After a 6-hour bumpy van ride from Popayan, I finally reached San Agustin. San Agustin is known for its pre-Colombian archaelogical sites.

I already had a hostel in mind before I arrived in the village. But when I got off the bus, an owner of one of the hostels there was offering a really good price for a room, about a third of what I would’ve paid at the other hostel. I decided to take it.

He gave me a ride on his motorbike up the hill to his hostel: Posada de Japones. The rooms were pretty basic but it’s on a nice location, with a nice view of the village and hammocks right outside the rooms. The owner, Libardo, is a really nice guy as well.

There were 3 other travelers there when I arrived. One had been living there for about 6 months already and the other 2 just arrived that same day in the morning. I wasn’t planning on doing anything that day as I was pretty tired and just wanted to relax. But after drinking the free coffee at the hostel I felt very awake.

I decided to join the 2 travelers that just arrived there, Blaz from Slovenia and Nikos from Greece, to go horseback riding. Really cool guys. It’s cheaper if there are more people, for the 3 of us we paid COP25,000 each, which is around $14 for about 4-5 hours of riding. The scenery along the way was beautiful. We stopped at some spots as well to check out some statues.

On the way back, we stopped at a museum. We didn’t actually check out the museum but spent quite a bit of time there to learn some things about Mayan Astrology. The lady there asked us our date of birth to figure out our “Galactic Signature.” Apparently, I’m a Red Magnetic Skywalker. It was already nighttime when we left the museum, but it was only about a 20-minute horseback ride left to get back to our hostel.

The following day I joined Blaz and Nikos again to check out the main archaeological park in San Agustin. We took a bus from the village to the park for COP1,000 ($0.55). The entrance fee to the park is COP10,000 ($5.55).

There are a lot of statues to see here and it’s a really nice park. Not crowded either, in most sections we were the only ones there. We pretty much spent the entire day walking around this park.

When we got back to town we decided to look for a cheap place to eat before going back to our hostel. We went inside the market and sat down at one of the eateries there. Really cheap, but good food. We paid COP3,000 ($1.66) each for a full meal: soup, chicken and rice, and tomato juice. Blaz and Nikos speak Spanish very well as well so they got a conversation going with the owners. Hanging out with them really motivated me to learn more Spanish as everywhere we went they were able to easily start a conversation with the locals and learn more about their country.