San Agustin: Number 4

Paco, Barb, Martha, Carlos!

When I first decided to start my "new life" in Cartagena, in learning more about the place so I could tell everyone what I was doing, I learned it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural site. As I spent more time in Colombia and traveled, I learned there were other such sites; I visited the second, the Coffee Zone (or "Eje Cafetero"), last New Year's. At Easter time, I visited another: Mompós. I was starting to think that maybe everywhere in Colombia was a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural site and so maybe it didn't mean so much, amazing as these places are. But I've since learned that there are only seven UNESCO World Heritage Cultural sites in Colombia, and, as someone wanting to learn a lot about the country and see the amazing places they have, I just happen to be hitting them.

The park is filled with sculptures & tombs

I hit my fourth in August, when I traveled with friends to San Agustin, in the Huila Department of Colombia. Martha, Carlos, Paco & I took an overnight bus from Bogota to San Agustin, a 525 km/325 mile trip that took 11 hours. The seats on the bus aren't bad, better than economy airplane seats these days. They even show movies (often US ones dubbed in Spanish & then subtitled in English!). Colombian buses have a reputation for "setting the air conditioning to stun" and so hand out blankets for the trip (why not just turn down the AC??? Who knows??!).

Small section of a carved river fountain

In the morning we got to San Agustin, a town of about 40,000 people and is known for it's Stonehenge/ Easter Island like ancient stone carvings & burial grounds. The main focus in the archeological parks there is on people who lived from 3,300 BC to about 800 AD. Not much is known about their lives, but these people left some amazing sculptures & mysteries, such as how did they move these multi-ton slabs around?? I was really impressed by how well-presented the sculptures were in the parks and how well-kept things were in general in this area, a little different from other parks and parts of Colombia that I've seen. 

All those camp years learning to ride for naught :)

The area around San Agustin was beautiful. On our second day there, we visited some archeological sites on horseback. I hadn't been riding since I was about 15 probably. I didn't really need to worry about remembering how to do anything as the horse knows what to do, since he does this same route with tourists several times a week. But I would have liked to have stopped him from galloping off whenever he felt like it (although honestly our whole "pack" would all gallop off at the same time so I'm sure there would have been no stopping my horse!). It rained a bit that morning but it was still gorgeous countryside.

Few sculptures still had colored paint

That afternoon, we drove to a couple of more spots, including the narrowest part of the Magdalena River. The Magdalena is Colombia's principal river, running pretty much the length of the country on the western side. It starts near San Agustin and ends in Barranquilla, just an hour east of Cartagena. There is talk of putting a damn in the Magdalena near where this narrowest part is, which of course some are in favor but many are not....and it is such a gorgeous site it would seem a shame to flood it.

So in less than a year, without really trying, I've been to nearly all of the Colombian UNESCO World Heritage Cultural sites. (In comparison, the US has only 9 and I have only been to only 4 of those, not quite half!) It is a pretty amazing country with a lot to offer, and there are other categories of UNESCO sites to hit here too! I plan to be visit the last Cultural site, Tierradentro, in late November. But before that, I'll be visiting a "wannabe"--one of the sites that's on the "tentative list" for becoming one of these cultural sites--when I do the 4 night/5 day Ciudad Perdida ("Lost City") trek in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Tayrona National Park.

Rock sculpted on 3 sides overlooking the Magdalena

View of the Magdalena

More photos of San Agustin can be found here (day 1: parks) and here (day 2: horseback riding & Magdalena narrows).

Travels with Sara 2 -- San Basilio de Palenque

Monument to Benkos Biohó, San Basilio de Palenque founder

Sara arriving in Palenque via mototaxi

I had wanted to visit Palenque, not far from Cartagena, ever since I read a little blurb about it shortly after I arrived here last October. Hard-working "Palenqueras", or women from Palenque, walk around Cartagena in their colorful dresses, selling fruit and sweets which they carry in bowls on their heads, and have become symbols of this city. What was the story of the town they're from?
"Palenques" ("walled cities"), were small towns founded by escaped slaves in the 1600s. San Basilio de Palenque, about 50 km from Cartagena, was the first such town and the only one still in existence in Colombia. Most of the some 3,500 residents are direct descendants of these escaped slaves and they have a unique culture reflective of their African roots, including having their own language.  The town has been recognized by UNESCO as an important cultural space.

Me with Maria & a friend

Sara was all for visiting Palenque and the adventure of getting there. We took a ~45 minute local bus from downtown to the bus terminal, then another ~45 minute bus trip to where the road to Palenque met the major "highway." From there you take a "mototaxi" the ~3 miles to Palenque itself. A mototaxi is a motorcycle that takes a paying passenger; no, it's not a legal business but they are widespread here on the coast. Having seen the mototaxis speeding dangerously through the jam packed streets of Cartagena, I never wanted to take one, but here it was our only option. I asked my helmetless driver for a helmet but there was none to be had. I will say that our drivers drove quite carefully and slowly over the partially paved/partially unpaved road in to Palenque and it wasn't so bad. Still, I don't anticipate taking one anytime soon in Cartagena.

El Maestro in front of his portrait

There are a couple of Palenqueras who work outside of my school & I had asked one, Maria, for advice on how best to visit her town, knowing this would mean we'd end up with a guide, which was fine. She set us up with her daughter (who I didn't realize was only 13, but that's ok...) and had us start out at the "Maestro's" house, an older gentleman who leads a Palenquero musical group that has traveled around the world, which we discovered when we met him. It was interesting, and quite a contrast, to hear him talk about his international travels while we were sitting in the back yard of his very humble home in this town which has only had electricity since the 1970s and where many people don't have running water.

The swimming slash laundry hole

Our guide Liliana showed us the cultural center; the river where many wash their clothes as well as swim; the main square with a statue of the town's founder Benkos Biohó, an escaped slave; the school; boxing area; and then took us to a restaurant where we had lunch. It was all quite interesting, even if there was not really much to see, but such an obviously different type of life. The people there live on agriculture (& Liliana was explaining to us what she learned in school about planting, harvesting, etc), tourism (there is a music festival every October when the town is packed), and the women who sell their fruit & sweets, etc. Such a different life.

 More photos of Palenque here.