The drive from San Augustine takes most of the day and several connections. Again, we see first hand that transport is not cheap in this country. After two share taxis over the hills we get to the big smoke. Then straight into an old bus with only 3 others on it.
Those Mexican saddles yesterday must have transferred weight into funny places, cos both of our backs are stff and painful. We bump along the shitty road, but really enjoy the view. We travel alongside a river in a deep valley. Its green and grassy, just like NZ. A half hour stop is made in a small town at a dead end in the hills. Its market day so the small square is quite busy. A crazy man with the meanest hunch back Ive ever seen runs around drunk checking our tyres and so on. Everybody ignores him. Another soon to be passengers stands out too. Hes the first really tall person Ive seen in SA, and has the meanest curly mullet ever. Billy ray Cyrus would be envious...
From here we back track a bit, then climb higher. Finaly we get dropped at the road side, 2km from the start of our destination town, which is also a dead end road.
The American boys gave us some names, so we check into their reccommended basic hotel run by a lovely couple who look like they are approaching 90. The town (or this section of it, as it turns out) is all of 100m long, with maybe 8 buildings. We eat some dinner and say hi to Fabian, the midget guide who came reccommended.
The next day we have barely got out of bed when Fabien finds us in the hostel and asks if we would like to join three others on a day tour. We´d kind of decided against a guide put hes quite pushy....
It turns out to be a very good decision.
We are with three othere, a Colombian couple our age, and a Swiss dude. The day starts with a pretty serious climb straight up a huge hill. Now when I say Frabien is a midget, thats quite literal.- Hes a dwarf, or small person, as i believe the new PC term is. Now I´m not overly fit at this moment, but when Fabien starts at a cracking pace, I am bloody determined not to be outpaced by a f%$king dwarf! The two of us surge ahead of the others, but its only me whos sweating profusely..
Later in the day I learn that he thought it was me egging him on by chasing his heels. Angela and Carlos from Bogota reckon we look like the fellowship of the ring with a hobbit leading us..
The tombs themselves are pretty interesting. they are all the same basic design, with a spiral staircase heading down to enter, and a circular cavern where they put the urns of ashes. They were another culture that mysteriously dissappeared in the 9th century, and again most of the ideas about the toombs are just theories. But its a great day out.
In the eve we eat dinner at Fabiens small cafe, and wouldnt you know it, his wife is a midget too! We have some good laughs, cos they are lovely people. When his wife puts her foot alongside mine, its halerious. Further experiments show the length of my hand is almost twice that of her foot!
In a remarkable show of generosity, Carlos and Angela decide to donate us the use of their flat in Bogota until they return in a week. We are stunned by this trust and generosity.
Between the four Col-o-mbians we have met today, -we are now understanding why so many travellers rave about how the poeple here are so lovely.
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