Paul frisked twice by soldiers

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From San Agustin there is a loop road that leads to Tierradentro, another place with archealogical sites, the only known underground tombs in South America. This trip was another experience, thank goodness for Patty who could speak spanish and barttered our way there. Sometimes we were in and out of buses, not knowing whether we were in or not as she was busy bartering away, if it didn´t suit her or the price was not to her liking she yelled for us to all get out, it was quite hilarious.

We left from San Agustin to Pitalito in a ford king cab and had to wait for the next big bus to Garzon and then La plater. Twice the transport had to stop and everyone off so that the Soldiers could check for bad people. Paul got thoroughly frisked and patted down to check for guns, by handsome young boys. At the first check a passenger had a huge pistol, he was allowed to keep it. He was just a passenger on the bus. Not a nice feeling, knowing that passengers carry guns. The ladies just had there handbags glimpsed at. It you are a guerilla, you need to have your guns carried by the womenfolk. I took a photo of Paul, hands up against the bus, being frisked. Someone siad to be careful, too late.

The last transport of the day was another king cab with two boys having to stand on the bumper and hold onto the top for 2 hours of swaying and bumping. 21 on board.

We stayed with an elderly lady at San Andres de Pisimbala, the first time we've had cold showers, not even a hot tap. THis is up in the mountains.

We went for a walk up to some more statues, similar to those at San Agustin. Back to the a restaurant for a nice meal.

This town has about 50 houses, everything is relaxed.

Wednesday 20th. Paul and Jema (a young tourist) climbed around a high ridge to look at more tombs. This took about 4 hours and I walked down the road and met them at the museums for lunch. We then climbed up to some more tombs and got caught in a cloud burst. The tombs are very different - carved out of soft rock to a depth of about 8 meters or more with a spiral staircase and a big chamber with arches and decoration painted in them. these are more than 2000 years old. The paintings were still visible. Some of the tombs were lit with electric light. All the tombs are locked up and a guard overseas them and unlocks them when a visitor visits.

The tombs were made with the stairs going spiral down about 4-5 turns and I think it would make a good wine cellar, except I had to crawl down because it was so steep and no hand rail. Paul laughed at my difficulty with vertigo and took photos. There was about 28 tombs, but we only looked in about 10 of them. It was quite exhausting, waking up and down and then we walked around a loop back to town. This was another 4 hour walk, passing local farms.

We decided to move onto Salento the next day. This involved a 0600 start in a king cab that had 24 people in and on it. This truck took us to Inza a town about an hour down the road. We had to wait for a connecting bus in the central plaza where the Army had set up a sandbag observation post on top of a building. Here we caught a bus back to Popyan to connect to the next place on the route. We bought tickets at the butcher shop - where else?

The road from Inza to Popyan went over high alpine and fertile dairy country.

Our next bus to Armenia broke down and we had to wait 2 hours for another to come along. THe soldiers did another search and Paul frisked again. We had to stay at Armenia overnight and get a minibus to Salento the next morning. We were on the road from 0600 - 2200 and did not quite make it to Salento.

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Photos

Doing the washing, San Andres de Pisimbala
Using a concrete slab, no hot water