The road between Popayán in Colombia and the border with Ecuador has bad reputation. The internet shows many reports and inquiries of worried travelers planning to use this road. But if you check carefully will see that most of these reports are a few years old.
I didn't want to ignore them and their recommendations but disliked the idea of being controlled by the anonym reporters commenting incidents somebody else told them. I checked with the local people and at the end decided to take a day bus to Ipiales and spend the night there before crossing to Ecuador. This was not a bad decision.
As with most previous roads in Colombia, the view is scenic and green. Some construction work was in progress but it didn't affected much. In general, there was much less visible military presence on this road as a few days before in the Cali - Popayán route.
The bus trip went problem free and we arrived Ipiales in the afternoon. After spending the night in Ipiales, we started early the next morning aiming to the "Santuario de Las Lajas". At this point the group consisted of Isabella from Sweden, Judith from Passau and myself. We shared a taxi to the sanctuary and later to the border.
At this point it was time to say good bye to Colombia and hello to Ecuador.
The border town in Ecuador is called Tulcán. We went straight to the bus station and took the first bus to Otavalo, arriving there short after noon. The town is very picturesque and good part of its income comes from tourism. It is therefor not a surprise to see that the Otavalo market is now mainly a souvenir market. It was however a Tuesday and not the bigger Saturday market the one I visited.
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