san agustin and popayan

after crossing the border we spent the night in a town just a few hours from the border.  the next day we traveled about 9hrs to the small town of san agustin.  the views along the way were spectacular.  big mountains covered in forest and tropical vegetation.  the roads were narrow and curvy and the going was slow.

this quaint little pueblo of san agustin is tucked up in the andes but not quite as high as we had been previously, only about 6000ft elevation.  the town itself is cute but the main attraction in these parts is the nearby archeological park where we spent an afternoon walking around.  there you will find statues that were carved by a people over 2000 years ago, dating to before christo.  they are amazingly well preserved.

the statues were associated with burial sites and tombs (deep holes lined with rock and covered with large slabs.  were the statues guiding or guarding? quiene sabe, but the kids and i wished we could find a magic treehouse to go back and visit these peoples of the statues.

a sarcophagus

our second day we took a tour that visited a couple other archeological parks but also some nearby natural attractions.  the important rio magdalena travels through a narrow channel called el estrecho.  change the vegetation a little and we could've been in the northwest!

we also stopped at colombia's tallest waterfall at 1300ft.

at one of the archeological parks you can still see the paint on the statues! paint that lasts over 2000 years!

we stayed a third day in town because we heard there was going to be a festival.  we've had really good luck catching festivals on this trip so we wanted to check it out....and there was a festival, sorta, but not of the scale we've come to expect.  this was the festival de reinado de la consecho (festival of the queen of the harvest)....the coffee harvest is starting soon.  there was no parade, or dancing, but there was a stage with several bands and lots of folks with food stands.  apparently the bigger party with the queens was the next day but we needed to move on.

leaving san agustin we traveled to the city of popayan.  this is colombia's white city.

our hostel has a bike share program so took advantage and tooled around on bikes the first day (it was sunday so there was very little traffic on the road). we haven't been on a bike in over four months so it was really fun to be on bikes again!

popayan was a lovely city and reminded me a bit of sucre (bolivia's white city).

tomorrow we hit the road again and head toward colombia's coffee region!
hasta luego!