Well, I've once again ended up staying longer than I thought I would- have just really enjoyed being here at Casa de François in San Agustin as it's such a relaxing place! I have spent some time seeing the sites but have also spent time just relaxing, reading in a hammock, chatting with other travellers…..and nothing much else! I thought I would leave on Friday but now plan on moving on on Monday. They do great food here in their restaurant so I've eaten there quite a few times, it has made a nice change from typical Colombian food- homemade bread, good sandwiches, crepes, stir fry…..I also cooked a few times and that's been good too. The hostel was quiet at the start of the week but is full now. There's a nice bunch of people here and is nice to chat about where people have been and where they are going.

So on to my 'productive' days here, visiting the interesting archaeological sites of the area:

I did a day long jeep tour around the local area, including some of the archaeological sites (Alto de los Idiolos and Alto de las Piedras), a stretch of the river Magdalena where it is only 2 metres wide and 2 waterfalls, Salto de Bordones beingColombia's tallest waterfall at 300 metres. On this trip we also got to see some of the surrounding countryside and saw that lots of sugar cane is grown in this area- they use it to make panella. The following day I went to the archaeological park of San Agustin just outside town. It takes a few hours to walk around the different sites which have lots of stone statues thought to date between 6th century BC and 14th century AD. The people in the San Agustin area buried their elders in tombs and placed statues next to the tombs. Within the tombs there was also pottery and gold objects but over the years a lot of this has been stolen and people still dig to discover tombs. Excavation at San Agustin didn't start until the 1930s and so far 513 statues, carved from volcanic rock, have been found. They vary in size, the largest being 4 metres tall.