November 4th: Tierradentro in Southern Colombia

 On November 4th 1975 I was at Tierradentro in Southern Colombia. 

The archaeological site at Tierradentro was spread out around the valley and on the hills.  I stayed in the village of San Andres de Pisimbala, where there was a small hotel and a nearby restaurant, a pleasant walk along the valley from the church and market.  I had a good room for a cheap hotel, nicely furnished and views over the river and the humming-birds.

After some walks to nearer sites, this was the day I climbed up to El Aguacate which was on the top of the open ridge behind the hotel which dominated the valley.  The journey up was about an hour and a half and slippery, but at the top you could walk right along the ridge.  The view the other side towards Inza was what made it for me; and as I looked down on this side, nearby there was a stream with rich, steamy, vegetation and a smell I now always associate with this moment.  The tombs small and not protected: one had paintings of insects, but there was not much else.  Without the archaeological site it would have been much more difficult for a foreigner to walk around these hills.  I went back down a different way into a little valley with thick woods, past Indian houses and fields.  There were bamboo and thatch shelters, and fields of maize, bananas and sugar-cane, and some red-stalked vegetables growing.  At the top I wrote:

Have climbed a few hundred metres above the valley onto the ridge overlooking Inza, the church, a central square, and quite a number of new looking houses, a few scattered communities along the hillside or further into the valley. The tombs line the ridge but are only the excuse to come and see the view, which is spectacular. It's very peaceful despite the noise of a bus I can see winding along the road, and a couple of places where I can see they're mending the road. Someone is burning a patch of hillside behind me, and I can hear trills and twitters of martins and lark-type birds, an occasional whoosh as a white-collared swift flies very close.

The next day I went to the market in the village about 6.40, early but not early enough, but there was still a little activity: the man selling meat, three women selling bread, a couple of men selling shirts and pots, sullen-faced, and a man with everything from wool to religious pictures.  There were quite a lot of Indians, speaking their language, in various clothes, some of it homespun, and they were often barefoot.  At 7 o'clock men arrived to work on rebuilding the church and the butcher closed up.  I had breakfast at a restaurant and walked part of the way back with an Indian lady going to sell little hand-made bags.

Links:  Wikipedia, Wikitravel

Tierradentro Market (2009), Picture by Daniel, CC

Tierradentro Tomb (2007):  Picture by Inyucho, CC

Tierradentro View (2007;  Picture by Erazzo B, CC

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October 30th: San Agustin in Colombia

On October 30th 1975 I was in San Agustin in southern Colombia.

I went with a guide and a few others to the site of Alto de los Idolos, which was on the other side of the Magdalena River. We met our horses at 9.30 in the morning and took the wide trail through the forest. We went down a particularly steep incline to the river, across a covered bridge and up to the highlands on the other side. There were waterfalls all around and for the first time in South America I noticed the large flocks of butterflies that hung around pools of water. Alto de los Idolos was a lovely site, not much visited in those days, with sculpture, tombs and crocodile statues. As so often, the archaeology was an excuse to get legitimately out into the country in a more remote place. My horse gave me a bumping ride and a couple of nasty sores, but I changed with the guide and my riding got better on the way back. We looked in on El Tablon where there was a statue with arms raised in funerary style. I have not often gone anywhere on horseback, but enjoyed this trip through the steep forests. The next day I spent most of the time lying on my stomach.

San Agustin was a good place to spend a few days in a little market town. I stayed at the Hotel Idolos, which let cheap rooms to foreigners, but also served food and was crowded all day on market day with men from the country tethering their horses outside and eating and drinking inside. One evening the foreigners all sat inside drinking beer and listening to a well-travelled American tell tales of the bizarre side to South American life, while local horsemen, drunk on aguardiente, were firing off their pistols outside. Rural Colombia was a good place to learn about the way things worked south of the Panama Canal.

The various archaeological sites were prettily laid in tropical gardens and had plenty of interest with their statues of humans and animals, carved rocks and various animal forms. However the museum showed the relative lack of sophistication of the culture.  This is all now a World Heritage Site. 

Links:  Wikipedia, Colombia Tourism, Alto de los Idolos

Carved rocks: picture by Diana Herrera, CC

Figurative Statues: picture by Diana Herrera, CC

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October 22nd: Bus from Medellin to Bogota

On October 22nd 1975 I was on a bus from Medellin to Bogota in Colombia.

This was not my first night bus but it was the first where the enormous scale of South America became clearer. I'd arrived in Medellin from Cartagena coming over mountains from the Caribbean into the deep bowl in which Medellin sits. But this was nothing compared to the ride to Bogota.

It helped that I chose to go the direct route via Rionegro, rather than on the more circuitous main road. The bus left after dark about 7pm and seemed to go straight up the mountain. After several hours of constant gears and serpentines I could still see the lights of Medellin almost below, as if from an aeroplane. Once we were on the other side of the ridge there were great mountain views in the moonlight. I nodded off in the end after Rionegro where the asphalt finished and the gravel began. At dawn the bus pulled to a stop where a huge tree had fallen across the road. No problem, a man with an impassive face, who had been sitting in the middle of the back row with a machete, set about chopping. After an hour or two of work the tree was cut and could be pulled off the road by a pickup with a winch. At La Dorada we joined the Magdalena valley, stopped for a tinto, the universal excellent black coffee of Colombia. Then we drove through fine scenery in the valley to Honda; there were gentle hills to the east, more eroded on the west, and lush grass for cattle in between with rich-looking haciendas and streams. At Honda we crossed the Magdalena over rapids in the narrow part of the valley and made the final ascents and descents and ascents to the more arid area around Bogota. The total journey time was seventeen and a half hours.

Medellin had been a curious place; it was part market town with primitive butchers and streets of bars with dubious looking women available, I've never seen so many bars; but it was also part a city with modern tendencies. I visited an art gallery, with its Picasso lithographs like any provincial gallery across the globe, and went to a concert-hall to watch a forty-piece orchestra play the Pastoral.

The Rio Magdalena:  picture by Anviatella, CC

Honda:  picture by Anviatella, CC

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