The odd statues at San Agustin, Colombia

Yesterday morning, we walked down to the main road and took the local bus to the archaeological park. It's only a 3 km walk, but we decided to take the 1,200 peso ($0.55 CAD) bus.

We had already paid the admission fee via the park passport we had bought during the tour yesterday.

When you enter the park, you have to sign a register saying where you are visiting from. I noticed that they had a sheet published and taped to the window showing October's statistics. I glanced at it and saw that only 7 Canadians had visited during the month of October. The most common was from Germany, at 66. Sorry, I don't remember any of the other figures!

The park starts with a visit to the museum, which opened in 2013. It explained that they know very little about the civilization that occupied this area between 2,000 and 5,000 years ago, nor why it disappeared.

Some of the statues on display in the museum.

Of course some of these tombs were looted during the late 1800's and early 1900's. Some of the statues have been found in Denmark and France and returned to the park. Obviously there are still some out there, and the park was looted again during Colombia's instability in the 1980's and 1990's. But again, most have been returned.

I can't imagine how someone stole one of these statues...they would weigh a ton!

They have a nice forest trail set up that displays 37 of the statues that have been recovered and they have no idea where they would have stood originally. First, we walked that trail. We were almost the only ones there and it was nice to enjoy both the jungle scenery and the statues themselves. There are no two statues the same!

We think this one is ready to go skiing!

This one is a woman holding a doll or child.

Ruth, on the forest trail.

This plant was growing on a tree way up high.

This beautiful flower was also way high up in the trees!

The main part of the park.

Some of the statues are huge...others quite small.

Many of the tombs were found with hug rocks covering them.

Ruth, having fun with the statues features.

Lots of exercise at this park!

And great views at the top of this hill.

And a few more statues. They must have buried some important people way up here!

So I had commented that there weren't very many people around. Usually, we had the park pretty much to ourselves. But at the top of this hill were a group of young women, and we got to talking to them. Turns out that they are university students in the city of Neiva, about 200 kms north of here. They are going to school to become teachers, and were out on a field trip themselves.

They were full of questions, wanting to know where we were from, and why we were visiting Colombia. Only one of them spoke a little bit of English. Then, they all wanted pictures with us. I think we posed for about 25 photos!

Not every day that Kevin gets to be in a photo with 17 beautiful women!

Today is another travel day for us. We're heading north about three hours to the city of Neiva and then a bus change for another hour to the town of Villavieja. Then, we're going to visit the desert. I bet you didn't know that Colombia has a desert!

Happy birthday to my beautiful wife Ruth today!

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