in a huge cement square filled with water and rubbing the clothes with a brush on another flat piece of cement.  It´s hard to describe the living conditions…but it was pretty dirty.  None of the rooms had doors.  To me it seemed unliveable, but to them it´s reality and I doubt any of them think twice.  They´re poor but it´s not a problem the same way being poor in America is.  They work all day, the kids go to a nearby school, the whole family lives under one roof and they were all super friendly.  The kids were roller skating up and down the front porch.

The hike back to town was all up hill.  I want to mention that I was filthy, covered in mud.  However, Lauren and Dave somehow managed to stay clean.  I´m always the dirtiest.  I don´t know how it happens, but I am.  Brady was so exhausted that every time we stopped to look at birds he would lay down.  When we got back to town we went straight to our favorite restaurant, located conveniently across from our hostel and had a delicious dinner.  Just to give you a perspective on how much everything costs, I had 2 BBQ pizzas (they´re really small thats why I had 2) and they each cost $2.  The restaurant has a roof but is entirely outdoors and Brady laied down right next to us just outside the gate.  He was exhausted and starving so we gave him our leftovers and then I walked to the grocery store and bought him dog food.  I am pretty sure he depends entirely on tourists feeding him to stay alive. 

We got back to our hostel, showered (best shower ever) and now I´m at the internet cafe across the street.  Brady is laying in the doorway watching me type.  He has been at our side whenever possible for 9 hours now.  When we wake up tomorrow he will probably be sitting up and waiting for us at the entrance of the hostel. 

Alright, I´m exhausted…goodnight!

I forgot to mention Kirk Cameron…

On the bus to Salento they played a Kirk Cameron movie.  I know what you´re thinking.  Kirk Cameron made a movie?  Yes folks, yes he did.  Apparently while we were all thinking he was living the high life off of his Growing Pain residuals he´s been hard at work making Christian movies.  The premise of this movie was Kirk Cameron and his wife just fell out of love and began hating each other.  Kirk asked his dad for help, and his dad told him there was a big guy missing from his marriage…Jesus.  Kirk spent 40 days incorporating Jesus into his life and thus saved his marriage because his faith rubbed off on his wife.  The best part (other than the token black friend who was constantly using street slang) was when Kirk´s father told him “Your mother introduced Jesus into our marriage and that´s what saved us,” to which a shocked Kirk replied, “Wait…women can do this too?” 

After grabbing breakfast at this cute little restaurant it started raining and forced us back into our hostel.  Lauren and Dave read and I studied Lauren´s Spanish Dictionary.  Around 2 the rain eased up and we went for lunch.  Even though it was still overcast it wasn´t raining, so we walked up to a mirador or lookout point.  It was a bit of a hike, but worth the sights of the surrounding mountains and Valle de Cocora, which is where we are planning on on hiking tomorrow.  The clouds gather around the forests here making what is appropriately called Cloud Forests and is supposed to be amazing to hike through.  Hopefully it won´t rain tomorrow so we will be able to enjoy Cocora and cloud forests.  It´s a 5 hour hike…I´m a little nervous.

Salento itself is a darling town.  It looks very Mexican.  The buildings are small and painted white with bright blue trimming, or bright pink trimming or bright green trimming…you get the picture.  The streets are narrow and a mix of cement and big rocks.  There aren´t many cars so everyone walks in the middle of the streets, kids play soccer, men ride horses, herds of cows wander through, and dogs roam freely.  There are tons and tons of stray dogs.  All these narrow streets lead up to a plaza at the top of the hill which is where most people congrgate.

Tomorrow we are waking up at 5:30 to hike the Valle de Cocora…ugh…I hope it doesn´t rain.