Exploring the city of Buga, Colombia

Went for a walk around the small city of Buga, Colombia yesterday. Population here of about 98,000 people. It's not on the international tourist trail at all. Most people head straight to the city of Cali, about 70 kms (43 miles) away.

But in doing the research, we couldn't find much of interest to us in Cali, plus we've had several locals tell us it's not the safest city. So we are going to skip it.

There's a busy little plaza very close to our hostel.

This couple was having fun feeding the pigeons.

She had them eating right out of her hand.

This plaza was full of these huge old trees.

Buga is one of the oldest cities in Colombia, founded in 1555. It is famous to Colombians for it's Basilica del Señor de los Milagros, which houses an image of Christ called el Señor de los Milagros ("the Lord of the Miracles"). It's also one of the very few cities in the world that have both a cathedral and a basilica.

The basilica is not that old, taking 15 years to build and having been completed in 1909.

The interior.

Looking up.

This is what everybody comes to see. 

The story goes that in the 1800's this crucifix grew daily before the astonished eyes of a laundress. The basilica was created to honor this crucifix. The city attracts more than 1 million pilgrims per year who come to see it.

The "lighthouse".

It's called The Lighthouse to people around here, but it's just a monument built in the 1950's to honor a local doctor. There was an empty chair out front, and a gate on the door to the steps but nobody around, and the gate was unlocked. So we went on ahead up.

Nice view of the city.

We headed over towards a trail that leads up the side of a mountain, and walked for quite a while to get there. It was a nice walk though, through some nice neighborhoods. But either things have changed or we weren't in the right spot, but there was a big sign saying private property. Oh well. It started to spit with rain around that point.

We stopped at a spot that had tables protected from the rain and a guy was selling fresh squeezed orange juice. We were going to get a couple of small glasses, and then saw a sign that he sold 1 litre bottles of the stuff. So we ordered one, and he ran about 15 oranges through the machine. Delicious! Cost was 6,000 pesos ($2.85 CAD).

Nice neighborhood.

Everybody has a nice little garden.

Nice town. Not a lot to see in the town itself, but there's a local guy that does fairly inexpensive tours run through the hostel and so today we're going to take one of his hiking tours to a waterfall.

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