Guadalajara de Buga, in the Valle del Caucais department, is a mid-size city in the central valley north of Cali. It is one of the oldest cities in Colombia, having been founded in 1555 by Giraldo Gil de Estupiñán.
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| Roughing it with croissants and coffee, Hotel Guadalajara Buga |
We stayed a night after descending from birding in the coastal mountains. The rest of the group left at 06:00 to look at birds in the reservoir and wetlands, but we decided to enjoy a luxurious breakfast and explore the city. The Hotel Guadalajara Buga, a historic hotel from 1954, was really nice - I like roughing it like this.
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| Gentlemen of Buga |
We walked downtown along Carrera 14 towards the Parque, Jose Maria Cabal. This is a busy place! Folks were out enjoying the good weather, chatting, eating, sharing stories, and just hanging around.
Of course, there were plenty of vendors with produce of various sorts.
Mid-morning, quick, what do you do? Drink a Colombian espresso, of course.
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| Calle 8, Buga |
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| Calle 7a, Buga |
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| Carrera 13, Buga |
This town is bustling with commercial activity. But stay off the street when the motor-scooters are buzzing towards you! I almost got smushed once.
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| Basilica Del Señor de los Milagros, Buga |
The Basilica of The Lord of the Miracles is an impressive pink complex of buildings and church. It receives 3 million pilgrims every year. We walked around and looked at the crypts.
When most of you read this, it will be winter in North America and Europe. You will not be seeing a fruit and vegetable stand like this for a long time. Savor and think about the flavors of ripe produce, real food.
I love exploring thriving towns like this. And I like to see all the street activity.
Most of the photographs are from Fuji Acros 100 film, exposed through my Leica M2 camera with 35mm and 50mm Summicron lenses. I use a Gossen Luna Pro Digital light meter in the field to measure exposure. The fruit vendor is Kodak Ektar 100 color film from a Yashica Electro 35CC camera. Click and photograph to expand to 1600 pixels on the long dimension.
Stand by for more Colombia photographs and thank you for following along..
4 comments:
Your timing was good for this trip, fitting in between civil wars and pandemics. I had similar good luck on my long-ago visit to southern Colombia.
It is interesting how you anchor the beginning and ending of the photographs with the two in color. You went to go birding?
Yes, this was a birding trip. We spent 2½ weeks in several different environmental zones (low altitude jungle, high altitude jungle, etc.) looking at birds. I would have enjoyed a bit more cultural travel in the trip, considering how interesting the towns are.
You are quite the cultural traveler...or were before the pandemic. Hope you can soon get back to it, but I enjoy the travels vicariously.
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