Uhuh
Trip Start
Jun 22, 2011
1
7
24
Trip End
Aug 05, 2011
What I did
excellent vistas and stone carvings
San Augustín, Huila, Colombia
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The next morning I got to the arranged meeting spot 5 mins late, which Carlos did not really appreciate but we did negotiate a longer tour and grabbed our horses. I vaguely recollect riding a horse when I was really young but was admittedly not very comfortable. The sadle was no good and the stirups too small, but it was fun none the less. Carlos pulled me/us for a while until I was comfortable and went on my own. We stopped at three different sites, one which was grave covers, one of colored statues and one that overlooked a spectacular vista of mountain and river and valley. It was clearly some sort of ancient (2500 years Carlos kept reminding me) ceremonial site. The main stone was a shaman holding his hands out to make contact with nature, or so explained Carlos. There were smaller carvings of animals all around. We stayed for a while and took in the view.
Carlos then took me to some random house in the hills where he said we could get fresh juice, which I of course went for. Haven't really talked about the jugos natural in Colombia yet but good god, phenomenal stuff and everywhere. I never realized that blending fresh fruit with a bit of water and a tiny bit of sugar was so delicious but it is. It may help to curb the massive amount of money I spend on juice in the future...perhaps a blender, nope a home probably first... So yeah had some mango-passionfruit juice and Carlos had a beer and chicken soup with a whole chicken foot in it, was pretty gross, had to take a photo. Carlos liked that I meditated and told everyone we talked with for the rest of the day. Finally finished up the tour by buying an artifact that Carlos had found (2500 years old of course).
Grabbed my stuff at casa de nelly and bought a ticket for a night bus back to popayan. I had a couple hours to kill so I got a really nice meal at a local restaraunt, a true mom and pop spot as mumma was cooking and her son, still in his school outfit (slick green windpants and a collared white polo shirt) was my server. He thought I was really funny not speaking any spanish, wanting strawberry AND raspberry mixed together for my juice and no meat. It was one of the better meals I had so far and I had a hot choclate and some sort of caramel cake thingy for desert. As I was finishing up, there was an old, very native looking lady who was getting up to leave (she incidentally had given me her bottle of salsa picante when my meal was served, speaking some sort of gibberish that I took to mean "Use this, it´s good") took my hand and looked deep intomy eyes and said (in espagñol of course) "Contemplate the statues." She said it several times and I took it very seriously. It was a really nice moment.
The bus ride was an adventure as I was again dropped off on the side of the road and told to flag down a certain bus, whenever I should see it. It was pitch dark by now and this I figured was when I would finally get mugged. So I fed the stray dogs that apperently had taken up residency there and they then chased off every car and motto forthe hour or so that I was there. Was supposively a risky night bus from San augustin to popayan as it's all desolate jungle and the FARC roams nearby but again all good and made it back to popayan at ~4am and grabbed a motel room near the bus station, had a TV and all which was fairly mesmerizing...mer.
