San Agustin is the scene of a very important Pre-Colombian UNESCO World Heritage Archaeological site. Two native cultures in the area used large volcanic boulders to carve huge sculpted figures, some anthropomorphic, some realistic. When we arrived in San Agustin, we were immediately spotted getting off the bus and approached by a man wanting us to stay at his hotel. We explained we had a booking elsewhere, so he offered to arrange us a taxi, though at a high c...

In a town called Zipaquirá about 50kms from Bogotá is La Catedral de Sal, The Salt Cathedral. The Cathedral lies around 200m under the surface in an old salt mine. As the story goes, the miners were deeply religious people, and decided to create and underground sanctuary to pray daily. This developed into the construction of the original church which opened in 1954, but was closed in 1990 due to structural concerns. After this a new Cathedral was built, under...

Bogotá is a place that fellow travellers had little to say about. Sort of a necessary stopping point with not much to offer. Our opinion didn't stray far from the general consensus, though it wasn't completely devoid of charm or attractions. We got into our hostel and were told our first night would actually be in their apartment around the corner, in a twin room not a double, then move back to the hostel the next day. Normally this wouldn't be such an issue bu...

The bus trip to San Gil was relatively painless and quite picturesque. We found the hostel without too much trouble and used the hostel map to find our way to Gringo Mike's for dinner where they served enormous burgers and a really good brownie for dessert. In the morning we had a look around town and at the markets, and purchased some things to make dinner. Lindsay was still in quite a bit of pain, so we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day. The host...

There ended up being 17 people from our hostel on the Guatapé tour, so in addition to a 10 seated van they also had a 4WD and a crappy old corolla. We were in the crappy old corolla. Before we even got out of the city we had to get out so the driver could get it to the top of a steep hill. After stopping at a lookout point over the city on the way, we drove for quite a while to a small town called Santa Elena, where we stopped at someone's house with a ni...