San Agustin - Archeological Capital of Colombia

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I have to tell you about my bus trip to San Agustin. It is a 5-8 hours bus trip from the nearest city linked to the Panamerican highway, Popayan, and the road is in really bad shape (not European bad, but South America bad...). So you end up sitting in a small, uncomfortable bus, bumping up and down for 5-8 hours...

I had breakfast in a restaurant at the bus station, while waiting for the bus.
When it was about to leave, I did not struggle my way in front of the line to drop off my bag like the Colombians, but waited til last... Bad choice, when I came in to the bus, there was no seat left. I was of course not happy about this, because I was among the first people to buy my ticket, so I told the bus driver and expressed very clearly my discontent and that I would not sit on the floor for more than 5 hours...
The bus driver went into the bus and yelled a bit and suddenly this lady remembers that she did not pay a ticket for her child, so she took her in her lap.
So, I got to sit next to Fat Lady, taking 1,5 seats, leaving very little for me.
On top of that, the whole bus was full of small kids, vomiting and screaming because of the bad and windy road in the mountains.
The daughter of Fat Lady next to me was no exeption, and every time (it happened like four times) Fat Lady mom fed her daughter chips with bacontaste, she threw up....
As you can imagine I was extremely happy when at a cros road, the bus stopped and let me off to wait for a taxi to San Agustin for the last few kilometres... :o)

San Agustin itself is a lovely little town in the mountains in southwest Colombia, surrounded by green mountains and rivers.
The town itself is quite sleepy and perfect for doing hikes and relaxing.
But the big attribute is the archeological sites.
5000 years ago a civilization lived and prospered around here in the fertile valleys. However, after some thousand years of existence the people disappeared and nobody knows why, but guesses ranges from volcano eruption to war to epidemias.
But, the people left behind around 500 burried stone statues scattered around the hills of San Agustin.

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Photos

Discovering the archeological sites of San Agustin by horse
Must have been 15 years since I last was on a horseback... My but hurt a lot afterwards...

Holy Stone
from the population that lived here 5000 years ago. It is still a mystery why the population disappeared.