Our last few days in Colombia: the Valley of the Ghosts and La Pelota

I am sorry if the title of this post is a bit confusing. There isn't really a Valley of the Ghosts or La Pelota, these are simply nicknames for the last two places we visited in Colombia: the Tatacoa desert and the ruins found in San Agustin. I'll start then telling you about the first one, our stop at the Tatacoa desert.

The Tatacoa desert is the second largest dry area in Colombia after the Guajira peninsula - though it's not really a desert but more of a dry forest. Its nickname is the Valley of the Ghosts, chosen because of Tatacoa's unique landscape. Tatacoa is a vast expanse of scrub and rock, characterised by rust coloured sand, punctuated by bizarre wind-shaped cacti and trees. We stayed only one night and, in the evening, we went star gazing like we did in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It was actually a last-minute decision to go because it was so cloudy that we didn't thought it would be worth it. Fortunately, it cleared out only a few minutes before the star gazing presentation started. 

When we arrived, there was a big group of secondary-aged students and their teachers from Bogota, and the guy presenting and telling us about the stars was very passionate and excitable. He told us how the stars were formed and how they are named. It made us laugh when he was telling us excitably about the Greeks and how they named the stars, I think Ioanna was ready to shout ' I am Greek'! Unlike the star gazing we did in San Pedro de Atacama, in the Tatacoa desert we only observed stars and star cluster from the telescopes, not planets. We did however have a look at the moon, which was as amazing as I remembered it in the Atacama desert.

After that, we visited San Agustin, one of the most important archaeological sites in Colombia, contested only by Cuidad Perdida. La Pelota means football in Spanish and is San Agustin's nickname, chosen for its large, grassy flat plains. San Agustin is shrouded by mystery, almost nothing is known of its creators, and all the 'clues' are grave bones, and hundreds of large carved statues. Nobody knows why this specific cultural group came to the area and how it disappeared, but the statues date from 4000 BC. 

We walked through the forest of statues where archaeologists had placed a hundred or so statues to lead the way to the 'mesitas' (flat areas like little tables). All the statues were almost comical, they represented monsters or animals with their angry looks and toothy features. Several of them were monkey-like, others were representing big, scary creatures eating or holding other creatures or playing some kind of ancient musical instrument. It also appeared like the statues were blocking the entrance to the tombs and guarding the dead. 

Going closer to the border to Ecuador tomorrow and driving a road called by locals 'the trampoline of death'! Wish us luck...