So last time we spoke I was soaking up the natural beauty of Salento... I unfortunately never managed to hike to the hummingbirds or see the high altitude palms that sounded so amazing partly due to being a bit knocked back with a throat infection and partly due to endless torrential rain which didn`t seem to want to let up for days on end... so I decided to make my way to Cali to be reunited with Ben, the last remaining fellow boat friend still traveling the same way as me.

So Ben and I just spent a day in Cali which is known for being the Salsa capital of Colombia... while it would have been nice to stop and shake a tail feather, Ben and I decided to make a move on to San Agustin. SA is a small town at the end of a 7 hour dirt road towards the south of Colombia, which is home to some statues, unique to Colombia, left by a pre-spanish conquest indigenous race. In order to catch our bumpy ride to San Agustin we needed to go via the picturesque colonial town of Popayan. Typically we bumped into various friends we`d picked up in previous locations at the bus station heading for the very same destination as us! ...and off we went like Team Gringo!

After endless hours of bumping and swerving round the mountains we arrived in San Agustin. Whilst nowhere in Colombia is exactly overrun with tourists, San Agustin gets a fair amount of visitors due to its unique archaeological sites. So as soon as we got off the bus we were greeted by two Colombian guides who worked for the World Heritage Site office. They gave us some reasonable sounding prices for tours to the various sites located around San Agustin... so we all piled into the back of their rickety old jeep and they helped us scope out a place to stay... the ride was hilarious as there were 10 of us cramped into this jeep with all our backpacks balanced precariously on top and 3 of the boys balancing on the bumper at the back! We were driving up a steep dirt track to one hotel and before we knew it, our overloaded vehicle tipped back into a wheelie... a wheelie in a jeep! It was crazy, not to mention dangerous, but we laughed it off as being yet another unexpected adventure brought to us by latin american transport!

So undeterred by our two wheel mishap we booked a days tour in a jeep to see the statues located far away and 3 of us, including me, decided to take another day to visit the nearby sites on horseback.

Not a huge amount is known about the race of people who left these statues. They were erected to protect the tombs of tribal elders. The dead were buried with offerings of food, pottery and gold. Some of the artifacts that have been recovered can been seen in the gold museum in Bogota but many have been robbed as well. The statues were first discovered in the 18th century. Since then many have been discovered by local campesinos (farmers)... our guide on the horse trek showed us a gold figure that he found in a tomb that he discovered in his farm... whilst I think these artifacts should be preserved you can hardly blame a poor old man for wanting to keep and probably flog a nice shiny lump of gold he found in his back yard! It`s believed there are many more buried beneath the ground in the surrounding areas waiting to be unearthed. With time and financial investment this may happen but the locals we spoke to seemed doubtful that the government would invest in such things in the near future.

So the tours were enjoyable... not just because of the archaeological wonders we encountered but also because of the school trips we happened upon! As foreigners in Colombia we often get stared at especially Ben due to his blondness! But as the group of us entered one site already swarming with a school kids we suddenly became the cause of much excitement for them! On seeing us on of the kids screamed out to the rest of them "EXTRANJEROS!!" (foreigners!) and they all squealed and screamed and ran up the hill away from us! So we walked around and took pictures and gradually the kids mingled among us too, staring at us, giggling, occasionally shoving each other in our direction... then when we finally left they were all together in a group with their teacher and they shouted "bye" to us in English and giggled and waved until we were out of site... later on we also bumped into a group of incredibly cute nursery age kids dressed up in animal costumes as part of a celebration of their indigenous past... the teachers were really nice and keen for us to take pictures of the kids... the kids themselves didn`t seem to keen though, not just on having their pictures taken but also being made to wear funny outfits in the first place!

So we encountered yet more beautiful scenery, yet more ridiculously friendly locals and we got our Lara Croft Tomb Raider fix too!

Sadly the time was coming nearer to make our out of Colombia... we just had one last brief stop on our itinerary... a church in a ravine close to the boarder. So back we went on the bumpy road for our last stretch of Colombia...