Southern Colombia: San Agustin statues and Tatacoa desert

 This year I spend a week traveling to the south of Colombia.

We ate in the region of la lechona.

We passed some beautiful scenery:

Our first stop was the Tatacoa Desert.  To get there we had to cross this countryside in Aipe

to get to this ferry to cross the Magdalena river.

On our journey we saw a dog travelling on a motorbike (see his little head at the back on the right):

I expected the desert to be all sandy but this one wasn't.

We stayed at accommodation in the desert (and got eaten alive by mosquitos!),

with plenty of wildlife (though these geese were domesticated)

One morning we woke up to birds and went out to look.

We found this roadrunner.  I never knew they were real.  Always thought it was made up for the cartoon!

The town by the desert is Villavieja:

From there we drove past Neiva to head south:

passing this beautiful reservoir (Represa de Betania). 

We encountered several 'tolls' manned by kids:

And we saw some "muñecos de año viejo".  The tradition is to make a puppet representing all the bad things of the year and to burn it at midnight.

I loved the Covid one!

In San Agustin we stayed at a lovely lodge with amazing views.

In the mornings we'd be woken by a chorus of birds and one morning there was a particularly loud one so I got up to look (top left of the tree, 2 black birds, they were chachalacas and supposedly announce rain - though we didn't get any).

It did get me up to see the sunrise and enjoy the lovely views.  

Sunsets were equally beautiful.

The reason we went to San Agustin was to visit the archeological park which contains the largest collection of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures in Latin America and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Below are some snapshots of the park.

San Agustin was a small town 

and we were there for New Year's Eve when we ran into some kids throwing flour in the NYE tradition there.  Luckily they didn't throw flour at us, though people were dressed to get covered - some with goggles on too.  A bit like Holi in India?

We celebrated New Year's Eve at the hotel.  They were hosting a dinner. but we stayed on our balcony with our champagne and enjoyed the music and fireworks.

I say 'enjoyed' the music but to be honest, it was very cheesy music traditionally played at NY in Colombia (carrangera).  I figured "when in Rome..."