Popayán & San Agustín
Finally in beautiful Colombia
14.09.2011 - 17.09.2011
26 °C
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We spent all of last Wednesday, 14th September, travelling from Otavalo to Popayán in Colombia. After a relatively easy, but slow, border crossing, 2 bus, 1 colectivo and 3 taxi rides, we finally arrived at our destination just before midnight.
The next day I explored Popayán a bit, a nice colonial city, with loads of white buildings and many nice coffee shops. In one of those coffe shops I discovered a 'Café Luxemburgo' on the menu. I did not try it, but it sounds good, it contains amaretto
Popayán

Popayán

A Luxembourgish coffee?
I met a New Zealander in Popayán who I knew from the Navimag ferry in Chile in March and who I had met again in Sucre and Quito. He was going to San Agustín the next day together with some other people from the hostel. Since I had already been thinking about visiting San Agustín, I decided to go with them.
The next day, at 6 in the morning, 5 of us got on a bus heading East. Luckily, the journey was faster than expected, so that we arrived after 'only' 6 hours on the bumpy road. We checked into the hostel we had chosen, which was a Swiss-owned hostel in beautiful surroundings on a hill outside of town, where we had our own shared cabin.
When we had settled in, we headed to one of the archaeological parks around town where part of the statues the area is famous for can be seen. The statues were found in tombs all around the area, but not much is known about the culture that made them or what they mean.
We were pretty impressed by the statues and by the landscapes they are set in. The statues represent humans, animals and gods and some of them we spectulated were vampires because of their long teeth ;-)
San Agustín statues

San Agustín statues

San Agustín statues

San Agustín statues
That night, we cooked a nice dinner and had a relaxing night in the quiet setting of our hostel.
The next day, we took a tour of some of the remaining archaelogical sites and the surrounding area. We saw more of the statues, visited a river and a 400m high waterfall.
Landscapes around San Agustín

Estrecho del Rio Magdalena

Natural fridge

San Agustín statues

San Agustín statues

Lulo fruit on the tree

Salto de Bordones
The tour was very nice and interesting, but at the end we were all tired of seeing so many things, so that when it came to visiting another waterfall for which we would have had to pay an entrance fee as well, most of the group decided to not go see the fall, but stay at the restaurant at the entrance and have a refreshing beer instead.
A beer instead of a waterfall
The next morning, I got on the bus back to Popayán and then on to Cali together with the New Zealander I know from Chile while the others were either travelling on in another direction or stayed in San Agustin for an extra night or two.
A few more lines about some things I have discovered about Colombia in these few days:
- There is army and police everywhere. On the road to San Agustín, we saw large groups of soldiers in several spots, I have already gotten into 2 army and 1 police check on the buses and even in the towns you can see heavily armed soldiers on many street corners.
- There are a lot of horses around, even in big cities. People either ride them or they are used to pull carts used as a kind of taxi.
- Colombians love pink. You can see a lot of people wearing pink everywhere. The most extreme example was the Colombian on our tour around San Agustín: she was wearing a pink top and gym trousers, with matching white and pink trainers and socks.
- The cars and taxis are more modern than in most South Amercian countries
- It is finally hot again!
Posted by sarahm_lux 15:02 Archived in Colombia Tagged popayan san_agustín Comments (0)