17th March 2015 – San Agustin – 2015-03-27 23:01

This morning we are picked up from our hotel at 8:30 am by our guide Moreno for our days tour around San Agustin. First we go to the archaeological park that was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1995. We see many of the 850 enormous megalithic religious monuments that date from between 3,000 BC to 800 AD. Many of these carved stones were found buried under 5 meter mounds of earth and marked the tombs of important people. They depict humans and animals and sometimes a combination of both, with the most common being a human form with a jaguar mouth. The human forms have large heads, no necks and short or no legs. They are really interesting and the objects that were recovered from the tombs are in the Gold Museum in Bogota that we will visit in 2 days. Our guide Moreno is very passionate about this site and his knowledge and descriptions of each of the carvings is informative and interesting, he is really proud to be able to show us around. The park is divided into plateaus (mesitas) and at the bottom of the park is an area of carvings in the river. It’s very interesting the way the rock has been carved to change the flow of the water in the river. There is even a chair and foot holes that have been carved out of the rock that the archaeologists believe was used for giving birth. On the walk down there is a great carving out of a huge piece of rock of a frog.We climb all the way up to the top of the hill, it’s a great view to the mountains and over the valley and there is evidence of buildings. The park is full of birds, butterflies and gorgeous plants it’s just really nice to be walking around listening to the bird sounds. Some of the birds are so small and very colourful and very hard to see. The larger ones are more easily spotted.Moreno tells us about the current political situation in Columbia, he is very proud of his country and I think we are very fortunate to be traveling here at the moment. The flowers in Colombia are beautiful. We visit the museum that is on site then go into town for lunch and we are approached by a local lady to buy some lemons from her.We don’t go on the afternoon tour to a gorge as we need to catch up on a few emails. Tonight we go to an Italian restaurant and they have a local band playing for us, the music is one of the best sounds we’ve heard to date. Quite a few of our group get up and dance, to the great beat.