Tierra Adentro

The general mean of transportation between the small villags in this area are white pickup trucks, the back part of the trucks is covered so more passengers can sit there, to get from San Agustìn to Tierra Adentro, I had to take four cars, switching at three villages on the way, the last part of the road, is along a river, which looks like it is flowing uphill, I don't know if this is just an illusion or some gravitational anomoly, in the end I arrived at this tiny village called San Andres, some locals suggested to me to stay at Los Lagos, a hotel in town, when I saw this place , I had this strange feeling, telling me not to go in, the place did not look bad or anything, but I just had this bad feeling about it, so I stopped for a minute to think about, looking at the place then to the other direction, wandering whether to go in or not, my original plan was to stay in one of the places close to the park, but that is half an hour walk from the town, and I did not feel like doing it with my heavy backpack, so I decided to go in, got a room, and went to take a shower, during the shower the electricity was suddenly cut, they brought somebody to check out the problem, but he could not fix it, I was finished with my shower anyway, and deicded just to lie down and read my book, using my head lamp, but the toilet had some leak, and the sound of water flowing down from the water tank was annoying me, so I decided to take a look at it, I oppened the top of the water tank, and started fiddling with the mechanism to see if I could make the flow stop, but instead I completely broke it, and the water burst out, socking my cloth, the lady had to close the main water switch, and cut the water to the whole place, I felt kind of guilty for the whole thing, but there was nothing much we could do during the night, and the problem had to be left for the morning, I went back to bed to read my book, at least there is know annoying noise of flowing water.

In the morning the electricty and water problems were still there, I head out to visit the archiological sites, I had no map and no guide, only the direcions lady gave me, I managed to miss the first site (later I found out that was because the sign had its face to the other direction, as the path should be walkd the other way around), I reached the second one, there I went down to see the tombs, only to find out that my lamp batteries were finished, because I forgot to turn off the lamp after reading during the night, somehow unfortunite events seem to happen in sequence, and I was getting really frustrated and annoyed, anyway the burrial site was not intresting anyway, I continued to the next site, luckily the tombs in this one were let, and it was more interesting than the first one, basicly these sites are kind of cemetaries, consisting of underground caves, some of them close to the surfice but others are up to nine meters deep, with a spiral stairway leeding into them, the caves are decorated with drawings and carved faces, in them the indiginous people put orns containing the bones of the dead, these caves were secondary burrial places, first the bodies would be burried in another tomb, then later the bones were collected, put into orns and moved to one of these caves, security at this place is very tight, all entrances to the caves are cealed with hatches, and there is a gaurd at the site that unlocks them for visitors, and then closes them after they go out. After this site (Sigovia), which is the most interesting one, I descended to the museums (where I should have started my tour), then back to the town, passing through the first site I missed, which was just statues like the ones in San Agusìn, but skipping the other burrial site (Alto de San Andres), and also the tombs on the top of the mountains surrounding the town, which would have taken me two hours to reach, I arrived back at the hotel in time for launch, there are no restaurants in this tinly little town, you just eat at the hotel you are staying in, at my hotel the lady just served me what ever she cookd for the family, she has a cute daugter, six yeas old, that decided to socialize with me, she showed me the birds they were keeping, and asked to see the pictures on my digital camera.

Maybe two to three tourists visit this place a day, the only other tourist I saw was a weird Japanese guy, staying at the same hotel, which I did not get a chance to talk to. After launch I decided to head for my next destination, Cali, but decided to stop in Popayàn for the night, then continue to Cali in the morning, to make the journey a bit more comfortable.

San Agustìn

I spent three days in this wonderful place, beautiful nature, very friendly people, little tourists, and many many stone statues. I stayed at hotel Cambi, run by a very friendly family, the first day I did the jeep tours, which took us to see a couple of waterfalls, and a few archeological sites, the two interesting onces are located on top of two hills, like most hills around, they are covered with green grass and sparsely distributed trees, many statues have have been excavated from tombs, and put infront of the tombs for display. The next day I did the hourse riding tour, which took as to other sites closer to the town, with more statues and carved stones, but it was a really nice day, perfect weather for a horse ride around the beautiful country side, it was my first ever hourse ride, but I had no problems, and I get better and better at it, learning how to bounce in rythem with the horse, we had a guide (Juan) with us this time, and he cleared up some things that I was wandering about the day before. The third day I went to the Archeological park, which contained even more statues, did I say already that there are many statues around here, all from the pre Hespanic times, by the way.

I tried a fish here called "Mujarra", it looks and tastes like a fish that we have in my country, we call it "Musht", anyway it is a very tastey fresh water fish. The hand crafted souveniers are very impressive here, too bad I have a rule against buying that kind of stuff, because I would have to carry it for a while in my backpack. To sum it up, San Agustìn is a very nice and tranquil town, the only thing it lacks is the tourist crowds, which just makes it an even more fascinating place.

Tomottow I am heading to Tierra Adentro another archeological site, in the middle of nowhere.

Popayàn

I left Bogotà after four days, I arrived at Popayàn a nicely preserved Colonia city, and a good stop over on the way to San Agustìn, I went for a walk around the town, all the buildings are painted white, a couple of the musiums I wanted to visit were closed, I took a walk up a near by hill, were they put a statue of the founder of the city, giving me an overview of the town, but then it started to rain, so I eneded my tour of the town. I went for dinner at a local restaurant, had a good steak, remineded me of the excellent Argentinean beef, for breakfast and launch I just tried different kinds of "empanadas" they have. In the morning I was awoken by the immigration police knocking of the door of my room, they said it was a routine check, asked for my passport, and asked many questions, then left, I decided it was time for me to leave.

I took the bus to San Agustin, a very bumpy six hour ride on an antique bus, we were stopped by the military at some point, they checked the peoples bags, and did some body searches, for some reason they left me to be, they did not check my backpacks and neither did the body search on me. Three years ago there was a lot of fighting in this region between the goverment and the FARC, which is why little tourists visited this place in the last few years, but they are starting to come back now, I met a few people in Bogotà who were in San Agustìn, and they highly recommended it, so I decided to make this trip as well. I booked a jeep tour tomorrow, which will take me to some of the archiological sites and a couple of waterfalls. The hotels in this town are not that nice, but considering that only a handfull of tourists visit this place everyday, you can't expect much investment in tourisim.

My 512mb memory card is definitly dead, so is my memory card reader, the former means that I lost my pictures of Bolivia and the first couple of days in Colombia, the later means I can't upload images as often as I did before, I will wait until I accomulate some pictures, then get them burned on a CD in a photo shop, I will just keep writing the entries for now, and I will add the pictures to them later, when I can.

Bogotà

I went to see the salt cathedral , which is about two hours by busses from Bogotá, it was quite impressive, but begs the question of why would one go through all this effort to blew up caves in salt mines with dynamite, just to put some crosses inside. I used the Transmelineo transportation system for the first time, it is best described as an surface metro, it uses normal busses, but have exclusive lanes, and like the metro it is a closed system, so you can switch any number of busses to get to your destination with the same ticket. Except for the main avenidas, all the streets in Bogotà have numbers, in one direction they are called "calle #" and in the other direction "carrera #". I went to visit the plaza de Bolivar today, very beautiful, also the other buildings and cathedrals around that area are very nice as well, heavy security everywhere, in the past there were deadly attack by Gurrilas at goverment buildings there, I wanted to visit the Botero museum but it is closed on tuesdays, so I went instead to the military museum, interesting, and it was only a dollar to go in.

I went to the cinima to see a Colombian movie last night, it was called something like ¨My grandfather, my father and me¨, it was a kind of drama/comedy, it was very funny, but still managed to be deep sometimes, I really loved it, and I heard from some poeple living her, that it the characters in the movie, depect really personality types in the Colobian society.

My memory card got screwed up for some reason, it had the pictures from the last three weeks in Bolivia and the first couple of days in Bogotà, this is why there are no pictures in the previous entries. Today I used my second smaller memory card, but it seems that my memory card reader is broken as well, so I can't upload any of those pictures either, I plan to go to a photo shop and just have them put the pictures on a CD, because the cheapest memory card reader I could find here costs 45 US dollars.

I am going to Popayàn and San Agustìn next, I met some travellers that went there, and they strongly recommended it, and it seems that the security situation there has improved lately.

Bogotà

Arrived at Bogotà Saturday morning, after arriving to the hostel, I visited the gold museum, very nice hand crafted gold objects from the pre Spanish period, after that I was so tired from the low quality sleep I got the night before, that I slept for a few hours, which was not bad at all, as it was the last day of the weekend and I wanted to get a taste of the night life in Bogotà , I went out with Coby (An Israeli guy) and Mark (An American guy living in Bogotà and working as an English teacher), we went to an area called Las Galerias, after checking out a few places we ended up in a pub called Kandaleria (I think that is the correct spelling), I been in clubs and pubs through out south america, but they are no match for Colombian parties, the women here are beautiful, they are the best dancers a I seen in south america, they love to party and they have a fondness for gringos, we ended up dancing all night, finally left at 5 in the morning.

Today I went up the mountain in the cable cart, to get a view of the city from above, it was very busy (Sunday), and it started to rain, so it was not the best conditions for viewing the city, the city is huge (8 million people live here), spreading in all directions beyond sight, when we got down it was pouring, we had no rain gear, and we could not get a taxi, so we ended up stuck for an hour, until the rain became lighter, and we could walk back to the hostel.

To Colombia

I received a call from LAB (The Bolivia Airline) telling me that I can`t go on the flight I reserved, instead I had to go to Lima, spend a night there (they would pay for the hotel), and then take a flight to Bogotà the next morning, bummer, but as compensation, I was offered a free flight ticket in south America, not a bad deal after all, I chose a free flight from Caracas to Cochabamba.

At the airport there was a big press presence, it turned out that Evo Morales the new Bolivian president was going to arrive soon, back from his world tour, all the press was gathered around the VIP exit door, which was next to the internet cafe I was setting in, I got excited about seeing Mr Morales in person, and I had my camera ready, but he played a trick on the press and used a different exit, and when that became known, all the press ran somewhere seeking to catch him.

I have yet to have a LAB flight that left on time, and this time was no exception, the flight from Cochabamba left half an hour late, and the one from La Paz three hours late, we arrived at Lima at 3:00 , just four hours before the flight to Bogotà , after searching in vain for somebody from LAB, I decided that there was no point anyway, that it did not make sense to go to a hotel and back with so little time left, so I took a nap for a couple of hours on an improvised bunk in the dining area, then headed for the check in desks of Aviana (the Colombian airline), apparently I was not supposed to do it this way, LAB was supposed to take care of the check in process for me, but in the end I did get my boarding pass and I was told to hurry up to the plane, a lot of chaos followed, apparently I am not supposed to enter through the normal entrance to the gate, because my flight is a connection flight, finally they referred me to some side entrance, but when I got to the immigration desk, I did not have my immigration form anymore (why do they make you fill one if you are just in transit and you don`t plan to leave the airport), anyway I had just shown this form to the guard at the side door, so I got back to him and told him he did not give me back my form, he could not find it either, we searched for it for a while but neither of us had it, so the only explanation that I could think of is that he got mixed up and gave to another passenger, which turned out to be exactly what happened, luckily one of the ladies at the immigration desk noticed the form, and that it did not belong to the person carrying it, finally I was allowed to go through immigration, ran to the airplane that was being delayed waiting for me.

But in the end I arrived to Bogota with all my baggage and I guess that is what really matters.

Cochabamba

Still in Cochabamba, but I am flying next to Colombia, I already bought my ticket for the 13th, my original plan was to do Australia and New Zealand, but due to personal and financial reasons, I decided to do Colombia and maybe a bit of Venezuela, I am fascinated by the stories I heard about Colombia, the cost of the whole trip will be same as the cost of just the ticket to NZ, and a taste of the Caribbean should make forget about AUS and NZ.

I witnessed a violent incident yesterday, and almost got involved in it, I was at an Entel point, a kind of telephony and internet kiosk, some young guy tried to pay with a 50$ bill (US dollars), and when the young women at the counter told him she had no change for 50$, he went mad, started shouting at her and making violent gestured, and when a man who was setting at one of the computers, kindly asked him to come down, he even went madder, started banging his hands over the glass doors of the cabins, swearing at that man, the man made gestures that he was not interested in trouble, and got back to what he was doing, but the young guy would not come down, he stood outside, his girlfriend in front of him trying to calm him down, but he just would not, he kept violently shouting and challenging the other man to come out, he must have been high on some kind of drug, his aggressiveness and hyper activeness just did not look normal, and when the other man ignored his calls to come out, he burst into the place which such agility that I did not think was possible for a human, grabbed the man, pushed him against the wall, and started beating him up, I felt I had to do something, I doubted that with my bare hand I had any chance against such strength and quickness, which by now I was almost sure it was boosted by some kind of drug, I looked around for something heavy I could use to knock this guy down with, but there was nothing around, but I felt I had to something, I started drifting towards the action, and if it was not for the last moment intervention of his girl friend, I might have gotten involved, she polled him to the outside of the place, but not before he grabbed a monitor on the way out, and smashed it over the front desk, he remained outside in front of the place with his girlfriend tying to talk sense into him, they started calling the police, but I though "how long is that going to take", I went out to the street trying to find some police men, started in one direction then in the other direction, could not find anyone, where are they when you need them, finally I found a couple of them at the other side of the plaza, I told the story and led them to the place, they where a couple old men, and if it was not for there guns would really be of no match for this guy, anyway the guy had left the place by the time we got there, but he was setting on a bench at the plaza not far away, the cups went to talk to him, in the end he paid the money, and that is all, the just let him go.