Jeep Tour

The next day we took a Jeep tour of the great San Augustine area which has a lot more statues, including the biggest one- Alto de los Idolos- that's 7m tall. Honestly the Jeep tour was a bit of a let down after the horse tour the previous day and we got COVERED in dust from the dirt roads on which we were traveling. We did however get to go to Salto de Bordones- which is the second highest waterfall in South America, second only to Angel Falls in Venezula.

We ended our tour in Isnos, which is yet another small "colonial" town. From there we caught a bus back to Popayan to get some of our stuff which we had left there. There weren't any seats available on the bus so we got to sit on the floor for the 6 hour trip back (at least it wasnt on the bus from our trip there)!

We got back to Popayan, paid to take a shower, and then met up again with Sagiv who had gone to Popayan earlier that day since he hadnt been there yet. We had a Popayan fairwell dinner at one of the two Visa accepting restaurants. Then it started to rain and I mean rain! We had to take 2 taxis because all 5 of us and our packs woudlnt fit but we couldnt find any taxis because of the rain. So we ended up missing the big bus that we had planned on taking and instead we spent the night on a tiny "supertaxi" bus. At one point we were stuck at a police ckeck point for over an hour- it was odd though beause they had buses lined up but they never actually checked anything as far as we could tell.

Horse Tour

We got up relatively early for breakfast a la Mario and then a hourse tour around San Augustine. My personal favorite spot was La Chaquira- pronounce like Shakira haha- it was a religious site on the top of a mountain (as they always are here) overlooking a huge valley with the Rio Magdalena and 2 amazing waterfalls. The ruins their were carvings of the Sun god.

All the sites that we visited had statues, tombs, and burial mounds. the statues were huge rock carvings, ranging in size, use of color, completion of carving, and subjects. The religion of the San Augustine people is very similar to that of the Quechua people of Machu Picchu- they worship the serpant, eagle, jaguar, and planetary beings. As such all the religious sites are high up on hills. the way they originally found the statues that were buried over graves many meters under the ground was by campesinos mining for gold (as I already mentioned). They can figure out where there are tombs by putting a thin stick into the ground, if it goes in it means the soil has been previously excavated. Colombians are very proud of the statues and they have locals who monitor the sites to make sure no one escavates anything else.

Our horse tour took 5 hours and included a bit of hiking too to mix things up. After the tour we were dropped of at the Parque Arquelogico, which had a bunch more statues and a museum. It also had an incredible ritual "fountain" that was a naturally occuring rapid into which the San Augustine people carved reptiles, amphibians, and people for ritual purposes.

In the park there was a lso a buge hill that had almost a 360 degree view of the region and some more statues. On the horse tour we had added a Japanese guy named Heroshi so we were quite the international looking group! As such, one of the guides insisted upon taking our picture over and over so that we could show people San Augustine...while his tour group waited! Then the tour group wanted to get into the pictures with us so that was very funny.

After that we headed home on a collectivo (a van that puts as many people in it as possible) but not before we took some more picture with locals who were obviously amused by us. That night was pretty uneventful except for Mario's description of his experience taking Agnasca- a hallucinogenic drug that you can go to a shaman to take. He said that it helps you to "confront your past" and move on but you can also OD so you have to go to a knowledgable shaman. He even gave us a card of a reliable shaman...needless to say that went unused- but can you believe they still have them!?

Out of Popayan!

We up up bright and early to catch the 6 am bus to San Augustine. The San Augustine culture was at its height from the 6th-14th centuries CE and they built huge stone statues, ranging in size from 20 centimeters to 7 meters, to cover their tombs. The tombs were discovered starting in the 18th century by peasant farmers (campesinos) who were searching for the gold that was buried in the tombs covered by the huge statues.

Our trip to San Augustine however started out a little bumpy- literally. Within 15 minutes of getting on the bus, it had broken down. So then they sent out another bus and we got on that one to continue...but within a few miles of being on the new bus, it got a flat tire. We didnt have a spare so we had to stop every mile to repump the tire until we got to a place where they could repair it. And repair it they did!! They took it compeletely apart and patched the hole in the tubing- this took about 45 minutes but luckily we were able to get some tinto (black coffee- but only in Colombia, tinto is also red wine) in the interim. Then we continued on possibly the worst road ever- I mean they should really be carrying a spare tire on this road, I'm not sure how its possible to travel 8 hours on this road without a flat tire! Alissa and Lucas, the American couple we were traveling with and who have been busing around South American for the past 6 months, said that it was physically the worst bus ride they had been on. Regularly we stopped to check the tire but it managed to make it through. We continued on for about 4 or 5 hours without event when the bus broke down again- this time it was the under-carage of the bus. We had gone into a pot hole that was so deep it had cracked the under-carrage. We think it was broken before too because after they fixed it the ride was a little smoother. We did finally make it to San Augustine though. We tried to get into one hostel but it was full so we took the taxi driver's suggestion and went to a place called Itaca. The taxi drivers in some cities work with certain hostels so they can be pretty pushy about their suggestions.

Itaca however was really nice, the owner Mario gave us an outrageously energetic tour of it so it was hard to resist accepting to stay there. Once we got there it was too late in the afternoon to start any of the tours so we just arranged the tours for the next two days- by extensive group bargining of course and then went to the market to get food for our late "Thanksgiving dinner." At the hostel we met an Australian, Robert, who was traveling around Colombia for 2 months on winter break from school. He had also taken a year off earlier in college to live in Paraguay so he is quite the South American traveler.

Actually, he was flying out of Bogota yesterday and we took him out on the town the night before- so it was really exciting to see him again!

Anyway, by the time that we got back from the market there was another guest, Sagiv, who Linnea and I ended up traveling with for the next 3+ weeks through Ecuador. So we didnt have any food that one would actually have at Thanksgiving but the spirit was still the same- we had an amazing time exchanging stories, getting travel suggestions, and laughing at the absurdities of traveling and living in Latin America.

Popayan Day 2

So we got up the ready to tackle the world, ready to get some money and get the heck out of nowhere souther Colombia but...no, it didnt work out that way.

There have been pyramid schemes that have been collapsing in Colombia- they get people to invest money, promise like 300% returns and in some cases actually give it because its a cover for laundering drug money but they have been collapsing all over the place and the one in that town happened to crash the day before. So for some reason the people who put their money in these schemes thought that since the pyramid scheme crashed the banks are the next to go and start pulling all their money out of the banks so there are lines blocks long at the ATMs. Consequently... all the banks close- so we have no money, no ATM cards, and there are no banks in a town that has now started to riot- we are talking police in full body armor, sheilds, and tear gas, a riot! Luckily we missed seeing that in person, we did however see it on the news later that night. So we finally find a bank on the outskirts of the town thats open and conveniently is a BBVA so we are thinking, ok international bank, this is good, we can get money wired or a cash advance and then split.

So we go into the bank and ask if they can do cash advances- they say no, they cannot do that. In desparation we head outside to the ATM line to try and see if we can guess the pin numbers to our cards based on pin numbers that our parents have on other cards- oh also we had extra credit cards that are on our parents accounts that were not stolen but since we only have them to use in an emergency we had no idea what the pins were. So as we are standing outside in line a woman who overheard our story came out and found us and brought us back into the bank to an actual bank representative, not an overwhelmed teller.

This woman literally spends 4 hours trying to get us money. We call citibank, which has a branch in Bogota to try and get an approval for a cash advance but they say they need permission from the states because its an account there so then we spend an inordinant amount of time being passed around from department to department trying to get an authorization code for this advance. At this point we are locked inside this bank with sirons going crazy outside, on an international talking simultaneously to a citibank rep, my mom, a translator, and with Linnea pretending to be the bank rep because she doesn't speak English and they will only talk to the rep. So finally we get an authorization code for this advance but it is a 6 digit number and the bank rep says well you can't use that in an ATM...well yes that wasnt what we were going for. Apparently the concept of a cash advance does not exist there. So then we changed tactics and tried to get my pin number, well you can only get the pin number through an automated system but since it was Thanksgiving there weren't enough calls coming in so all of them were getting kicked over to representatives who didnt have access to the pin- so essentially we were out of luck because they weren't busy enough. Ok 4 hours down and we are absolutely no where, we asked about wiring money but apparently you can only do that from once BBVA account to another so the bank rep gives us her account info so we could wire money the following day into her account, which she would then give to us.

So during this time people are getting let out of the bank in groups for safety, they are stuffing money in their underwear and the bank is locking the double door to inside the bank before they open the other on to the outside so that people cant rush in. So we have no money, we are gringas, and we are coming out of this bank to a rioting city- perfect- luckily as soon as we got out the door the bank rep decided she couldnt let us walk home, that she would have her husband drive us home, what a relief!

So we get back pretty defeated but then we talk to Linnea's parents who have found the pin for her card and my mom had finally gotten through to the automated system and I had one too, victory, onlly by then it was after dark in a rioting town- we were not about to go to an ATM.

Luckily though, the hostel owners daughter was amazing and took us to Exito, its kind of like Target, outside of town so we could get money out woooo! we can get out of this place...no. The PanAmericana was closed.

By the time we get back to our hostel there is an American couple there. They say they are heading to San Augustine which is a major archeologic site about 9 hours away in Colombia but not along the Pan Americana and invite us to come along. Obviously we accept, we were ready to get out of Popayan and we had planned on going to San Augustine before the robbery business anyway.

Oh Popayan

Things got a little more interesting in Popayan than expected...first we got robbed...at a church...in the middle of the afternoon. After that though things were pretty awesome! So we report that we've been robbed and the police are on the scene within a few minutes and when I say police I mean 6 policemen with automatic weapons. Needless to say, we had their full attention, while we were in the squad car some guy ran up to report that someone had just stolen his car... they told him they would call the dispatcher and shooed him away.

After going to some of the potential culprits homes for questioning we headed back to the police station where they took an extremely detailed police report...3 times in Spanish and then once in English- we are pretty sure the only English speaking guy on the force just wanted to practice. In fact he said he hadnt had occasion to use his English in 3 years but there seemed to be a lot more gringos around Popayan recently (thanks to Lonely Planets description of a quaint colonial border town)... and asked us if there was a white people conference or something...rrrrright. He also bought us coffee and "candy" (really halls cough drops, they eat them like candy) at the police cafeteria. Then he gave us money to go call our parents. So we were escorted- reggaetone blaring and siron on (when someone got in our way) to the only place to make international phone calls in Popayan.

Then the cops dropped us off and explained things too our hostel owner and asked us to go dancing with them that night, which we accepted. Our hostel owner was not especially pleased that we didnt have anyway to pay her and we had lost our key in the robbery... so she sawed off the lock on our door with a hacksaw blade, after I had broken another key off inside our lock, trying to get it open, oops. Then we settled in for our lovely feast of peanut butter and the least rotten pieces of fruit we had purchased earlier.

Luckily when the cops came to pick us up they asked if we had had dinner, to which we replied we had no money to get dinner (and you can only use a credit card in 2 restaurants in the whole town...and they were closed) so then they took us out to dinner for what looked like some deep fried e. coli with a side of chicken. We were both planning on being sick afterwards but not willing to pass up a free meal. Here you also get a plastic glove to eat chicken with, which was funny.

Then we went looking for somewhere to go out dancing but literally every place in town was closed because it was Wednesday night after 10pm (everything closed literally by 6 on week nights) so no dancing. Instead the police picked up some beer and we drank it on the way to one of their houses...police can do whatever they like. We were expecting bachelor pads because they insisted that they weren't married, they lived alone...but that apparently meant they lived with their parents. So we went to one of their parents homes at midnight- yikes- but his mom did say we could stay there as long as we needed if we couldnt get money to pay for our hostel- she was lovely. We decided against that despite the generous marriage proposals we got from the police- they told us they normally had multiple girl friends but for us, they would be one woman kind of guys- charming. All in all though we had a great night and we got back to the hostel exhausted but ready to make things happen in the morning- i.e. get the heck out of Popayan.