Popayan in southern Colombia. sabado 1 de setiembre – lunes 3 de setiembre
In the morning, I leave at 6:45 to get a bus to Popayan in southern
Colombia. To do so, I bought a ticket to the only big city on the way, Cali.
But although I bought the ticket from the Palmira bus company. I am led to
another bus, and there is only one person on the bus even though it is supposed
to be leaving in a few minutes. We head
off a half hour late, and pick up a few people on the way, but at the first
town stop, the bus driver asks me to pay the rest of the fee to go to Popayan
(another $8, on top of the original $22) and then hands me a receipt which has
nothing to do with Popayan, and then escorts me to a pretty full mini-van. I
finally realize that the changes are due to the original bus being nearly
empty, and in South America you just do not go anywhere if the bus is not full.
I took a motion sickness pill which meant that I felt fine but sleepy and
seeing as I was sitting right up front with the driver and his helper (bus
drivers always have helpers, even these 15 seaters), I could not sleep. At
Cali, I was asked to change buses again, and finally arrived in Popayan in late
afternoon. Popayan is a colonial city, nestled in among some big hills and
small mountains in a fairly arid area. Like elsewhere in Colombia, the houses
are built right up the very steep slopes. The old portion of the city was
originally built in the 1500 and 1600s, it was rebuilt in the same style after
a 1983 earthquake. It has narrow streets, and the buildings are made of
white-washed adobe, and built right out to the sidewalks next to the street.
The effect is somewhat claustrophobic and devoid of anything living, but
attractive in its own way. Popayan has a beautiful town square where people
hang out, day and evening, and one evening when I was there, there is a band playing:
pretty good music. Anything sounds good to me though, as I have no music on my
computer, no other device for playing music, and I rarely go to bars or
concerts. I am treated often enough to music in the street, and I occasionally
listen to music on internet radio, so I am not totally deprived.
Since I have my GPS with me, I decide it will be interesting to follow
my longitude and latitude (and altitude), as I go further south than I have
ever been. My first trip to the Amazon did bring me across the equator
(southeast corner of Colombia) and back already, though. Popayan is at N2o 34.4’ W76o 2.3’.
I hang out in the Popayan town square several times, talk to locals, and
read newspapers (with a dictionary- one of my language learning strategies).
There is a big hill at one end of town, that is a park. I climb it and pass a
group of teenagers smoking pot on the steep slope. There are a variety of
people up top just talking or admiring the view. This hill I have read was
originally a pyramid erected by an earlier civilization, and it certainly has
the rough form of a pyramid. (You really cannot go very far in much of South
America without encountering evidence of earlier pre-European
civilizations.) At the other end of
town, is an elaborate stone path leading up a hill and the path is adorned with
biblical statues along it. At the end of the path is a large Catholic church
which overlooks the town. I had also planned on the same day (Monday) to visit
the Tourist Office (closed) and the History and Art Museum (closed).
The hostal I stay in has beautiful high ceilinged rooms with
white-washed walls. There is an older Swiss man living there with the hostal
owner who speaks French and keeps speaking to me in French. It is a recurrent
theme that people want to use another common language: makes sense, but it is
only by using my broken Spanish that I am going to succeed in learning the
language.
In Popayan, I also visit a small Natural History Museum, which, on three
floors hosts exhibits of Colombian sea life, insects, reptiles and amphibians,
birds and mammals. While the insect pinning and animal taxidermy is of poor
quality, and the information with the specimens is limited (and wrong in some
cases), it still gives me my first good look at a wide assemblage of South
American fauna, which is so different from our own, although with quite a few
shared species including many migratory birds, white-tailed deer and the
cougar. There are a couple of specimens of the Andean condor, which has a 3-m
wingspan, and is revered by Andean peoples as a symbol of freedom. I was finally to see them in the wild for the
first time in Peru a month later. The obvious differences between North America
and South America include a dazzling number and variety of wading birds,
hummingbirds, and birds of prey, as well as some groups that we do not have in
North America, many kinds of snakes, and a very exotic mammal assemblage
including sloths, monkeys, coatis, capybaras, anteaters, many small cats, a
couple of small dogs, and many unusual (and some familiar) members of the
weasel family. I stay there until almost closing time. As I walk down the
street after leaving the museum, a man calls out to me from a second story
window, that he has a cure for baldness if I am interested. I respond with a
‘no, gracias’.
The last night in Popayan, I wanted my towel to dry by morning, so I put
up a clothes line and place the towel close to the open (barred, 2nd storey)
window. In the morning, it is gone. If someone wanted it that badly they are
welcome to it. It was one of those camping towels that feels like you are
drying yourself with wax paper. The landlady tells me that theft out of the
window is a common occurrence. Later I buy a hand towel in a market to replace
it, but now when I need it to dry quickly, I just do not use a towel. After months of this, I get pretty good at
squeegeeing my body and then air-drying for a few minutes.
Tierra Dentro in southern Colombia. martes 4 setiembre – jueves 6
setiembre
Tierra Dentro (translation: inside the Earth), a small mountain village
of archeological importance. Tuesday
morning I take the bus to Inza, the nearest town (although the bus was supposed
to go to Tierra Dentro, it didn’t.) .
The bus trip took 5 hours to cover about 120 km. A very narrow, muddy road,
with lots of steep drop-offs. Beautiful valleys and steep slopes. The whole
area is very rural with terraced farmed slopes, a lot of livestock (cattle,
pigs, and the ubiquitous chicken), and small mixed farms, many of them slashed
and burned out of the mountainside, going higher and higher. I buy a couple of
containers of home-made fruit yogurt from a local who spent a year in
Scandinavia 20 years ago and has enthusiastic but broken English. I pile into a
Jeep that is going the last few km to Tierra Dentro (for $2).
I book into a small hostel run by a man in his 70s whose wife has
recently passed on, but whose daughter checks in on him. He does speak Spanish
but I have trouble understanding him and he, me. He tells me that hostel name
is a combo of his and his wife’s names. A French couple who have been traveling
for most of a year translate a couple of times for me. I ask them why I have so
much difficulty communicating with our host, and they tell me that his Spanish
is garbled and he seems confused. I have
a charming little room and there is a roofless courtyard there which attracts
some very beautiful songbirds. In the night, I notice an interesting variety of
cockroaches and beetles who are co-habiting. In the morning, I buy breakfast
early at a nearby restaurant as well as some bread and fruit for lunch. I am at
the museum at 8 AM when it opens. It interprets the area as well as sells
tickets to enable one to hike the surrounding mountains and visit the
archeological sites (which three Bogota friends insisted that I should not
miss). The museum has displays of most of the past and current indigenous
peoples’ practices in the area. This includes wooden machinery for extracting
juice from sugar cane, coca leaf chewing, wheat
grinding, primitive woven bags, water bags made from rawhide, etc. I later see identical sugar cane
machinery in use in the Bolivian Amazon.
The cane juice is boiled down in large kettles set over dug-out underground
ovens, just like maple syrup.
By 9, I am off into the hills to visit the sites. These consist of 100
or so secondary (not where the bodies were originally placed after death)
burial tombs at 5 different sites, about half of which have been excavated. The
other half (mostly at the most remote mountain top site) are just holes in the
ground, but they go down and then in horizontally. Where the tombs have been
excavated, there are roofs overhead to protect them. At each site is a guide
who unlocks a gate over each tomb so you can climb down and have a look. Some
of the guides are quite enthusiastic while others just want you to go so that
they can get back to whatever they were doing. Some of the tombs contain urns
with ashes, and have walls painted with whitewash followed by intricate
coloured designs. There are carved steep stone stairs going down into each one,
and they are in varying condition. These tombs are thought to be about 1000
years old. At one of the sites, there
are stone statues which have been collected and deposited here under one roof.
These are 3 to 7 ft tall and quite elaborate, and it has been determined that
they are related to burial but completely unrelated to the tombs. As I hike
between sites, I spot a wild orange tree, and leaning over from a high spot, I
am able to pull down a branch and free a ripe looking orange. I peel it and eat
it. It is as sour as any lemon. Not as good as I had hoped but nevertheless I
eat it and enjoy the sour juice.
Steps
down into these tombs carved out of rock
Inside the tomb also carved out
of solid rock. Each one held the remains of many people.
The last site I visit is on a mountain ridge, much higher than the
others, and farther removed. It is a long hike down to cross a creek valley and
back up much higher, taking a couple of hours. At one fork, I am not sure which
way to go but I am pretty sure that both lead toward the summit ridge which is
where I am going. It turns out that the fork I take leads to a homestead. The
path here is extra slippery as there was an hour of rain a couple of hours
earlier and there are no rocks on the path. I see a small brown snake lying on
the path with its head in the shade of vegetation. Pretty nervy or pretty
poisonous. I cannot see the head so I do not know which and so am careful. A
dog runs up to me barking loudly and it obviously lives nearby. Its owner comes
along shortly, informs me that the other way is easier. He is wearing sandals
that mountain people in the Andes almost all wear. When I get to the top, there
is a beautiful view from there and the town of Inza and other villages are
visible. A couple and their very young daughter are tending to their fields on
the unbelievably steep slopes just below the last group of tombs. There is no
guide here but most of these tombs have not been excavated and do not have
roofs overhead. I have been warned to
get down before dark as tourists have been robbed in these mountains. In any
case, I am not keen on descending a mountain in the dark and so I head down,
arriving in Tierra Dentro by 4:30 or so.
Mountain ridge location of many tombs most of which have not been
excavated yet (the roofs are over those that have been.
One of a group of black vultures hanging out on the mountain ridge with
all the tombs. A thousand years too late.
I go for supper every night in the same restaurant. The second night, I
notice that they have a little store there and I buy a bottle of coca wine
(abut $15) as I am curious. It turns out to be one of the worst wines I have
ever drunk. In fact, I try to share it with a French couple but they are truly
French: they will not have more than a
taste. I drink it myself and get a buzz: it is better after the first two glasses
(like some terrible fruit wines I have made; the worst ever was made from
red-berried elder).
It is such a beautiful area that I decide to spend another day and
night. In the morning, I consult with some locals on my way to a 6:30 breakfast
(pre-arranged with a local woman who runs a small restaurant/store/hostel, as
for my original plan I would have needed to be off early). I am told that the river valley trail I was
planning to hike to, from a nearby village, is dangerous: there are supposedly
very unfriendly people in that area. One suggests that I visit the Pyramid of
San Francisco. I had never heard of this, but I verify with someone else that
it does exist and it sounds not only intriguing but a lot easier to get to than
my ‘dangerous hike’ in a river valley would have been. I could bus to the
village nearest to the Pyramid but opt to walk instead as I want to see more of
the countryside. I walk and walk which is very pleasant, all small fields,
homesteads and livestock, and many kinds of colourful songbirds flitting
around. The friendliest of the guides
from yesterday drives by on a motorbike and stops to chat. He is on his day
off. I ask him about the pyramid as I have no idea what I am looking for. He points
to a distant triangular shaped peak of rock high up and a few miles away. I
thank him and he heads off. I walk through a town and on, crossing a large
fast-flowing river that forms the valley in which I walk. After I cross the
bridge and and start a long uphill (still on the road). I start asking people
more regularly about the Pyramid as I know that at some point I will have to
turn off the road and climb into the hills. People keep telling me to keep
following the road. Finally, as I enter another village and ask yet again, an
older man tells me that there is a road way up ahead that climbs up to the
Pyramid of San Francisco, but that there is an old path which is much quicker.
This path is only a few 100 meters ahead, but I do not understand his
directions. He has turned off but waits and watches me. I turn back and
question with my hands if this is the way to the trail. He indicates that it is
further so I keep going and again look back for confirmation of a path.
Finally, the third path is the one and I follow it up and up through a bamboo
plantation and then through steep fields of banana, sugar cane, and cassava.
Eventually, the fields end but the slope and trail continues upward through
scrub and grass until I finally reach more level ground (although still sloped)
where there are more houses. I keep going upward until I find a series of signs
which are eccentric and have both a Christian and an environmentalist tone but
indicate that I am not far. Going through someone’s yard, I see coffee beans
drying in the sun on a tarp, and beyond I see the pyramid of rocks I had seen
on my walk at about 10:00. It is now about 12:15. All in all, it was a 2.5 hour
walk and a 45 min climb. I climb over the jumble of rocks, see that on one side
they are well lined up. Once on the far side with a good view, I sit down and
eat the lunch I brought with me (water, bread, oranges, chocolate bar). After
checking it all out, I began to head back. But talking to a man and a woman who
live there, I learn that there are tunnels underneath. They offer to take me down
but I have a headlamp and I prefer to explore on my own. They warn me that the
far tunnel (there are two) has a steep drop.
I follow the trail they indicate and soon find myself in front of a
gaping hole in the side of the mountain under the pyramid. It is about 6 ft
wide and 9 feet tall. It goes way back. I put on my head lamp and head in.
After 40 m, the tunnel turns 90 degrees to the left and continues for another
70 m or so. I see a bat flying, and then looking around see about a dozen
hanging upside down from the wall near the roof. My head lamp has disturbed
them and a number are in flight. I turn and head back out, and on to the second
tunnel. This one is similar to the first. I note that there is a cross carved
into the rock at the entrance: maybe a more recent addition? This one goes in a
similar distance but instead of turning to the left, this one turns down with
some steep steps carved into the rock. I carefully climb down the steps around
20 feet down. At the bottom there are several large spaces including one that
descends another ten feet or so (without stairs). This is kind of creepy but
fascinating. I turn off my headlamp to experience this in almost complete
darkness. I am feeling a little uneasy here so I turn on the light and carefully
climb the somewhat clammy stairs. I am guessing that this pyramid and these
tunnels are some kind of burial site but I have seen no information about this,
so that is as far as I get with my understanding of this. Clearly a huge amount
of energy went into building this.
I head out and the woman asks for
a payment but does not tell me how much. I leave her 5000 pesos (about $3) and
she is happy. I continue on and find the road that goes down from here. I take
it and then continue walking into Inza (about half an hour). I walk on the left
side like I was taught as a child and from around a tight bend come three
teenage girls on a motorbike. They are hugging the roadside to be safe but had
not counted on me being there. They swerve and I jump to flatten myself against
the rock wall and all is OK. As I get closer to town, I see a man unloading
sacks of oranges from two mules. The orange trees are clearly down the steep
slopes below the road, and I stop and chat and ask about the mules and the
oranges. The huge pile of orange sacks beside the road have come up in three
trips. He offers me a couple of oranges which I gratefully accept. I continue
into town and eat the delicious oranges as I walk.
I enter town and discover that the main road is closed as they are in
the process of placing a series of speed bumps along it. This is extremely
common in South America and I am sure saves many lives. I walk along this and
then take stairs up to a higher street, and head toward the main square where
there are a lot of small stores and where buses load. I meet the
English-speaking yogurt seller who gives me some wrong advice about the buses
but I eventually get it straight and hop in a Jeep and get a ride back to my
hostal in Tierra Dentro.
The last night in the restaurant I talk to a couple from Australia
although the woman is only there temporarily and is from Germany. The man does
most of the talking and although he is obviously bright and interesting, he is
one of those people who cannot stop bragging about himself and the conversation
becomes all about him. Note to self: never be like that (although I know that I
have done that before).
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