So now here we are in popoyan, another charming colonial city in thesouth of Colombia. Things have changed loads here recently -5 years agopeople barley visited this area. the lonley planet i have which is5years out of date warns against travelling at night on buses due toguerillas (FARC) stopping and robbing buses, burning them, particularlydown at the borders but the relatively new president ruibe has ploughedcopious amounts of cash into public security (apparently his dad waskilled by FARC) and has a vendetta against them. This has madetravelling around colombia much safer, although the flip side is publicspending in other areas has dropped and rise in unemployment hasresulted in a rise in city crime. Obviously there are still areas ofthe country completely out of bounds, in fact most of the country interms of area including the vast amazon. we were also warned also aboutthe pacific coast by our dutch friend Ron in Tyrona national park who´dhad a good Colombian friend from Bogota kidnapped on a boat with 20other Colombians last year and had been held captive for 6monthssomewhere in the amazon. The friend had been released after 6 monthsfollowing some payment which people don´t talk about (its illegal to paymoney to the guerillas), but kidnapping and drug trade is what funds theguerillas and that evidently still goes on. So anyway we´ve checked thesituation with the local police who have assured us the situation issafe now and escort all buses down to the border. In actual fact theystop all traffic flow for 3-4hours at night and then escort vehicles inconvoy.

The chiva bus (see photo) is the typical bus from colombia, all the indigenous use it, but the buses over night are a bit more westernised