Guerrillas in the Mountains?

Until quite recently, the area around Tierradentro and San Agustín in the south of Colombia was not the safest due to guerrilla activity. There was an attack on police in September 2014 in Tierradentro and military operations near San Agustín in May 2010. Therefore, when we came across a band of heavily armed men dressed in fatigues while walking on a small path towards the ancient tombs of Tierradentro we felt some trepidation. We're now pretty sure that they were army, though, and we had a nice chat with them about the area, although didn't bring up anything too political!

The path where we came across the army - we obviously didn't try to get any pictures of them!

We'd left the touristy village of Salento for Popayán, one of the larger cities in the south of the country. It's known as the White City (see Arequipa, Perú and Sucre, Bolivia) and lived up to its name, with plenty of colonial buildings and churches lining the streets. We didn't spend much time here, though - we were just using it as a base to get to the UNESCO-listed archaeological sites at Tierradentro and San Agustín.

Popayán - the (a) White City

Not much is known about the pre-Colombian civilisations in this area. All that is left now are underground tombs, particularly in Tierradentro, and hundreds of statues and rock carvings, primarily in San Agustín. They date to the first millennium AD and no-one knows what happened to the cultures that created them - they'd disappeared by the time the Spanish arrived in the 1500's.

A tomb in Tierradentro

The tombs in Tierradentro are situated on four different hilltops around the town of San Andrés de Pisambalá. They consist of a large well of around 5-8m depth which gives access to a cave where bodies were interred in pots. Many of the tombs have no decoration, and many have been looted and damaged. However, some still show colourful, but simple, painted geometric patterns and creepy faces carved into the walls and supporting columns.

Statues guarding a tomb in San Agustín

Although Tierradentro has a few statues, the majority are found at many sites around San Agustín. Again, not much is known about them, but there are many hypotheses as to their meaning. They range from 1m to 7m in height and take on the form of humans, animals and a mix of the two. Some are thought to be gods and others shamans. To our eyes, they appear quite aggressive, with many bearing their teeth and others seeming to represent child sacrifice.

An owl/eagle and snake god?

The town of San Agustín is set in a beautiful location, close to the source of the Magdalena River, which we'd seen before in Honda and Mompox. Here, though, the river was much narrower and raged far below in a deep canyon. We found a good way to visit the river and a number of the archaeological sites was on horseback. This was our first time on horses, and we had a good time sitting on them while they did whatever they wanted!

Jo and her horse, Carmela

From San Agustín, we took a night bus up to Bogotá, which will be our final stop in Colombia before we fly up to the Dutch island of Curaçao for a few days. We're using this as a stop on the way to Guyana, avoiding the currently unstable and dangerous Venezuela.

The Lord of Sipán - The Richest Tomb in Peru

Our next stop having left Chachapoyas was the city of Chiclayo, on Peru's north coast. We took a nightbus here from Chachapoyas, arriving at the antisocial hour of 4 am. It seems that most nightbuses in the north of Peru leave at around 8pm, regardless of the number of hours to the destination, so we've arrived before dawn several times!

Chiclayo is not the most pleasant of cities - it's big, busy and polluted. However, there are several amazing archaeological sites in the area, plus one of Peru's best museums, and we spent most of our time exploring these attractions.

View from Purgatory Hill at Túcume, near Chiclayo

A short colectivo (shared taxi) ride from Chiclayo is the town of Lambayeque, which is home to the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán. This museum showcases an incredible collection of treasures that were found in the Royal Tombs of Sipán (dating to about CE 300), a few km away. The discovery of these tombs in 1987 and their subsequent excavation was hugely significant in archaeology. The main tomb of the 14 tombs discovered at Sipán belonged to a great lord of the Moche culture - in fact the most important person of all, equivalent to a king. And unlike most pre-Incan graves, his tomb had been left intact, undiscovered by gravediggers.

This Lord of Sipan was so important that he was buried with hordes of ceramics, gold and silver objects, armour, offerings, animals and even several other people as his 'attendants' into the afterlife - the warriors that were buried with him had had their feet amputated, probably to render them incapable of leaving. The finds from just this one tomb took up an entire floor at the museum, with case after case of unbelievable riches. There were also recreations of several of the tombs as they originally looked when first excavated. It was all really interesting: you can see why these tombs have helped archaeologists such a lot to shed more light on the people and practices of the Moche culture. Sadly we weren't allowed to take any photos.

Pyramids at Túcume

Also near Chiclayo, we visited another site called Túcume. This huge complex of pyramids, now crumbling and covered in mud and sand so they just look like giant mounds scattered across the landscape, was originally built by a different culture - the Sican people (approx CE 800-1350). It continued being used as an important regional centre by the Chimu and later the Incas. At the centre of the site is a hill known as Purgatory Hill, which we climbed to get a great view of the sheer scale of the area.  Purgatory Hill has a story behind its name. At the start of the Spanish occupation of this area, the Spanish lit fires atop this hill and claimed it was purgatory. In an attempt to scare the locals into converting to Catholicism they even dressed as devils and threw non-believing locals to their deaths.

Part of the Sechín site at Casma

We headed down from Chiclayo to Lima via the small town of Casma in order to visit yet another amazing set of ruins (Peru is full of them!) In this case, it was the ancient site of Sechín, dating from around BCE 1600. Most of it is a heap of rubble, but the main temple building has been restored to some extent, and the most interesting feature is the incredible bas relief carvings that decorate all the stone blocks of the building's outer wall. These original carvings represent all sorts of gruesome scenes of war and human sacrifice, including people being beheaded and eviscerated. Little is known about the Sechín people but it doesn't sound like they were the nicest of folks!

Gruesome bas relief carvings at Sechín - note beheaded heads!

We've spent the last couple of days in Lima. Today we went to see the San Francisco Monastery, which has a library dating back to the 16th century. I was in my element and wished I could have opened some of the thousands of ancient books there (sadly you are only allowed to gawp at them from a distance!) Our guide told us some of the larger books have pages of animal skin and covers of wood, and weigh over 20 kg. Wow!

Strange carving of two heads on top of one another, at Sechín

Tomorrow we're leaving to Peru and flying down to Santiago and then onto Patagonia, where with Kev's leg now 100% we will finally be hitting the Torres del Paine National Park that we missed on our previous visit. Can't wait!