Popayan, Colombia

Popayan was the very first city of Colombia Cynthia and I visited.  It is known for it's beautiful white washed walls all around the city.  To get there, we rode a night bus from Quito to right outside of the Colombian border.  We got our travel visas, which were free for all except for Canadian residents.  It was an awesome feeling to finally be in another country. Colombia.  The interesting part was actually getting where we needed to go.  I had never once booked a hostel in Ecuador, and felt no need to in Colombia.  So once our bus arrived, at about 1 a.m, we walked around the city attempting to follow our directions to the hostel we found.  Once we finally arrived there, exhausted and a bit scared, the man told us there was no rooms for us so we were pretty much SOL.  Fantastic.  2 a.m, and we had no where to go.  The man gave us directions to a nearby hotel that was about the same price, so we did our best to find it.  finally, once we found it, we got the room for 3 nights.  Looking back, that wandering around with all our belongings was probably not the brightest choice, but you do what you gotta do sometimes when you're in a bind.  From then on, we booked our hostels online.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in Popayan, but it was nice to rest and get a little shopping done while we could, as well as wander around the white city and visit a few museums.