Equipo Williams

Two days ago we went on a horse tour in San Augustin. San Augustin is in south-central Colombia and is home to the San Augustin ancient group. They didn’t leave any written records and they died out long before settlers came here, so we don’t know their name or much about them at all. The only remains of them are their burial grounds. San Augustin is on the Magdalena River and it seems that the burial grounds were placed on specific points related to the river. 

The burial grounds of these people are guarded by giant statues made out of stone. These statues are part human and part animal. For example, they all have fangs in their teeth meant to seem fierce and ward off evil. The figures were painted in the later years of this civilization with colors like red, yellow, black, and blue. They used natural dyes to dye the stone. The figures were buried under the earth after erosion and changes in the land. They were found by farmers in the last century and made into several visitable and mostly free sites where you can see them. We went to see these on horseback.

To give a little background we were at our hotel and there was a sign for horseback tours of the sites. The sign said the tours were recommended by Lonely Planet and that you could inquire at the front desk. I didn’t think we were going to do it but the parents decided it would be a lot of fun. The next morning we woke up, had breakfast, and got on the horses at nine. We then rode down the very steep road to the main town. It was about a four or five kilometer ride to the first stop. We mostly walked, but were encouraged to speed up and trot as well. At the first site we got off and looked at four stone anthropomorphic figures. They were very creepy and my personal take on the situation was that they were used to keep other tribes and outsiders from getting too close to the tombs.

After that we hopped back on our horses and rode to the second site. The tour guide was urging our horses to go super fast so once it evened out, I started loping on my horse. These horses were fairly skinny so the loping didn’t hurt my legs as much as the horses I’ve loped on before. My dad also loped with me and we were having a lot of fun, but Syd didn’t want to go so fast, so we slowed down to trotting to the next stop. Here we walked down to a lookout with some unfinished figures of a woman and a bear, as well as a lookout down to the Magdalena River. We were getting a bit tired by this point, but once we were back on the horses all of that just slipped away.

It was a twenty minute ride to the next place and now that our horses knew they could lope, they did it most of the time. It was a hilly ride and the horses were careful walking down the hills, but at the bottom of each they just took off. The problem was that Baba’s horse wanted to go really fast and since these horses were somewhat of a family, that meant that all of our horses started loping at the bottom of hills. It was fun and we were definitely going faster than we’ve ever ridden before. The third stop had a rebuilt model of what one of the tombs would have looked like. We looked at that, ate some native fruit which I could not name and got back on the horses for our last ride.

This one was fairly long and also very hilly. We passed another horse tour and I don’t think they liked how their horses also started loping as we passed. We also passed some schools and a lot more houses as we got back into town. The ending point of our trip was an archeological park that we walked around for a while. This had more of the statues and some different styles of statues than the ones we had previously seen. My favorite was titled The Flutist. She had a long flute that could have also been an elephant-like nose. After this we went home and slept like logs. That is the end of my story but I will say that even today my back and legs hurt A LOT. Anyways, our trip was really fun and I am putting all of my wishes towards another horseback ride on this trip.