This morning we had a planned visit to an archeological site, close by San Agustin. After we were ready, we made our way to the common area, where we were served a massive delicious breakfast. Most of our breakfast, was actually sourced directly from the owners farm, so everything was so fresh and full of taste.
Soon after we finished breakfast, we all headed out to the minivan, where we all jumped in and were driven about 15 mins to the other side of town, to the archeological site.
Much to my excitement, we all received archeological passports, and at each of the sites we were to visit we would get a stamp. Nothing quite like a stamp in a passport to get me excited!!!
We met our local guide, who then lead us on our expedition. We stared to walk down an unmade path, and as we continued down the path, we found ourselves walking through some beautiful green forests. There were a lot of flowers in full bloom, including many of the native colourful orchids!!
We continued down the path, until we came to the first clearing. There were lots of shelter sheds, and when we looked a little closer at the sheds, we could see that they were protecting stone carvings.
The guide was very passionate, providing us with detailed explanations on each of the cravings. He explained that the carvings were essentially guarding graves, which were also covered by these shelter sheds. We were lead around to each of the carvings by our guide, and had the life explained out of each of them. Which was alright for the first couple, but after being dragged round to about 30 of the carvings they started to lose their appeal. If only I had a dollar for every time the guide described the statue as have a large human head, with a jaguar mouth, no neck, short body and short legs, I would be a millionaire.
We then moved on to the next location, here we found a stream that lead to rocks, where water was cascading down. Going over the top of the river was a bamboo bridge, which resembled a Japanese garden, especially considering there was a lot of bamboo that was growing out of control in the forest close to the bridge. As we walked over the bridge, we could see that the rocks had in fact been carved. There were three square holes that resembled baths, and in each of those baths were carvings of animals and humans. I would like to give you an explanation behind these baths, however by this stage I had already tuned out!!
We continued on our walk, along the path, and up a lot of steps. We continued to climb up the hill via these stairs for quite a while. The forest again was lining the pathway, which was lovely to walk amongst. As we came to another clearing, again there was a shed with more carvings underneath it. However most of us were more impressed with the gorgeous view we greeted with at the top of this hill. We could see the Andes mountains surrounding us, with pockets of towns located in the valleys. There were farms, with coffee plantations lining the sides of the hills... and from a distance the lines of coffee trees reminded me of braided hair. We sat at the top of the hill, just enjoying the views. Eventually we were prompted by our guide to continue our journey back down the hill.
As we walked down the hill, we came across a farmer who was making sugar cane juice. So as a group we stopped in there to watch how the farmer processed the sugarcane into juice.
We stood there and watched the farmer as he pushed the sugar cane stick through the machine. As it went through, the sweet juice poured into a plastic jug that he had resting just below the machine spout. The cane then filtered through to the other side of the machine, looking a lot more squashed than it's original condition going in. As it came through the farmer grabbed it, folded it in half, and then put it through the machine again. He followed this same process 4 or 5 times with the one piece of sugar cane, making sure that every last drop had been squeezed out of it.
As I looked at the machine, all I could hear was the intense buzzing of the wasps that were attracted to the sweetness of the sugarcane. They swarmed around the machine, quite often landing to eat some of the sweetness. We later found out, that the farmer only gets bitten 4 or 5 times a day by the wasps, sometimes even more. Hmmmm, you would never have picked sugar cane juice maker as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world would you???
Some of the group tried the sugarcane juice, I on the other hand was happy to leave it for the wasps. The last thing I wanted or needed was a wasp sting to my throat.
We then restarted our trek down the hill. We followed the path, and continued towards the exit. Just as we thought we were about to leave the park, the guide then redirects us down yet another path to another clearing filled with more sheds and carvings. We were well and truely tired of carvings by now, and we merely just followed the guide around. No one was taking photos by this stage, and essentially we were looking at every thing but the statues. Finally we had finished at this clearing and again we continued on our way to the exit. As we walked through the gates of the park the rain started to fall. We were saved by the small market stalls that were set up directly outside of the park. We took the time to walk around under the shelter of all the stalls, looking at the handy crafts that they were selling. The rain soon slowed to a very light mist, and we took the opportunity to continue walking along the path to the carpark.
We were just about at the carpark, almost home and free when I hear a 'Michelle, stop'. I turned to see Andres waving at me, he then explained that we haven't finished, we still have more ruins to go to. Damn!!!
So we waited for the guide to arrive.... and he lead us down another path. Holy crap.... as we walked along, we almost all died when the guide told us that we had another 35 statues to look at. My plan, fly through them as quick as possible.
We walked around each of the statues, and again listened as the guide droned on about big heads and jaguar teeth!! Laurien asked a question, which turned into a 3 min conversation.... So from that point on we put a ban on any one else asking questions. Finally we had finished our tour of the San Agustin ruins, and it was time to leave the park. FINALLY!!!
Our conversation soon moved to how disappointed we were in the fact that we only received one stamp on our passport for all of those ruins. That so wasn't worth it!! For boredom and length of time spent in the park, we at least deserved 5 stamps for that!!
We were soon picked up by Hector, the hotel owner and driven into town. Here we stopped for a traditional Colombian lunch, which included chicken, rice, salad, fried plantain and a lemonada. It was here that we found out that we were not getting a lift back to the hotel. What?!?
Some of the group had decided to go and visit a coffee plantation in the afternoon, so the bus was going to take them there. The rest of us had to find our own way back to the hotel. So weird, I have never had a day tour that has not returned you to the hotel. In the end Donna had a word to Andres, and he ended up paying for a taxi for us to get back to the hotel. But I don't think he would have offered to do so off his own back if Donna hadn't complained.
The next problem, how do we get a taxi. We were told by Andres that we should just flag one down on the Main Street, however there didn't seem to be any taxis driving down the main street. This was just a shambles. However, in the end we asked Hector if he could please call a taxi for us which he kindly did.
A couple of minutes later a taxi arrived, and Bruce, Donna and I all jumped in. He drove us the 10 mins out of town to the hotel.
Donna had a quick turn around, as she was the only one who had wanted to go horse riding. The rest of us were too chicken to go horse riding, all through bad experiences with horse riding in the past. Whilst some did the coffee tour, the rest of us just hung around at the hotel. I had a few things I needed to sort out for work, which I quite happily did lying in the hammock over looking the Andes mountains.
I watched as Donna clip clipped her way down the street on her horse, and everyone else at the hotel all went in separate directions, all desperate to get some much needed down time.
I finished my work, and sat listening to music for the remainder of the afternoon.
As it got darker, the others slowly returned to the hotel, all excited about the afternoon of adventures that they had just had. It was great to hear that they had all had a great afternoon!! I was happy to sit and listen to them tell their stories!!
I started to think ahead, and went and shut our window shutters. As the windows didn't have glass covering them, if you were too late in shutting the blinds you were guaranteed to return to a room filled with flying and crawling insects. A mistake that we had made the night before. Thank goodness Donna had gone around and killed all the insects she could find with a spare towel in our room. This was not the case tonight though. Instead, what we had found tonight when we returned to our room was an insect graveyard. It was the place that insects had come to die. Obviously the staff had sprayed our rooms with insecticide, as all over the floor laid many differing types of insects, all upturned on their backs. We used our hashen sack mats as make shift brooms, as we swept our insects off to the side, just to ensure that we didn't step on them during the night.
By 6.30 we were all starving, and not to mention tired, so I did a quick knock around to see if everyone was happy to leave a little earlier for dinner. It was an unanimous yes.
So we set off on our walk to the local Italian restaurant. We walked down the unmade road, which was lit up with the torch that Donna held and the moonlight. We had the living suitcase scared out of us, when a couple of dogs came running up to the boundary fence barking at us. I think it was the fact that there were a few seconds where we all thought that there wasn't a fence stoping these dogs and envisaging the weeks of rabies injections that would soon be following.
We soon had the pleasure of street lights once we hit the bitumen road running into town. We walked another 5 mins down the road until we came to the Italian restaurant.
We entered the restaurant, and found a nice young guy wearing a suit. He welcomed us warmly, and showed us to our table. We all sat, and quickly ordered our meals and drinks.
The food was yum, and as some of the group were finishing off their desserts we were all surprised when the power went out. The conversation soon turned to ghost stories. We discussed how we thought that we could see people walking up the drive with a torch, and trying to scare everyone by saying that they had machetes in their hands. It didn't work though.... and the conversation again changed, this time to how the lights would come back on and the waiter would find our table empty, realising that we had all disappeared without paying our bill. However considering that Andres comes to this restaurant everytime he comes to san Agustin that he may actually get a frosty welcome next time he arrived.
We were just finalising our bill when the power came back on. It was then time to start walking back to the hotel.
As we walked up the street, we were amazed by the fireflies that were dancing in the paddocks lining the street. Their light zigged and zagged across the grass, like miniature shooting stars.
We continued along the road, until in the torch light something caught my eye. As I started to scream and run around flapping my hands, everyone was worried about what I had seen. I was reassured that there were quite a few others that were bothered by all of the spiders that lay before us. It made me feel sick.... this road was like a spider crossing.... they just sat there looking disgusting and horrible. I watched every step I took, and was not above tucking my trouser legs into my socks, so that they couldn't climb up my legs. I was no longer worried about crazed dogs, or men with machetes, I was just worried about spider alley. I skipped and jumped, taking very wide berths around spider sightings, until eventually we made it back to the unmade road, and no longer were the spiders lying in my path!!
We soon arrived back at our hotel, and all made our way to our respective rooms. Time for bed!!! Another busy day lay ahead tomorrow.... and this girl needs her beauty sleep!!!