Category: Ecuador, Columbia, Panama and Costa Rica 2017

San Augustin Archaeological Park Day 2

Today we went for a horseback ride! We rode about eight and a half miles and visited three Archaeological sites that are more remote than the sites we visited yesterday!! It was wonderful!

It is so beautiful here, lush with wonderful views and lots of interesting flowers, crops and birds. Our guide Boliva was great and his horses were nice and calm and well behaved.

Every morning we’ve been here we have heard a loud raucous bird in the trees. If I understood our guide correctly it is a chachalaca bird. Some people even have them as pets. At one of our stops we saw one up close.

Our first stop on our ride was Purutal – La Pelota. An ancient burial site that was excavated in 1984. That’s four years after Duke was here. The statues are colored. As I understand it these are the only statues that they have found that are colored. They are located exactly as they were found.

Our second stop was at La Chiquita. We left the horses at the top and climbed down to a spectacular overlook of the Magdalena River Canyon and two waterfalls. There were carvings overlooking the canyon too.

Our third stop was El Tablón where the statues were excavated by a German archaeologist in the early 1900s. They were sent to Germany and then later repatriated. Next it was back to our hotel.

I got to practice my Spanish a lot today talking to our guide. At one point I asked what he uses for coffee when he drinks coffee at home. He said he has a few coffee bushes. He picks the coffee, roasts it, grinds it, and brews it all right before he drinks it. Our hotel told us they do the same thing for our breakfast coffee. The coffee is delicious.

Coincidentally the wife of our guide is the niece of the man Duke stayed with in 1980. The girl in the picture below from 1980 is a bank manager today!

The ride today was so tranquil and beautiful. We saw fewer than twenty other tourists!

It started raining hard after we got back to our hotel. I wanted comfort food for dinner so I had delicious Pasta carbonara and Duke had lasagne.

I haven’t been on a horse since I was in college. I’m sore and tired tonight but it was a wonderful day!

San Augustin Archaeological Park Day 1

This morning we walked up to the entrance of the San Augustin Archaeological Park and then spent a few hours exploring the park. There are several groups of statues and burial sites at this location and a museum. There also other parts of the park with a lot more that we didn’t see today. We will explore them in the coming days.

First we visited the excellent museum which has several smaller pieces. Many of them had been stolen over the years and then in the last few years recovered. One of the things the descriptions stressed is that over the last century archaeologists have proposed many theories about the people who created these statues but they are all just theories. They know very little about these people. They do know that the statues were created over more than 2000 years prior to the Spanish arrival.

When Duke was here in 1980 he was on horseback tour of several sites with a guide. They came upon a man plowing with a horse drawn stick plow. He had just turned up a small statue very similar to the ones above.

After the museum we walked through the jungle to six other sites where the carvings and burial sites are still in place.

After a rest at our hotel we went into the town of San Augustin and explored a bit.

We had an excellent dinner at a small restaurant about half way between town and our hotel. We started with fried plantains with garlic.

Then we each had steak fixed in different ways. Unfortunately you can’t really see Duke in this picture but you get the idea.

I have a lot of pictures which aren’t posted in the blog. I upload them to a iCloud shared photo stream. Let me know if you would like to be added as a viewer of the photo stream.

Mocoa to San Agustin Archeological Park

We rode two different vans today. The first one took us from Mocoa to Pitalito. The second one took us to San Agustin and then to our hotel in San Agustin Archaeological Park. In the second van I was squished in the middle in back but at least all the roads were paved and the rides weren’t too long.

Our hotel, Hostal Huaka – Yo is in a beautiful setting and we have a big comfortable room.

Before it got dark we went out for a walk on some of the back roads and saw lots of chickens,

Coffee,

And beautiful flowers.

We ate dinner at the hotel. It was the best meal we have had since Quito. Duke’s Fried plantains were especially tasty. The chicken and beef were wonderful too. We are the only ones staying here tonight and we were the only ones in the restaurant.

San Augustine Archaeological Park has The largest group of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures in South America. Duke has great memories of being here almost forty years ago before it was a UNESCO world heritage site. Tomorrow we explore.

Pasto to Mocoa, Columbia

If you look at a map you will see that we are heading generally north towards Bogata, Columbia. Of course to get there we have to go through the Andes. Yesterday when Duke was buying our bus tickets for the next leg of our journey the helpful man in the bus office explained that it is a 10 hour bus ride from Pasto to Pitalito, our next destination. We decided to go half way today and half way tomorrow. So as a result we are in Mocoa tonight. Google maps says it is 43 miles from Pasto to Mocoa. But it is a windy mountain road and the trip takes five hours. About 60% of the road is dirt and very narrow. It is cut out the side of some very steep Andes Mountains. We rode in a van with 5 other people because I don’t think a bus would have fit on the road.

The picture above is our van at a lunch stop in Sibundoy. The road turned to dirt right after this. We have seen lots and lots of motorcycles in Columbia. Right in front of the van in this picture was a Yamaha motorcycle shop.

I tried to take some pictures of the road out of the van front window but they don’t do the narrowness or the steep drop off justice. The mountains were covered with jungle and we saw several waterfalls and even forded several streams.

The road twisted and turned so much and was so bumpy there was no way I could read. So the whole five hours I listened to the audiobook of Hillary Clinton’s new book “What Happened”. I’m really enjoying it and finding it inspiring and entertaining, perfect for our long ride.

Mocoa is at 2000 feet altitude, so for the first time on this trip we are warm. We even ate at an outside restaurant.

Tomorrow it is on to San Augustine Archaeological Park near Pitalito.

Ipiales to Pasto, Columbia

This morning before we left Ipiales we took a taxi to see Las Lajas Sanctuary. It is a beautiful gothic church built into the side of a gorge. The altar area is a cave in the rock where it is believed that miracles have happened.

As soon as we got in the taxi and the driver found out that we were from the United States he asked us if Trump is really going to build a wall with Mexico. Duke said who knows! And they went on to discuss American politics and the current situation in Columbia. I got to use my stock phrase Él es una vergüenza National. (He is a national embarrassment). All of our taxi drivers so far have been very friendly.

We walked down to the church from the road at the top and then took a new cable car across the Gorge back up to the top. It was spectacular.

Back in Ipiales we caught the bus to Pasto, about a ninety minute bus ride.

Pasto is the most modern town we visited since Quito.

We walked around and explored a bit. For dinner we ate Mexican food