Oh hi! An hour north east of Popayan is the small town of Silvia, which hosts a Tuesday market. Silvia is also the centre for the Guambianos, one of the most traditional Indian communities in Columbia. The Indians don't live in the town, but come to the Tuesday market to to buy and sell fruit, veg and their crafts.
How exciting, I couldn't wait...we had planned this visit since Bogota! On the day though we both slept through the alarm and awoke an hour later slightly confused, having missed the morning buses on our timetable. Undetered we got a taxi quick smart to the bus station, hoping for a collectivo. Better than that a bus was leaving in 10 mins, on which we each got a seat. Wiji proptly fell asleep and I enjoyed a very sedate, and uneventful journey.
As we got further up into hills and the cloud descended, and there was a damp chill in the air. We passed some villagers clearing the remains of a landslide from the road, and a few scattered houses, one of which had rows and rows of wool hung over bamboo poles in the front garden, it looked quite erie in the mist
On arriving in Silvia we were first stuck by the peacefulness of the town. Even though it was bustling with pick up trucks and lorries, people unloading goods onto hand drawn wagons, there was a strange air of calmness about the place that we had not experienced before. It was so different to the usual loud socialising, and touting of wares that we have seen in all other markets. It left us quite lost for words...we headed off to the nearest cafe on the square and had some huevos revueltos and cafe con leche to start the day.
Cloud descending over the hills behind the town centre.
The town filled up with pick up trucks, loading and unloading goods.
We hadn't seen these vehicles before. Open sided, with benches the full width. Hand painted geometic designs on the outside.
Some were more overloaded than others, this one included.
We wandered around the town after breakfast. There were a great deal of Renault 'lentils' about!
Thinking that perhapse it was quiet because the market had not fully set up yet, we ventured off out of the village to look at the river. We saw a large bird of prey with a small animal in its mouth on a nearby branch.
After wandering around the streets of Silvia, away from the market, we realised that it was just quiet everywhere...even though there were lots of people about.
This is probably our favourite bakery sign yet. Chicken features heavily everywhere too.
As well as some very short legged stray doggies hanging about for scraps, were these large black vultures on some roof tops.
After looking around the town, we made our way back to the market area to look at the stalls.
There was a fantastic selection of fruit including these yellow spikey beasts, (they are not star fruit, but more like cactus fruit). We have really been enjoying Mora berry juices, a bit like logan berry's, while in Columbia. There were plantains galore!
Potatoes were big business here, including these beautiful purple ones. There were lots of stalls selling dried beans of all kinds, also in hessian sacks.
The shallots and leeks were absolutely beautiful. Wiji could have made a fantastic leek and potato soup from this market produce.
A man stood by his pick up, full of chickens, as the day went on there were fewer and fewer left.
After looking around the market we headed back to the main square to watch the world go by. We chose our place to sit rather badly, as soon as we had sat down we realised that we were sat amongst some very drunk men who were dishing out some clearish liquor in shot glasses. One very gone-on old man attempted to chat to us, he could barely stand. So he sat down and kept tapping my arm to ensure my attention. Neither he, nor I got very far with the conversation and we later saw him staggering around quite happily.
In the main square were more Guambianos in traditional dress. Both the men and the women wearing tiny bowler hats. The women in black woven skirts with indigo blue felted shawls, with a cerise pink lining and numerous stands of white beads making a thick neaklace that was really striking against the blue felt. The men were all wearing indigo blue calf length felt fabric tied at the waist to make a skirt and felted ponchos.
The women had children slung on their backs secured with a decorative woven band on top of the shawl. Most women were carring a wooden bobbin and spinning wool into yarn from a cotton bag in the other hand. You can see a group in the foreground of this picture. Their traditional dress was beautiful and I would have loved to have really captured it, but it would have been rude to take pictures that were less general than this.
As well as fruit and veg there was also house hold goods, clothes and shoes. There were very few indigenous crafts being sold, although I did see some ladies making the traditional cylindrical shoulder bags with wool on two needles.
We briefly checked out the indoor meat market, and left reassured that this was the same as other markets, say no more! We saw some facinating stalls that had a whole variety of oils, pastes and dried plants. One had a dried bears foot!
Several stalls had these richly adorned little boxes containing budgies or finches. All the doors on the boxes were initially open, (before it rained), and the birds were being hand fed by the owners. This one was not only adorned with strings of glass beads, like the others, but had the addition of pistachio shells and a ginger pelt of some unkown ferret sized animal. We paid to photograph this one, other traders declined our request for a photograph. We got the impression that these were kept as lucky charms..?
There are two budgies in this box. (Nice biro Toucan drawing on the door).
After securing this shot, it really began to chuck it down so we decided to head back to Popayan and caught another bus back. This was an interesting glimpse at Silvia's indigenous market.
