San Agustin

San Agustin is one of Colombia's main archeological hot spots. The
area has loads of ancient free-standing stone carvings, left behind by
a mysterious pre-Columbian civilisation. Nobody seems to know much
about the people who lived here. The carvings are focused around
burials, tombs etc. Beautiful.
Yesterday we went to the main site, then walked the 3km back down to
the town. The people here are super friendly, seemingly so happy to
encounter a foreign tourist.
Things that stick out: beautiful houses with pristine tropical
gardens, horses - working horses, juice restaurants, sugarcane, coffee
crops, fruit everywhere, flashing Christmas lights on all the houses,
girls in slutty clothes, cars with booming stereos out of the boot,
tavernas brimming with men drinking 'Poker' beer at 10am on Sunday
morning, friendly people shaking our hands :)
We booked a jeep tour for today to see the other sites and some
waterfalls. 6 foreigners all crammed in, Kirsty and I got the back
sideways seats i.e. in the boot. Kirsty not happy. By the time we had bumped along for
an hour, the sick bag was ready again. I must mention that she hasn't actually been sick on any of these buses yet!
 The other sites were all similar to the main site in San Agustin, but it was good to check out
the countryside and have a wee peek into how people live here. Lots of
agriculture: fruits, coffee, banana, plantane (sp?), sugarcane, cows
grazing, horses. The waterfalls were good too. They claim that one of
them is the second largest in South America, but we aren't sure that
can be true. They also have this '7 metre' statue, we were looking for
it all day only to realise that we had seen it, 5 metres of it is
under the ground, only 2 metres sticks up!
We had a cash flow problem in San Agustin. We had exchanged a few US
dollars at the border, and again at the bus station. We were holding
out for the ATM in San Agustin. There were 2 in the town. First one,
no queue, no money inside. We go around the corner to the other one to
see a sea of people all lined up waiting. We decided to come back
later, same problem. Turns out it was payday, people come from all the
tiny villages to collect their wages - the ATMs can't handle it! We
owed George for our accommodation and our jeep tour, and we wanted to
get a bus north. George to the resue, drove us to the next big town,
to an ATM, now we're at the bus terminal waiting for another overnight
bus - apparently on better roads - to Pereira. George is a legend, he
totally looked after us, we would be washing dishes if it weren't for
him!
Today is Monday. We fly to Costa Rica on Sunday. We're heading north
to try to fly from Pereira to Nuqui on the pacific coast. Notice FLY
and not bus. Our tolerance is lowwww at the moment! ;)
Time is running out here but we definitely like Colombia the best and
wish we could see more of it.
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