San Agustin – Archaeological Site Capital of Colombia

COLOMBIA TIP #41 – Even if you manage to fall asleep at some point, night buses are the worst.

We had an extra long weekend coming up and it needed to be taken advantage of.  So Crista, Veronica, and I decided we’d go to a new place in Colombia towards the south called San Agustin.  This place is known for the archaeological digs that have happened here and the thousands of stone statues that have been found.  It’s also in a new department of Colombia (Huila), bringing my total to 14/32!  The only buses that were available were night buses, so after dinner, we all headed to the bus station.  We drove on the super windy road called La Linea through the night, so it was difficult to get sleep.  We stopped in Ibague, Neiva, and then finally made it to San Agustin around 9am.  We found a breakfast place and then moved forward to our hostel.  It was more of a hotel-hostel type thing, I guess depending on which type of room you reserved.  There were open hammocks under a roof, but we had booked a room for just the three of us.  It turned out to be a teepee!  We had our own bathroom out the back, which was half under a roof, and the other half with the shower was open (with a wall separating us from the rest of the area).  It was probably my favourite “hostel” that I’ve stayed at!

Our personal teepee and below is a view from the inside.  The bathroom that was half-roofed is out that door in the back.

We had a bit of a nap to recover the lack of sleep on the bus, but then we were ready to tackle the first of the archaeological parks.  We got a bit of a history lesson about when certain people came to the area and how they found the statues, and some guesses as to what the statues are supposed to mean.  It was mostly just walking around the circuit where there are hundreds of statues under wooden roof coverings or along the path.  I started taking pictures of a lot of them, but after a while they were all the same.  Crista shared my thoughts, but Veronica never loses her enthusiasm and was taking pictures of all of them!

Veronica pointing out something of interest with Crista checking it out too.

I had to keep myself entertained somehow…

This one is ready to eat but with two knives.  Or chop sticks.

Any guesses as to who this looks like?  Anyone?  Here’s my clue: “Ellliooooooottttttttt.”

We retired eventually, and had the biggest Bandeja Paisa dinner ever (probably one of my favourite meals in Colombia – beans, rice, ground beef, sausage, and lots of other things that I pick around such as avocado, chicharron or pig skin).  We just relaxed in the evening and went to bed relatively early, still needing more time to recover our sleep.

The next day, we had planned a Jeep tour and we had a few other people join us on the tour.  We had an Australian named Kim and two Swedish girls named Elvis and Olivia.  We were a great group and meshed well.  Some of the highlights of the trip were:

-The skinniest part of the Magdalena River – this river is also the longest one in Colombia stretching from around where we were in the Huila department all the way up to the Atlantic coast in Barranquilla.  Fun story about the Magdalena River – Pablo Escobar, famous drug lord in Colombia, was so rich and started a fad of bringing over exotic animals to kind of make his own personal zoo.  Among those animals that he collected, he had four hippos (one male and three females).  When he died, they took most of the animals out, but the hippos escaped and found their way into the Magdalena River.  Now, years later, the hippo population has grown to 60 or so hippos, living in the river in Colombia, far from their home in Africa!

No hippos here!

-The highest waterfall in Colombia – it’s called Salto de Bordones.  This was as close as we could get, but it was still a pretty spectacular view!

And a selfie for good measure.

-Other archaeological parks with even more of those same statues.  These people really liked their carvings.

This was our tour group stopping to look at a particular tomb of statues.  As you can see, it was a little rainy at that point, but not bad.

The next day we went on more of a hike to a place called Chakira (yes it sounds like Shakira).  Along the first street to make it to the trails, a lady caught up to us and asked if we were going hiking.  She came to San Agustin with group of bikers, but she wasn’t one herself.  So Maria Fernanda (or MaFe) tagged along with us for the day on the hike.  This hike was very hill-y!  Lots of ups and downs and thankfully Veronica and I had our Ciudad Perdida training to keep us going!  The scenery was pretty and the vegetation was different than Armenia which was cool.  Once we made it to Chakira, we found some look out points and took lots of pictures that could never do the view justice.  Then we remembered we had to hike back, and that seemed like a daunting task! But we made it with sore legs, but a good workout nonetheless.

That was to be the last adventure of the trip!  It was a nice weekend and I had never travelled with Crista before and so it was good to be able to do that!  We had another (k)night bus ahead of us and arrived back in Armenia for a rest day before school the next day.  Yes, there’s your reminder for you all that I am still working at this point and not just travelling to crazy places!  I’m also moulding the minds of the future of tomorrow.  Sorry in advance.

PS.  Poppa, I tried to make this one short and sweet for you!

Roadtripping Through Boyaca & Santander

COLOMBIA TIP #25 – Sandwiching adventure with a rest in between is usually a good idea.

Way back during Easter time, it’s Semana Santa (or Holy Week here) and we get a whole week off of school rather than just the four days we usually get at home.  This was a long awaited break for both staff and students and it was time for an adventure to a new part of Colombia with the other Katie and Angela who teaches in Pereira.

One of Katie’s student’s parents helped her organize an itinerary for us visiting various cities in the Boyaca and Santander departments (towards the north east).  Our first destination was to Bogota though, and we were met by Katie’s aunt and cousin who live there.  We went out for lunch with them and then were on our way to Villa de Leyva, kind of the Salento of Bogota.  However it’s a lot farther and the bus ride was terrible!  We specifically asked and though they said it was direct, we went around in circles around the city at least 3 times picking up new people and dropping off others and it took us a lot longer than it should’ve.  We finally arrived and it was dark in the town, but we found our hotel easily enough.  Something interesting about this town is that all of the streets are cobble stoned and you have to make sure you walk carefully as to not twist an ankle!  This also makes it almost impossible to walk around in heels, so we weren’t seeing much of the Armenia-type women around.  That night we just walked around and went to the town square to hang out, then made our way to a small dancing place.  The music was really fun and we met some people there who were really nice too!  It was refreshing to have them just dance for fun instead of trying to pick you up and take you home which happens way too often, so I thought that was pretty cool.

The main town square of Villa de Leyva with all the cobble stones.

Angela, Katie, and Katie – this was the first extended trip I went on while being outnumbered by Americans, so I was constantly hearing repeats of how I say “OUt”, “EH”, and other such Canadian sayings!

The next day we decided to go on ATVs!  There were three of us and we got two ATVs so we switched so that everyone could drive and share for a bit.  We turned out to be the only ones there at the time, so we got a private tour!  It took about two hours to ride around to various places and see the different landscapes.

All ready for some ATV action.

Katie ahead of us, Angela driving, and me the photographer (you can see Angela and I in the rear-view mirror!)

This was one of the stops on the ATV tour and I thought it was the coolest – it’s a house made entirely of mud!  I have no idea how it was made or how the rain doesn’t destroy it now, but hey it looks cool!  And below is a look at the inside of the kitchen with more mud.

We also decided to go all out and go through the mud puddles on the ATVs and have everything splash up on us!  Luckily we were able to clean up in the hotel before heading over to the hostel (we decided to splurge, but only for one night!).

The next day, we were off to the next place – Paipa.  It was rumoured to have nice big lakes and water sports, but it was such a small town that consisted of essentially one street, and there didn’t seem to be much to do.  We went out to a nice restaurant for dinner and we met some people sitting near us that told us of some cool places to go to.  They spoke amazing English, even better than the students.  It made me think about how crazy it is that these people that are kind of in the middle of nowhere have much better English than the kids who are paying to have a bilingual education.  Maybe it all depends on which part of the country that you live in because in Armenia there is zero English outside of school, whereas in other areas, there are more people that are either travelling or just know the language more so they’re more exposed to it outside of school.  A common theme that I found throughout this area of the country was that English was much better than in Armenia.

We woke up the next day and went to a town that had 7 representations of other towns within it.  It was pretty neat to see and we got some good pictures in.  We also ate some interesting fruit ice cream that I’m still not sure that I liked.

This was the representation of Villa de Leyva!  Notice the cobble stone.

I don’t remember what the town was called for this one, but it was a place where they made soccer balls, so I definitely wanted a picture with the statue that represented that!

The buildings are so colourful!

Most of this town consisted of us sleeping, taking naps, and resting.  We had adventure in Villa de Leyva and after that and barely any long weekends at school (I know I sound spoiled), we needed the break!  We vowed that in the next location we’d be better.

So then we got on a bus to San Gil, which is the adrenaline capital of Colombia.  It’s known for all of its extreme sports, so we decided to plan out the many activities that we wanted to do.  We first decided to go caving.  I had already been caving in Swaziland on my ISV trip, but this caving was quite different.  We were given helmets with flashlights all the same, but no coveralls and we knew we were going to be almost swimming in these caves.  We were on a tour with another family and our guide had a little bit of English that we could get clear instructions from.  Almost as soon as we climbed down into the cave, we stepped in water, and soon after there was a section where we held onto a rope and had to dunk underwater to pull ourselves across to the other dry side.  It was only 2-3 seconds underwater to get under the low ceiling, but it was a little bit scary!  And cold.  It was pretty muddy and slippery in the cave too, and at the end we got to go down a mud slide which was pretty fun!  They just didn’t warn you that at the bottom you landed on your bum and it was a little bit of a drop which hurt.  But overall, our first extreme sport was a success!

That afternoon, we met up with a friend that we were organized to meet who was going to be with us for the next two days and take us to Bucaramanga afterwards.  There were three of them – Nicolas, Jimena, and Dayann.  We all went rafting next and I had never done that before so I was excited!  We were in a boat with maybe 10 people altogether and the girl in the back who was our guide would yell a side of the boat and which direction we needed to paddle and we weaved around rocks or towards rapids and it was really fun!  We also got to jump out and float for a bit, Balsaje style.

**No idea where the rafting pictures are, will need to investigate!

We finally reached the end after about an hour and a half or so and had to get back to the hostel and change for our dinner and night out.  We found Lee and Michelle who work in Manizales on their vacation too, so we all had dinner with them and then we parted ways and went dancing with the new friends we had.

The next morning, we woke up and went for our third and final extreme sport in San Gil – Paragliding!  I had already done some paragliding near Cali last year, but this was going to be extra awesome because it was over the giant Chicamocha Canyon, which is a much bigger and better view from up high.  Everybody got a chance to go and when it was my turn I was barely nervous!  I knew last time when they asked me if I wanted to do flips and turns in the air, I said “no” because it was my first time doing it, but this time I was all ready for it!  I also had a bit of a crash landing the other time and the guide guy reassured me that wouldn’t happen this time, but turns out that it did.  But we survived and it was awesome!

**Once again, I need to get the photo/video evidence on my own computer for this from the GoPro they gave us up there, but I have some pictures from the ground too!

Gettin’ ready to go!

This last picture I stole from Katie of her being up in the air!  Just so you can get an idea of what it looks like up there.

After the last adventure, we all drove in Nicolas’ car to Bucaramanga.  From what I remember, the trip took a couple hours.  It was actually very lucky of us to have our own chauffeur because it turns out it was Good Friday and almost no buses were running!  We arrived in Bucaramanga and I finally reached the city that was so much fun to say.  They brought us to our hostel and we cleaned up and had a bit of a nap before meeting up with the nephew and friends of the same parent of Katie’s class that helped us organize the trip at the beginning.  We went over to their apartment and had a dinner of hand-picking foods with all these new people, listened to music, played some games, and practiced a lot of Spanish (they practiced their English too)!

Our flight the next day brought us straight back to Armenia, and we said goodbye to Angela who continued on to Pereira.  It was an incredible Semana Santa break and I was glad we got to venture out and see another (and very different) parts of this amazing country!