Are you looking for place to read full E-Books without downloading? Here you can read Popayan Diary: 3 months in the highlands of Colombia. You can also read and download new and old full E-Books. Enjoy and relax Reading full Popayan Diary: 3 months in the highlands of Colombia Books online. . CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FOR FREE
Popayan Diary combines text and color photos to trace the events of the author's time in the city of Popayan, a provincial capital more than a mile high in the Colombian Andes. Surrounded by green hills where tropical fruits and coffee plants grow wild, Popayan has both modern shopping malls and a well-preserved colonial old town dating from the sixteenth century. The Diary begins by noting daily challenges, personal safety issues, local news items, and dinnertime stories, as well as the sights, sounds and flavors of the town. After a long period of violence, better times have come to Colombia in the last half dozen years. There is a ceasefire in effect in the war with Marxist revolutionaries. The counter-revolutionary paramilitaries are keeping a lower profile and the country is no longer the world's largest producer of cocaine, having lost that distinction to Peru. The infamous north Colombian city of Medellin no longer has the world's highest murder rate and now advertises itself as a great place to spend the Christmas season. For the first time in decades Colombia has become an attractive destination for mainstream tourists. There are places around Popayan, however, where the revolution still simmers and farmers still find a market for dried coca leaves at seventy-five cents a kilo. As he learns more about his temporary home, the Diary's author is drawn into a survey of the nation's history, looking for clues about how it all came to be this way. He sketches the events surrounding independence from Spain and tells of Simon Bolivar's imperial dream of Gran Colombia, a vision not entirely shared by his chief subordinate, Francisco de Paula Santander. More directly relevant is the area's more recent history and the diarist finds he must also address Colombia's late 20th century political divisions, its complicated relationship with the United State, and some of the ways that the nation was affected by the influxes of drug money and oil wealth that began in the 1970s. In the end, what the author finds most important is that Popayan is a place where ordinary Colombians still go about their business as they always have--even in the worst of times--caring for their families and building up a fascinating and modern nation. The Diary is a loving depiction of a city which is not on the main tourist trail but which is a place of warmth, caring and unstoppable energy. It opens up a small window on what life is like in Colombia today and provides the reader with a personal and engaging introduction to Colombian culture and history.
