San Agustin and The Bus Ride I Wish Hadn´t Happened

Our last stop in the land of Locumbia was San Agustin, a land of green hills sprinkled with enigmatic statues from a lost civilization we know nothing about. We spent our time picking country roads at random to wander down. Day One took us past the front yard of this small, shriveled gentleman


who hijacked our leisurely stroll to share a cup of coffee and fistful of toasted coca leaves. Perhaps you can tell from the ferocity at which he grips my upper arm that he liked us. ¨Te da energia!¨ he said, through teeth stained brown by this most favorite of hobbies.

Refined in a laboratory, coca produces cocaine, but indigenous Colombians have partook for thousands of years as fuel for living. It tastes like hell and you have to periodically spit green sludge (which our ancient friend insisted I do into a piece of notebook paper he held for me), but I will say the mountain paths walked a lot easier that afternoon.

Day Two was spent more conventionally, as far as San Agustin is concerned. We did a muddy country road circuit of the neighborhood´s most famous statues. I got my Mayan horoscope read at one of the sites and I don´t want to keep you in suspense: I´m White Spectral Wind. Mission in life, according to my friends the Mayan? To communicate. The hippie who enlightened me of this new, true nature of mine told me that journalism would be my spiritual path. Loved her.


Here´s La Chaquira, up in the left corner. She is one of the mysterious statues who sits looking out on the deepest, greenest valley you´ve ever seen. She is amazing.

But sadly, even La Chaquira couldn´t give us a visa extension. So, from San Agustin it was south to Ecuador. Easily the worst twenty-seven hours of my trip so far.

Now, I know you come to this blog for your daily shot of gypsy-Caitlin sunshine, but can I tell you that this was the most godawful bus ride of my life? Our ride broke down about 40 kilometers from cell phone reception and then we got stuck behind a fruit truck that had snapped an axle, but these were minor concerns. The first six hours we spent riding our dilapidated short bus down former FARC-controlled jungle dirt road. Our guidebook is from 2004 and it said we´d be going through a permanent road stop run by the guerillas. Erik was particularly disappointed that time had given the Colombian army a chance to remedy the situation, but we still got to share the ride with two machine gun-toting soldiers, who laughed their asses off every time the bus hit a rut and the gringos in the back seat bounced their skulls off the bus´s roof. And then there was the stains on our seat covers...

So as you can see, even we derelict wanderers have our tough days. Hasta luego Colombia, you police-state sweetheart.