Sylvia, Columbia

By far the most exciting thing I´ve done in this country is to go to the Tuesday market in Sylvia. Once a week the Guambiano people come down from the villages surrounding Sylvia to sell their wares as well as stock up on others. The Guambiano, one of Columbia`s oldest indigenous peoples, still dress in their traditional costumes of a blue shawl, bowler hat and skirt, even the  men, though I notice many of the teenage boys are wearing pants. The women wear thick strands of some kind of bead around their necks, had net bags slung on their backs and carried beautifully patterned wool shoulder bags.

On the square in Sylvia

 The market itself is huge and very colorful. On the street there are many clothing booths but inside there is a riot of color where fruits and vegetables adorn table after table after table. Some areas have huge canvas sacks of different kinds of potatoes and rice; sugars come in different colored bricks. There were cooked items and I fell in love with some empanadas made of yellow corn with mashed potato inside.

On the meat section, fresh cuts hang in all shapes and sizes, horrible to those not used to gore, the cutters and attendants get a big kick out of leading us greenhorns through, pointing out hooves, hearts and eyeballs among other things.

My travel partner, Niko, found out about a small settlement higher up so we took a ride in a small Land Rover with eight people and two panes of glass in the back, two up front, two more on top and two men standing on the bumper. We were pretty packed in but having a really jolly time of it. Our destination was Casique, not a town with a square but a caseria, like a neighborhood almost at the top of the mountain. It is an agrarian community that grows potatoes, some corn, and lots of poppies, all worked by hand. We stopped at the school where there food for lunches is grown on the grounds, all of it, even the meat. The gardener told us the students have the job of feeding the bunnies, chickens, pigs and sheep on his off days.

Too bad this bus is full.

View from Casique

Casique - Looking the other direction.

In the late afternoon, we boarded another bus for another ride along a twisting, winding, ridge hugging road with yet another madman at the wheel. As usual we arrived alive in Popayan. Whew!