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.