I started off by catching the 6am bus for the six-hour journey to San Agustín, which is the location of hundreds of statues carved from volcanic rock by a group of people that lived in the area between the 6th and 14th centuries AD. The statues are located next to the tombs of tribal elders, to honour the dead.
I arrived in San Agustín around midday, and after lunch I walked to the Archaeological Park, which contains some of the most impressive and well-preserved statues. I spent a couple of hours at the park, and you can see pictures of some of the statues here, here, here and below.
There's also a general view of one of the statues sites here, and a photo of the view from Alto de Lavapatas, which is a site located at the top of a hill, here. I then returned to my hostel, Casa de François, which has probably the most idyllic location of any hostel I've stayed at so far, on a hill overlooking the town. That evening I also booked myself on a jeep tour of the more remote archaeological sites, for the following day.
I turned out to be the only non-Colombian person on the jeep tour, which I guess was actually a good thing, because it meant extra Spanish practice. Our first stop was at El Estrecho del Magdalena (Magdalena Narrows), which is where the entire Magdalena River flows through a channel less than two metres wide. En route to our next destination, we passed a panela factory, so we got out to take a look. Panela is basically solid unrefined sugar, which is made from sugar cane - you can see the finished product here. They gave us some of it to try while it was still hot and liquid, and it was so sweet and tasty that I bought a small block of it later when we stopped for lunch. However, when I tried to eat some that evening, I discovered that it sets so hard that it's more or less inedible without heating it up, so unfortunately it ended up in the bin.
We continued to Alto de Los Idolos, where there are some fairly impressive tombs, for example here and here. After lunch in San José de Isnos, we stopped off at Salto de Bordones, which with a drop of 400m is one of the higher waterfalls in the world. Our final archaeological stop was at Alto de Los Piedras, where we saw the 'Doble Yo' (Double Me) statue, which represents the supposed duality of body and soul.
The following morning I left San Agustín for my next long journey to the Tatacoa Desert. This involved a four-hour bus journey to Neiva, followed by another hour in a colectivo (shared taxi) to Villavieja on the edge of the desert, then a short ride in a mototaxi (tuk-tuk) into the desert. I decided to stay at a space observatory which is located in the desert, because I'd heard that it was possible to visit the observatory to get a guided tour of the night sky from the resident astronomer, Xavier Restrepo. After having missed my chance to go to the star-gazing tour in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile a few months ago, I was keen to take this opportunity instead.
When I got there, I discovered that by a fairly remarkable fluke I'd arrived on the first day of the annual Fiesta de Estrellas (Star Party), which is a four-day celebration of astronomy. The first thing this meant was that all of the cabins at the observatory were occupied, so this became my bedroom for the night. However, it also meant that there was a special star-gazing lecture that evening, so I couldn't really have picked a better time to have been there.
In the afternoon I had a brief walk around the desert, although it was extremely hot so I didn't stray very far from the observatory. I did see some interesting landscapes though, for example here, here and below.
In the evening I went along to Xavier's lecture, which took place in a field where three large telescopes had been set up. There was quite a lot of cloud cover, so it wasn't a perfect night for looking at the sky, but Xavier was able to point out several of the zodiac constellations, as well as Venus, Mars and Saturn, which were all clearly visible in the same part of the sky. He then set up the biggest telescope to point towards Saturn - I took a look, and I could clearly see the planet, including its rings, which was a pretty amazing sight.
Overnight there was a massive thunderstorm, which I found surprising considering this was supposed to be a desert. Fortunately I'd put my tent next to the main observatory building under the shelter of its roof, which meant that the tent stayed dry, but everyone that was staying in the main campsite woke up in a mud-bath. I got up just after dawn and had planned to spend an hour or two exploring the desert, but I soon discovered that all of the sand in the desert had turned to mud, and it was almost impossible to walk in it. As a result, after about ten minutes I returned to the observatory, packed up my things, and set off for Tierradentro.
This turned out to be the most marathon of all of my journeys on this trip, because I had to change buses at both Neiva and La Plata, and the buses are quite infrequent on this route. I had a 1½ hour wait at Neiva and a 2½ hour wait at La Plata, and in the end the 100km journey along horrendous roads took ten hours. I arrived in Tierradentro at about 6pm, and checked into a hostel in which I was the only guest. I then had dinner at Tierradentro's only restaurant (when I went in, the lady had to check if she had any food left to serve me). It was becoming clear that Tierradentro was about the least touristy place I'd ever been to. I heard that the reason Tierradentro receives so few tourists is that until fairly recently it was a guerilla stronghold. That's no longer the case, but the tourists still haven't started arriving in large numbers.
The following morning I set off to see what I'd come to Tierradentro to see, which are a set of tombs built between the 7th and 9th centuries by a disappeared tribe of indigenous Colombian people. The majority of the tombs are situated at four sites that are dotted around the surrounding mountains, and it takes a full day to see them all. I first visited Segovia, which is the most important site, with 28 tombs. I was allowed to go down into several of these tombs by an attendant who unlocked the trapdoors covering them, and to enter each tomb I had to walk down a steep spiral staircase. There were some well preserved wall paintings on some of these tombs, as you can see here and here. In one of the tombs there were also a number of burial pots.
After seeing another set of tombs at the next site, Alto del Duende, I stopped for lunch in San Andrés de Pisimbalá, which is a tiny village with a 400-year-old thatched church at its centre. After lunch I climbed up to the next tomb site, Alto de San Andrés. The tombs there were a bit more difficult to see because they're unlit, and flash photography isn't allowed in any of the tombs, so I had to view them by torchlight. I did however get a pretty good picture of one of the wall paintings.
I then set off to the final site, Alto del Aguacate, which is high up on a ridge, a seriously tough 1½-hour hike uphill from Alto de San Andrés. The scenery was spectacular though, as you can see here and here. I finally made it onto the ridge, where there were a number of tombs, most of which are now just holes in the ground, because they've been destroyed by grave robbers. Below is a picture of me, very hot and sweaty, at Alto del Aguacate. (Incidentally, you may notice that, for now at least, the beard is back.)
It was then a very steep downhill hike back to the hostel, through some more mountainous scenery.
On Sunday morning I again got up at dawn to catch the first bus back to Popayán, with the aim of getting back in time to watch the World Cup final. I did get there in time, but as I'd discovered the previous Sunday, almost everything in Popayán is closed on Sundays, and I couldn't find a single bar in which to watch the match. In the end I gave up and decided to fetch my big backpack from where I'd left it at the hostel, and catch a bus to Cali. The driver did tune into the match on the radio, and although the commentary was in Spanish and I didn't understand much of it, the 20-second shout of 'GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL' towards the end was all I really needed to hear.
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