Cartagena de las Indias, Bolivar, Colombia: The colonial section of Cartagena looks exactly like it should: it has colorfully painted narrow streets, buildings that have beautiful wrought iron balconies and lovely flowers on them, great churches, and quaint plazas.

 
It’s postcard perfect and ideal for any history nerd. 

 
Outside of the original walled city is the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas. It’s an impressive structure that still looks over the city and the harbor. 
  

The heat is also impressive. It’s the kind of heat that makes you think about every step you take: you don’t want to spend excess energy. 

  
Exploring the fortress made me think of two things:

1. I fully expected to turn a corner and see Sir Francis Drake coming towards me, sword drawn as he’d just breached the fortress’s walls. Wandering through the tunnels is really fun and you can let your imagination run wild.  
2. It also reminded me of a truly creepy Edgar Allen Poe story, The Cask of Amantillado. Some niches in the catacombs would be the perfect size for Montresor to bury Fortunato alive. 

This was my second time in Cartagena — I visited it in mid-June during my first stint in Colombia. Because I’d already done the heaving sightseeing I opted to escape the heat and go to Playa Blanca: an hour west of Cartagena. 

  
True to its name the sand on the beach is white. It was a little overcast on the beach, but it was also delightfully cool and a great place to spend the day on the Caribbean. 

San Andrés de Pisimbalá, Inzá, Cauca, Colombia: Pre-dating the statues in San Agustín the tombs in Tierradentro were built between 2000 and 1100 years ago. 

 
Most of the tombs have been carved into the ground on the tops of the hills. The tombs are underground and to get inside each tomb has 5-13 steps that range between 1/2m–1m high a piece.  

 
The people who built the tombs were either very tall or very flexible. 

 
As is true in San Agustín very little is known about the people who constructed the tombs. The Nasa, the indigenous people who live in the region now, say that they are not descended from the group that built the tombs. 

 
But the ancients obviously wanted their dead close to the sky. 

 
Tierradentro is described as the most important archeological site in Colombia but frankly it’s a bitch to get to. 

 
The day I tried to go there was a protest: local teachers closed the road from Popayán to San Andrés. I had to go the long way around via La Plata. 

 
San Andrés was a guerrilla stronghold until a few years ago, so you would think the government would have gone in a modernized this important tourist site as soon as they regained control of it. You would of course be wrong. 

 
The paved road is on its way, albeit slowly, but the water went out while I was there and the town does not have cell service or wifi. 

 
However, the mountains are beautiful, the tombs strange and it is well worth the hassle to go for a few days and hike around the valley. 

 
What I found interesting is that the tombs built on the eastern mountains are better preserved than those built on the western mountains. 

 
Those to the west get more rain and you can feel the humidity in the rocks. 

San Pedro de Riobamba, Chimborazo, Ecuador:
Two highlights from Riobamba:

1) A cab driver asked me when I was going home to Spain; 

2) A good view of Chimborazo. 

Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in Ecuador (over 6,000 m) and taller than any mountain in any other country on the equator. Because it is the highest point on the equator its peak is the closest point to the sun on earth. 

Take that Everest. 

Baños de Agua Santa, Tungurahua, Ecuador: I’m not going to make it to the Galapagos this trip, but after two weeks on mainland-Ecuador I think you can skip Ecuador if you are pressed for time. 

 
Similar to Bolivia, Ecuador and I got off to a shaky start. However, unlike Bolivia Ecuador has not won me over for a variety of reasons. Many of which came to a head in Baños. 

Baños is in a beautiful valley, at the foot of the Tungurahua volcano, along the banks of the Rio Pastaza. The town is named for the thermal baths that come from the volcano, which is quite active. 

One night I was standing outside my hostel and the proprietor pointed out smoke emanating from the crater. 

On my first day in Baños I hiked up the mountain across from the volcano. There is a viewpoint near the top called Mirador Ojos del Volcán (“lookout: eyes of the volcano”). 
It was a nice hike and gave me a good view of the valley. However, on my way back down I was attacked by a dog. 

Normally my experience with dogs in South America has been they bark at me, put up a fuss, and then let me go. This dog came charging out of a driveway and bit me. 

I was totally caught off guard. I was not the biggest dog lover to begin with and my feelings for them have not improved.  

But I did get to go to the hospital clinic in Baños, which looked like something out of a 50s sitcom. 

Once I asked 100 questions to be sure I wasn’t going to get rabies (the nurse actually laughed at me) I was told to wash the wound out everyday and it would begin to heal.

While I was in the clinic another tourist walked in with a dog bite. Maybe it’s something in the water. Either way the city needs a new anti-theft device. 

Baños is Ecuador’s adventure sport Mecca. One such activity: jumping off of bridges. 

But after my trauma I wasn’t feeling up for rafting, etc., so I went to the Cascada Pailón del Diablo (“Devil’s Bowl”). 

The waterfall was on the other side of the mountains from Baños — in the direction of the Amazon. Just one mountain and already the climate felt different. 

Mocoa, Putumayo, Colombia: “El fin del Mundo” in Colombia is small cluster of waterfalls outside of Mocoa in the jungle. Mocoa is a fairly nondescript town. It’s a smaller version of Iquitos.  

It’s a pleasant hike up a couple of hills and across two rivers. 

  
The local story behind the name is that the local children would run through the jungle for what felt like an eternity and get to the top of the waterfall. The ground would fall away and they said it was like reaching the end of the world. 

Apocryphal or not it’s a good story. And while it is a nice hike the people who named the waterfall obviously have not been to Iguazu. 

San Agustín, Huila, Colombia: San Agustin is another small Andean town that I loved. It’s a bit bigger than Salento but fair less touristy. 

It is known for funerary statues found in tombs in the surrounding mountains. The people who carved the statues settled the region c. 1000 BC and died or abandoned the area c. 1300 AD. 

Not a lot is known about their culture, language, or why the statues were put in tombs. 

Some of the figures are similar to those found in other Andean cultures. 

Just outside of San Agustin is an archeological park that has the best preserved stones. 

I also went on a jeep tour to the archeological sites in Isnos, a town that is a mountain away from San Agustin. 

Also on the tour was a stop along the Magdalena River. There is a part called the narrows where the river is forced between rocks 2 meters apart. 

And we also saw a few cascades.  The tour is largely designed for tourists from Bogota and this allows them some additional time in nature. 

  
The statues are interesting, but you get the idea pretty quickly.