Ancient Civilazations
Trip Start
May 11, 2005
1
191
259
Trip End
Ongoing
San Agustin,
Colombia
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
there.
OF COURSE I COPIED AND PASTED THE ABOVE TEXT......
Getting to Saint Augustin took 6 hours on a sketchy dirt road that wound its way deep in to the Colombian highlands
a
. The US and British web sites both warn that this is an extremely dangerous area due to heavy guerrilla activity. Even Colombians warned us that this was very dangerous area. But of course nothing happened! On the plus side the weather was cool so we did not swear our ass off for 6 hours! Basically the activity here is to check out the stone statues that are littered throughout the country side. Most of these statues are marking graves and either represent the person buried inside or are some sort of protector of the dead. The civilization was suppose to be very advanced but there is very little information on it so not a whole lot is known. Peter, Imar and Anna (all English) have all been bumping into me as I have traveled Colombia so we all wound up doing Saint Agustin together.
The first day we took a jeep tour to check out some waterfalls, huge gorges and of course stone statues. The scenery in these Colombian highlands is so green and mountainous. The countryside could easily be confused with the Alps. Plus there was ton of massive waterfalls
I ended up forgetting my only jumper in the jeep that we took that day. Since the jumper is the only warm piece of clothing I own, I was eager to give it back. I had a friend call the jeep company to tell them I left it. 2 days later I still did not have my jumper. I knew that the driver knew it was mine and I knew the jeep driver knew where I was staying so I just chalked it up a loss. Walking to the bus station my last day, I saw the jeep driver waiting to pick up more backpackers wearing my jumper! Seeing me he tried to get into his jeep and drive away! I stayed calm, opened the door of his jeep and pointed to the jumper he was wearing and told him it was mine. He then said he just had to go somewhere and would comeback
a
. Then he drove off down the street! Knowing that he probably was not going to come back, I went into the tourist office and ask if that guy (Diego) worked there. They told me yes, then I told them he stole my jumper, then they told me that what ever I left in his jeep became his....hmmmm.... then I told them I had called soon after I had left it.... then they told me that Diego did not work there.... hmmmmmm In reality I did not really care that much about the jumper but the whole stealing and lying thing pissed me off, So I pitched a small bitch-fit. Swearing loudly, calling the tourist office thieves, getting names and numbers of the tourist office guy and getting my English possy involved seem to do the job. 5 minutes later my jumper appeared....... whatever.. cheeky bastards.Besides this little incident I had great time checking out all the sites . I went alone because the English gang went for a ride on malnourished old horses. Hiking around I ran into a huge elementary school group of kids They all wanted to have their picture taken with me and ask all sort of things in Spanish. Their teachers had the whole class say hello to me in English. They took pictures of me and I took pictures of them the adults wereeven filming me... Then all the kids and teacher proceeded to give me a huge group hug. Of course I was not expecting a group hug thing so when 25 kids and 2 teachers hugged me at once my hands went to my pockets to protect all my stuff. I found out later (from a flier they gave me that I later had translated) that they believe in the healing properties of hugs and were trying share their hugging philosophy with me!
Later that day I was trapped for an hour in a small little gazebo with these 25 kid while waiting for a monsoon rain to end. They had so many questions and would laugh as I butchered the Spanish language. One kid wanted to know if my hair color was normal in my country, the other kids thought this was a rude questions and I could hear them telling him that of course I was normal in my country...little do they know!
Our last stop in Colombia was to see a random church built on the border between Ecuador and Colombian. Its built right into the side of a mountain where a rock formation of the virgin Mary is found. It was a cool site but not as cool as two lamas wearing miniature sombreros.. Check out the pictures.
