In fact today's pics come from last night, after I'd updated my blog. The old town (pic) was all very nice but very touristy, full of white middle class middle aged people, which is fine, and who knows I might be one of those one day, but...
...instead I walked a few blocks south to the Plaza de Trinidad, a cool local hangout and great place for cheap street food. I bumped into a couple of fellow backpackers and we sipped some cheap beers from the shop opposite and chatted. It was a fabulous evening, with laid-back locals congregating to do social things like play chess al fresco - quite a spectator sport (pic). There was also an impromptu band - a guitarist/singer and several percussionists (who didn't know each other, they'd just turned up) struck up some salsa singalongs, with lots of beautiful young people clapping along and joining in. I blended in unnoticed - but that was mainly because regular power cuts kept sabotaging the lights, so nobody saw me.
As for today, I spent most of today doing a final stroll round the old town, finding cheap street food and fresh fruit juice. I took a local bus through torrential rain to the bus terminal outside town, where I got on an overnight bus south to Bucaramanga. Forget all those tired old clichés about Colombia being dangerous: night buses are perfectly safe. That's because there are armed security guards frisking everyone who gets on, searching their bags, and taking videos of all the passengers so they can identify the victims later on.
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