San Agustin, Colombia - Stone Statues and a Great Family!

We left Bogota and began driving again through the mountainous Colombian roads.  This time we were headed toward the town of San Agustin, famous for its Precolombian burial grounds, including hundreds of unexplained stone statues.

When we arrived in San Agustin we realized that the small town was in fact tiny, with not much room for a camper like ours.  Although we don’t often pay for a place to stay for the night, we decided to spend a night at a campground.  We found a man named Manuel who had a small hospedaje behind his house, and a large front yard that he charged $5 a night to camp in.  Perfect.  But we didn’t realize then just what a great find it was!

Manuel's

A nice spot for Cubby

The shower!

The bold resident rooster, used to being fed by tourists.

We loaded up with water courtesy of Manuel, and after we told him all about our trip he invited us to come to his house later that evening to meet his family.  We accepted, set up the camper, and went to a “piscina natural” (natural pool) nearby for a quick swim.

 

That evening we went to Manuel’s and met his wife Pati, his two young sons, and a few other friends of theirs that had come to visit.  There were two other travellers, Linda and Dario, there as well.  They told us that they had been travelling through Colombia, and had already been camping at Manuel’s for a week - they were having so much fun with the family that they just couldn’t leave!

Playing with the family dog, Chiquis

We soon found out exactly why this was.  Manuel’s family was incredibly sweet to us, and treated us just like family.  That night they happened to be making delicious empanadas.  The empanadas just kept coming – they fed us until we were stuffed.  We had a great time with the family, talking and eating, and it was decided that we would stay at Manuel’s another night so we could relax there after going to the ruins.

The next morning we got up and headed to the ruins.  San Agustin ruins are not the typical pyramids and building structures that you see at most Mayan or Incan ruins.  What you find at San Agustin is hundreds of stone statues and tombs, scattered over the hills around the Magdalena River. 

 

Not much is known about the culture that built the statues.  They were built between 1-900ad, and it is supposed that it is a burial ground for tribal elders and important persons, because there were offerings like pottery and gold objects left in the tombs. 

San Agustin statues

tomb

There is also an area of carved rock in the middle of a stream, called la fuente de lavapatas.  Although the carvings are wearing away, it is obvious that it once was very elaborate with many pictures and designs carved into the rock, and the stream runs overtop, filling the carvings with water.  It is theorized that this was an area used for ceremonial purposes. 

 

At the top of the hill there is an incredible view of the surrounding areas – must have been a magnificent and spiritual place back then.

 

Some statues resemble humans, others have animals features, some seem like a mixture of both.  Was there a deeper meaning behind these statues?  Impossible to know.  The culture that carved the statues seems to have disappeared before the arrival of the Spanish.



While there are hundreds of statues at the San Agustin arqueological site, that’s not all of them!  Statues and carvings are found all over the surrounding area as well.  Linda and Dario took us to some of the best ones that they’d gone to.


more statues

At the site called La Chiquira, there is an amazing lookout point over the river below, the Rio Magdalena.  You can spot many waterfalls in the gorge.

carving at La Chiquira

looking down at the river

 

From the lookout point, you can hike down to the river.  It was very steep and muddy, we had fun slipping and sliding down to the river.

 

We made it down to the bottom and went for a swim.  Well, in my case, just a dip – it was COOOLD!

brrrr

Dario, Linda, and me, back at the top

Well that night, we hung out at the campground and Manuel taught us a card game.  Pati convinced us to stay another night because the next day she was planning to make bread – it was going to be a big event, using the brick oven outside and inviting friends and neighbors.  We decided that we could even have a barbeque using the brick oven and we would treat Manuel and Pati.

The party was a big success – the amounts of bread that were made just blew my mind!  Pati also made a sugary icing to spread on the bread.  It was delicious…

Starting the fire in the oven…notice the tray of meat already waiting

Bread-making machines!

Looks like someone got into the flour.

Bread that was left over at the end of the night, after everyone had eaten AND taken a bunch home.

 

And it was decided again that we would stay another night…

The next day Manuel and Pati took us fruit-picking on their property – they grow lots of cool stuff, like nisperos, bananas, oranges, and coffee.  They let us keep the whole bag of fruit we picked!

We hung around that day and told Manuel and Pati that the following day, we really would have to be leaving... of course, Pati was already planning an event for us.  “You can’t leave,” she told us, “tomorrow I’m making sausages!” Hahaha…this family is great.  A supposed one-night stay had turned into four, and we could easily end up staying a month with them (and probably gain 10 pounds)!  But we did need to move on with the trip, so we insisted that we had to leave but will be back someday.

Quality time with the rooster.

The next morning we took a family photo and said a sad goodbye… thank you for everything Manuel and Pati!

San Agustin family

And we headed toward Ecuador, with Linda and Dario along.  The adventures continue in our next post…



 

Back to Colombia

We headed back to Colombia from Venezuela, and we were there before we knew it – literally!  We got a tip from a Venezuelan that there was an easier and more direct border crossing than the one we were headed to.  He directed us down a road which we followed for some time.  There were some checkpoints on this road, like usual for Venezuela, where we had to stop and show our documents, etc.  At one particular checkpoint, the officer was especially thorough.  He searched Cubby, checked our vehicle paperwork and passports, and even asked us, “Did you get your passports stamped?”  What a weird question, we thought, of course we had gotten stamped into the country.

After some squinting at the passports, he gave them back to us and told us that we could continue.  We got back in the car and drove a little further, thinking that we should soon be approaching the border.  10 minutes down the road, we find yet another checkpoint. They stop us, of course, and ask to see our documents.  We hand them over, and the officer says “This is a vehicle permit for Venezuela.”

“Yes,” we respond.

“You’re in Colombia now.”

We looked at each other and laughed.  How in the world did we cross a border and not even know it????  Apparently, that overly thorough officer at the last checkpoint was not a checkpoint at all – he was the border.  And he had been asking if we had been stamped out.  There were no immigration or customs buildings, no signs, nothing to indicate that it was a border, since it was just a small, rarely-used border crossing.  So there we were, in Colombia, with no documents.  We explained the situation to the officers, and they told us that since it was a Sunday (just our luck) there was no one at the border office anyway.  Technically, without proper documentation, they could have confiscated our vehicle, but they were understanding and advised us to drive to the next city, Cucuta, and take care of the paperwork there in the morning.

We drove the hour to Cucuta and spent the next morning being sent to different locations around the city to take care of the paperwork.  In the end, we had to go back to the border (we went to the large Cucuta crossing this time), walk into Venezuela in order to be stamped out, walk back into Colombia to be stamped in, and only then could we take care of the vehicle paperwork.  It took almost the whole day, but eventually we found ourselves legally back in Colombia.

We headed into the mountains to visit some of the towns on the way to Bogota.  We wound through the steep, curvy roads of the Colombian Andes.

The first town we stopped in was Pamplona.  A pretty town, it had a large central plaza that reminded us of Mexico, although with cool, damp weather.

We parked and stayed right there at the plaza that night.

See Cubby?

We walked through the town and treated ourselves to some delicious pastries from the pasteleria that evening!

We left Pamplona and ended up next in Barichara.  Barichara is a lovely colonial town that looks over the Chicamocha canyon.  Again, we parked and stayed right at the central plaza!

We explored the cobblestone streets of the city and walked to a lookout point with a fantastic view of the canyon below.

lookout point over the canyon

Chicamocha canyon

We were relaxing in the plaza when who shows up but Sonja and Dietmar, a German couple we met in Panama!  They are also driving overland through the Americas and were shipping their vehicle at the same that we did.  They were eye-witnesses to the whole fiasco of us trying (and failing) to fit the camper into the shipping container.  It was great to see them again and swap shipping and travel stories.  We hung out with them that night and tried our first Colombian Aguardiente.  It was a fun night!

With Sonja and Dietmar

Our next stop was the town of Villa de Leyva; this is a big tourist destination, and for good reason – it is a beautiful place, quite charming and relaxed, with beautiful spring-like weather.  The plaza is huge and striking. 

We enjoyed wandering this town very much!

Villa de Leyva has a colorful and fun Sunday Market.  Great fruits and veggies!

Near Villa de Leyva there is a museum called “El Fosil” – where you can view the fossilized skeleton of a kronosaurus.  The skeleton is in the exact place where farmers found it in 1977.  Pretty impressive!

From Villa de Leyva, we went to Colombia’s capital city, Bogota.  Bogota is high in the mountains.  It is a cool place.

We ate some “typical” Colombian food, I tried the peto, a sweet oatmeal-type concoction made from corn, and Ricardo had Changua, a soup with milk, egg, veggies, and bread.  Yum!

We went to the independence museum and learned how Colombia gained its independence.  The museum is located in the  old house of Jose Gonzalez Llorente, a Spanish loyalist.  As the story goes, on July 20, 1810, Colombian patriots asked to use a fancy flower vase that belonged to Llorente.  He refused, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back, so we say.  A riot broke out, the flower vase was smashed in the process, and the patriots declared their independence from Spain.

statue in the independence museum

 The bottom of the broken flower vase is on display in the museum and remains a symbol of Colombian independence.

What remains of the broken "florero"

In Bogota we also went to the world-famous Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and learned about the history of metalworking, all the way back through precolombian times.  There were many, many, maaaany pieces of gold on display...

I took the tram up to Monserrate.  At the top, you are 3170 meters above sea level and can look down over the whole city below.  I took the cable car back down.

the train going up to Monserrate

panoramic of Bogota from Monserrate

teleferico

We had been told by friends to check out the Bogota Beer Company, the local craft brewery, while we were in town, but we were not quite sure where it was.  Nobody we asked seemed to know anything about it.  On our last evening in Bogota, we were talking about how disappointed we were to miss it, when we just happened to walk by!  It was the perfect way to spend our last night in Bogota, although we spent more money than we should have on the first delicious microbrew we had had in many months!

celebrating a good beer after months and months of lager