Wednesday 30 April 2014

Campesino's, blockades and statues in San Agustin

Currently writing this post from San Agustin where we are stuck due to campesino (farmer) blockades. 

After Salento I had headed to Cali to break my journey in a different place from when I travelled North. I enjoyed one night at El Viajero hostel with a free salsa lesson and then headed South to Popayan - back to Park Life hostel.

I managed to meet up with Lucy, aka the stalker and after a reunion with lots of wine, we made the possibly poor decision to head east to San Agustin, a UNESCO pre Colombian archelogical site, with some more friends.

The journey to San Agustin wasn't fun - Regina and I were stuck at the back of the van with a family of incredibly car sick people around us - sick hit me when one tried to throw up out of the window and blew back in - eeuurrgghh!!!

When we eventually got to San Agustin we found a hostel in the centre - Diosa Lunar - whose owner Humbeto promised he could arrange anything. On the way in we'd heard about the strikes but everyone thought it would be a few days until Popayan area was effected. When we arrived in San Agustin we weren't too worried - but we met people on the way out and by the following day there were road blocks set up - some were letting people through every few hours.

Determined to get in our experiences of San Agustin - the largest archelogical site in Colombia - we headed off on a 5 hour horse tour of the sites and statues near town. Not everyone had been on horses before/in a long time so we took it slowly.

Lucy and Regina on the way out of town - Regina managed to bond with her horse Chaquira

Lucy still doing good!

I was a tad more comfortable on Rod than I had been on riding in Salento the previous week.

We visited El Purutal, where we saw some well preserved painted sculptures

The statues were found by farmers and preserved in their orginal sites. Their being buried helped preserve them.

These statues were defaced by someone with extra paint but restored to 90% of the original. Even with just the original paint they are bright! Our guide Alvarro showed us some of the trees that the red and yellow colours would have come from.

The next site we saw was the La Pelota site.

This motive of an owl with a snake is used in lots of places.

Quite a few of the human depictions have fangs

The archeologists interpretations are vage about the use of the statues - some like the painted ones guard tombs, others seem to depict the gods of sun and moon and some are other religious icons.

La Chaquira was the next site with stunning views over the river Magdalena.

View over the river gorge

These carvings in the rocks look out over the river

Me mimicking the carving!

El Tablon was the final site we visited with the horses before heading back into town just as it started raining.

This was one of the statues at El Tablon - the eyes in this one represent Eagles which were a sacred bird. He is also wearing a nose ring and breast plate - which we saw examples of in the gold museum in Bogota.

This little guy has the fangs.

Some of the statues at El Tablon were incomplete - just the outlines could be seen on the rocks.

Back in town we had a few beers at the roof top terrace of our hostel and collapsed in bed exhausted!

We managed to get up (late) the following day and walk up to the archelogical park just outside of town. By now we'd heard from a few tourists that the road blocks were in place - but we decided to visit the park and then visit the police.

In the park some of the tombs and statues are in their original sites or mesitos and some, including the best examples of the carvings, are in the forest of the statues 'Bosque de las Estatuas'.

The ceremonial altars - the central figure has two guards who have animal headdresses 


Funerary jars in the tombs

Another owl snake combo


Stone carved tomb


Some of the statues in the forest:

Do you think he's going skiing?!

After walking back into town we visited the police who seemed to tell us that there was no way out of town due to the road blocks. We were told that if sufficient people registered with the police who urgently needed to get out (e.g. Flights out of the country) then they could arrange a helicopter to take us to Bogota.

So we registered and seemed fairly happy about this, free chopper ride!

Then the following day we heard there was no police helicopter unless we got stuck here for a lot longer. So next option was to get a car to take us out - unfortunately it seems we've missed the sweet spot where we could have avoided the road blocks and now we'll need to bribe our way through (the road blocks have multiplied over the last few days).

Luckily our hostel owner Humbero 'todo es possible' knows a man - so fingers crossed we'll be back in Popayan Saturday!

Monday 21 April 2014

Soggy Salento

After leaving Bogota I caught up with the PeruHop gang in Medelline for Easter weekend in a finca.

There were 19 of us, one whole pig, about 9 litres of rum and 6 of aguardiente and too much beer to count. They butchered the pig for us and we are pork at every meal - we had the liver, leg meat, pork belly, ribs, random hunks of meat, stew, chicharron and crackling. Oh and the pigs head (although I don't think anyone ate much of that). I don't think I need to eat pork for a year now! 

So after a weekend of excess I headed on the bus to Salento via Pereira. On the buses you always get people trying to sell you stuff - sometimes just drinks and food, but sometimes it's like a condensed dragons den. They get 10/15 minutes til they need to jump off to sell you the product and possibly tell you their life story (not 100% sure as my Spanish isn't up to it). Luckily being gringo means I escape the hard sell mostly.

When I got to Salento the bus dropped me off at the firestation and it was a short walk to the Plantation House hostel, which had come recommended through my friends. I was lucky to find some fellow travellers to do the Corcora valley walk the following morning and grabbed some comfort food - chicken tikka masala!! (And it was good).

Corcora valley is renowned for its wax palms - these are the tallest palms in the world reaching up to 50/60 meters tall. They are also the national tree of Colombia and only grow above 2,500m. The walk takes you through the valley, then into cloud forest to a hummingbird sanctuary, crossing 7 different precarious bridges.


Not sure if this counted as a bridge - but it was precarious!

We were lucky to have sun on the walk through the valley




The walk was very muddy and in some points you had to walk in the river - so wellies were a requirement - luckily we could rent them from the Plantation House for the day.

Me being farmer Katie in my wellies

There were lots of cows...

After hiking through the valley and the forest we stopped at the hummingbird sanctury to refuel with some chocolate con queso and attempt some snaps of the very fast birds. Here's a couple I managed to get:





Then you climb a hill 'La Montana' and walk back down the track to the drop off point for the jeeps. This bit of the walk is usually pretty spectacular as you walk through the wax palms looking like something out of Jurassic park - however it was raining pretty bad by the time we got there so the palms were reaching though the mist :(

At the top of La Montana

Beautiful gardens at the rangers station

Wild strawberries on the way up

Wax palms in the rain & cloud

'View' over the valley

Wet selfie - shortly after I learnt that my water proofs weren't torrential downpour proof...

We were soaked through and happy to pay extra for a non scheduled jeep rather than wait half an hour for it to fill up. As soon we got back to the Plantation House hot showers were in order and they even lit the fire for us in the common roomto help us warm up (and dry our wet clothes!)

The next morning I joined the coffee tour that owner Tim Edward (aka Don Edwardo) runs on his finca. We walked down to his coffee farm - on the way learning more about coffee in Colombia (they export the good stuff generally) and his feuds with the neighbours.

Don Edwardo pointing out a local landmark - one cartel members ex house on the hill - complete with watch tour and lion cages.

The tour takes about 2.5 hours and after that epic you are gagging for the freshly brewed home grown coffee they give you. We learnt a lot about how to grow coffee, how to process it to get the bean out of the fruit, wash the sugars out, dry the coffee and then how to roast and brew.

Wax palms in natural state (no cows grazing below them)

Entrance to the finca

View from the top of the hill - the coffee is inter planted with bananas and palms to give it shade

How they harvest traditional coffee - bend it over!

On the table the process coffee goes through - from right to left green cherries, ripe red or yellow cherries (depends on the variety), beans from the fruit, washed and dried beans or parchment coffee, de husking the parchment husk and then the fine husk, roasted beans, ground coffee.

We tried 2 different types of coffee, traditional and modern coffee beans, black and strong! Both cups were good and I could feel the buzz after number 2 which I think was smoother. This was the modern coffee plant beans apparently.

That afternoon on a coffee high I decided to join the others for a horseback tour to the cascades. 


Unfortunately it was drizzling / foggy so the pics weren't the greatest. 

Pretty! Megan and the trumpet flowers

Low light shot of the cascades

We also ended up riding back in the rain in the dark which would not have been fun except for the numerous fireflies in the trees and fields - they were magical, like stars! Needless to say this was another night we needed the fire at Plantation House to warm up and dry out...

Sunny Salento on the morning I left! Plantation House terrace.

Thursday 17 April 2014

Bogota & the BBC

That's the Bogota Brewing Company to you!

Before Cat left we had a few days in the Bog - aka Bogota - and managed to catch up with some exBeehivers - more than we'd planned to! Hana, Vince, Elissa and Yvonne had all aimed for the same dates, mainly to wave Cat and Yvonne off, and we ran into Fiona whilst looking for someone else's friend!


Obviously this level of reunion required hard liquor and the bar at Musicology hostel was happy to provide. Being us, Cat and I imported some red wine too. Then we got stuck into the happy hour cocktails and the national spirit - Aguardiente - which is like watered down sambuca (the one we had was less than 30%)

Then we also had to visit the BBC to sample their ales - including the classic, rojo and honey (no one was in the mood for the porter) - we discovered happy hour was from 12.30 to 5pm with a great discount on jugs and a beer pizza combo - happy backpackers :)


We also managed some sightseeing between the drinking...

We were staying in the historic centre Candelaria area - view down our street - it has lots of quirky stuff going on - including green people hanging out on rooftops and buildings that matched Yvonne's jumper!


We visited a coffee 'factory' Cafe Fonda. When we arrived it was full of gringos - which was reassuring as the area was very dodgy (got a cab there). Little did we realise they were all on the bike tour! When they disappeared around the back to collect their bikes we thought a tour of the factory was starting - but turns out you can just wander in and one of the staff will explain how they roast the beans etc..


So we had a wander - they turned on the roasting machine for us and we had a cup of coffee - yum! Better than the NescafƩ we'd been drinking recently!

We then headed back to the historic centre to check out the main road which had been pedestrianised   - we think for Holy Week, but it could have just been because... There were lots of shops, so we shopped of course! Then we made it to the gold museum which pretty much does as it says on the tin - lots of gold artefacts from different eras of Colombia's history.


It was stunning in the sheer amount of gold on show - there were also huge vault doors on the way into some of the rooms


The museum was good in trying to explain the symbolism behind the breast plates, nose rings and head dresses, and how the different regions had different influences and styles. We had learnt some of this from the gold museum in Cartagena - but this was much more in depth. All in all worth it for only £1! (Especially to escape the rain outside!)

Dark storm cloud over one of the main plazas

A quick stop for some chocolate santafereƱo - basically hot chocolate with cheese helped us escape the rain.

You dip the cheese into the chocolate - I don't think it improves the chocolate but I like the cheese melty.

We also managed a trip up to one of the hills, Cerro de Monserrate, to see the view over Bogota. Although it wasn't raining the view wasn't so great with either cloud/smog over the city.


We enjoyed the telepherique up and the funicular back down!

Another cable car!!

Scary tunnel back down...


Pretty buildings at the top 

JC on his separate hill - so no head shot here...

We also hit up some of the free art museums in the historic centre - the Donacion Botero is all paintings donated by Botero - some are his and some are from his personal collection which includes everything from impressionist through to surrealist.

He is famous for his 'fat people' - increasing the size & volume of the subjects for policitical criticism or humour - he isn't himself fat - I checked wiki so it must be true!

Chubby interpretation of the Mona Lisa

Hand studies

Fat couple

Probably the best free tour we got was our personal tour around the national police museum. As we were the only 5 gringos we got a private English tour from Ana. This included a drink - I was very impressed! The national police museum gives a lot of information about the history and structure of Colombia's police force (set up by a Frenchman who was running the French force), but is notorious for the information on the drug cartels that they've brought down (Pablo Escobar being just one of many).

We saw a lot of guns 



Mural showing the history of the national police force of Colombia

Interior courtyard of the museum - French style to honour the Frenchman who set it up

View from the roof

Bomb handling robot

Old and new modes of transport

Then it was time to say goodbye to Cat - we separated at Bogota El Dorado Airport with her headed to New Zealand via Chile and me to Medellin for some finca fun for Easter.