Volcanic Popayán

We tried hitchhiking out of Cali to Popayán and it didn't work. We eventually took a bus. Maybe the street was too busy due to Christmas time, maybe our looks were gnarly that day, I don't know. We arrived in the late afternoon by bus - the good thing is that they stop wherever you are. The driver told me he would go directly (I asked) but as we arrived in some town halfway, we had to switch the bus - ours was only half full. So all the passengers squeezed themselves into another bus, the last ones literally stood at the open door while the bus drove. Driving here is very.. economical - many people, few buses.

Popayán itself is beautiful and calm. They paint the town white every year, every single building.

The next day we went to a volcano. We went to bed super early because the only bus there leaves the town at 5 in the morning.

The bus took us up to 3500m, our destination, the volcano crater, was at 4600m.

A guide is obligatory, it's to support the indigenous people living here, same as the entry fee for the national park. Some time ago the money went to the government, now it goes directly to the people, which is a very good thing here in Colombia. The indigenous people fought hard for years for this.

There was the option to take a shortcut by car but that costs a lot and the distance to the volcano's crater is just 6km one way (with 1km inclination 🤣), so we walked.

Pilimbala is the town at the foot of the mountain. We already felt the altitude but at this point it wasn't too bad.

The picture above shows the transition of the landscape super well. All the way down in the valley are trees and jungle, then follows a drier climate that you already saw, and then at around 4500 there are just rocks and stones. Snow starts at around 5000 but luckily we only had to go up to 4600. I can tell you, it is pretty rough. There were people who couldn't make the last 100 meters incline and gave up shortly before the crater. The weather the day before was terrible so no one was able to go up that day. All these people went today, so there were quite a lot of us, around 30 people at the top. As far as I can tell, we were the only ones who went on foot, the rest took the expensive shortcut by car and skipped half of the way. The last half is the more difficult one though (obviously).

Enough talking, here is the crater:

Since we left together with a bunch of other people who went by car, we asked if we could join them to the foot of the mountain which seemed to be no problem, they had a big Jeep.

As we arrived, the driver suddenly wanted money. He was from some tour agency and was going to drive these people all the way back to Popayán. As we explained to him that we wouldn't pay since we never talked about money, he asked us furiously if you get anything for free in life, especially public transport. We explained to him that we barely pay for buses and hitchhike a lot, which he didn't appreciate at all but eventually accepted and let us go without paying.

We then started hitchhiking back to Popayán, right in front of where the angry driver was waiting for his tourist group to go to some restaurant. We asked a car that was parked and got out right in front of his eyes. It was glorious. But the best part was that the couple who gave us a ride didn't go directly to Popayán but went to another part of the national park.

We continued by car on this terrible dirt road.

Then we arrived at the main attraction, the hot thermal waters of San Juan. Bathing was prohibited due to the very delicate structures but it was just TOO beautiful. Later, the people working for nature preservation told us that everything there, except the pathways and bridges, is 100% natural, they don't even remove any plants.

I'll just keep adding pictures here..