Like a Cowboy
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008Day 120
The beautiful landscape together with the stone statues scattered around the San Agustin countryside make it an ideal place for a horseback ride. So that’s what we were off to do today, oh and hopefully find some more sex crazed monkey sculptures.
We had breakfast at El Maco, the restaurant here is in a huge thatched hut with tremendous views of the mountains. Two Australians, Adam and Joeb, that we met at El Maco the night before were joining us. We met our guide, Pacho and our horses and were soon off. We rode on rough trails through the green landscape. The horses were great, very responsive. If I wanted my horse to stop he did, right left, no problem. When we all felt a bit more comfortable we gave the horses a bit of a whip and off they went. I’ve been horseback riding a couple times but this was by far the fastest horse I have ridden. He broke into a fast but smooth gallop, it was such an amazing feeling.
About 2 hours in we came to a small house where a woman made us some tea, coca tea. The same coca that is used to produce cocaine. Its pretty decent as a tea and no it doesn’t get you high. Pacho them showed us the coca plant, each family is legally allowed to have 5 here in Colombia. We chewed some of the leaves, something that isn’t done much here but is very common in Peru and Bolivia. It apparently helps with acclimatisation to the altitude and gives you a bit of a boost. Jordana didn’t like the taste, I thought it was ok. As for giving us a boost, not sure about that but after chewing enough leaves your mouth tingles and tongue goes numb.
From here we rode along a beautiful ridge with a rushing river down below. Across from us on the other side of the valley waterfalls tumbled down the hillsides. This combined with some rock carvings and more statues, no monkey sex here, created quite the setting. We disembarked from our horses and silently enjoyed the view, I thought to myself Colombia is now officially one of the most stunning countries we have ever seen, and it seems to get better the more we see of it.
Riding back to El Maco we stopped at a few more stone sculptures that litter the countryside here. One in particular was very impressive, with the original colours still very visible. Reds and yellows, painted by using the plant life found in the region. We finished the trip racing the horses down the main road. Jordana’s horse, the smallest one lagged behind. I was behind Adam and Joeb when my horse kicked into another gear. Wow, I flew past them. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing, this was great fun.
After winning our little race we stopped for a trout lunch at a nice riverside restaurant. It was a great day of riding and one of the most enjoyable days we have had yet. We had planned on leaving tomorrow but at dinner decided to stay another night. El Maco was to good to leave just yet. Dinner conversation was dominated with talk of the Ecuadorian border and whether it was still open to tourists. Ecuador has moved thousands of troops to the border and is blocking all commercial traffic from crossing. All this in response to the Colombian bombing of the FARC camp a few days ago. We are heading to that border in 2 days. Some travellers were saying they heard the border had been closed to everyone and some weren’t sure. We weren’t sure either but we had come this far and planned to find out for ourselves in a few days.
Michael Coroneos