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Pasto is a city of about 450,000 people and the capital of the department of Nariño, located in southwest Colombia. The city is located in the "Valle de Atriz", in the Andes cordillera, near the volcano El Galeras, at a height of about 2527 metres.
Its citizens are the targets of a great number of jokes of the lightbulb variety.
History
It was founded in 1539 by the Spanish conquistador Lorenzo de Aldana and named "San Juan de Pasto", after the name of the indigenous people ("Los Pastos") which inhabited the place at the arrival of the conquistadores. It has been an administrative, cultural and religious center of the region since colonial times. During the Wars of Independence against Spain, it was a royalist city, so after gaining independence and because of its geographical location, it kept isolated from the rest of the country creating a traditionalist attitude and cultural absorption.
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