San Augustine

I'm writing this from San Augustine, which is an unremarkable little town in the south of Colombia. What makes the place worth a visit are the mysterious statues that litter the surrounding countryside. They were put up by a forgotten race to guard the graves of their leading citizens. As far as I know there's no real evidence of what these folk did when they were alive, I suppose their undertaking responsibilities took up all their time. Perhaps that's why they died out.

After my last report another week flew by in Bogota before I set off with John and Nicole (my Australian friends who I used to work with) and Chappie, from Middlesborough. He recently came back to Bogota after a few months earning a fortune installing fibre optic cables all round Europe. Readers may remember him as one of the unfortunates bundled off to a police cell for not carrying identification. The policeman's response to his plea of "tranquilo amigo, tengo un passport, es in me hotel, like" has become a well-known catchphrase throughout Bogota. As he was manhandled into the paddywagon the copper just snarled "estamos in Colombia" - "we are in Colombia". This, usually shortened to "estamos", is now the stock phrase to greet the frequent surprises thrown up by this singular nation.

I'd sort of hoped that by being here over the festive season I might avoid some of the awful, tacky, glittery pointlessness of Christmas, but not a bit of it. If anything the Colombians are more silly about the whole thing than we are at home. Throughout Bogota there can't be a single house that's not dripping with lights and tinsel, and the outlay on civic gaudiness would probably be enough to house a few million displaced children. But I suppose as they scavenge in the gutters they can always look up and see the stars (as well as the neon Christmas puddings, flashing reindeer and cackling elves), which is nice for them. The night before we left was the grand lighting ceremony, with huge firework displays throughout the city (perhaps the best I have ever seen - they turned the city's tallest skyscraper into a fountain of silver, with giant red lovehearts bursting above it). It seemed that everyone got involved in the festivities, almost all the pavements were covered in little lanterns and the streets were filled with people touring around admiring their neighbours' light displays (or perhaps, if they´re anything like the English, sniffing that it all makes the street look very common).

Herman, the owner of Platypus, was kind enough to give us a lift to the bus station, where we planned to catch the night bus. Unfortunately even he was unprepared for the sheer excitement that greets the lighting-up ceremony, so we struggled through the dense traffic only to arrive two minutes after the last bus (to anywhere) had left. Cursing the festive spirit that had clogged the roads we bought tickets, went home for a few hours sleep and got back for the first bus the next day.

Ten hours later we were in San Augustine, feeling sore and tired. Nothing much happened along the way except when we were stopped at a roadblock. There were about half a dozen soldiers and a very short, very fat little man in very shiny little shoes and civilian dress. His eyes lit up when he saw us and he started to ask us lots of daft questions. "Why are you going to San Augustine? What business do you have in one of Colombia's most popular tourist destinations?" He squinted at our passports, perspiring piggily in the sun, before trotting off to make, or pretend to make, a phone call. He came back and announced that there was a lot of guerilla activity in the area and that we should go no further. We shrugged and tried to look non-plussed as we waited for him to think of an excuse to ask us for money. He obviously drew a blank, because after searching our bags and examining one of John's flip-flops really carefully he let us go on our way without paying anything.

After arriving we put ourselves in the hands of a chap from a tourist office, who found us a taxi and recommended a family-run guest house. It's a charming little place, surrounded by bird of paradise flowers and orchids planted out in ancient stone artefacts, with chickens patrolling the patio and a couple of pigs in a sty out the back. There are also two dogs with alarmingly mad eyes and a pair of snottering infants who communicate by means of ear-splitting squeaks. The senora of the house cooked us a dinner and we popped to a nearby shop to buy supplies for the evening. The shopkeeper looked grave when we asked him for beer and cigarettes. "But today is a day for our Holy Mother," he said. "If I sell you cigarettes it could cause you pulmonary problems, and I can't do that because today Mary is looking down on us all, and hurting you will hurt me." I asked if the same applied to rum and cigars, but he was having none of it. I even considered claiming to be a satanist, thereby reassuring him that loading me up with fags and booze would all be part of the good fight, but he had that unsettling spark of zeal in his eyes and a machete strapped to his hip, so I thought better of it.

It was just as well we didn´t succeed, we were all so tired we crashed out at about eight. Despite this early bedtime we all slept straight through until about nine o'clock, when a breakfast was laid out for us. At first glance the porridge sprinkled with muesli seemed a deliciously wholesome way to start the day, but as the morning fog lifted from our eyes (and we had eaten half our bowls) we became aware of tiny movements on the surface of the porridge. Grubs, dozens of them, tiny wriggling brown things with shiny black heads. I suppose they were the same things that pirates used to get in their ships biscuits. Not altogether unpleasant really.

After professing our fullness and assuring our hostess that we couldn´t possibly manage another mouthful, we headed off to the archaeological park to see the monstrous statues guarding their graves. They really are an impressive bunch, and like with the Mayan remains, it´s hard to imagine how they could have been carved without metal. They were scattered thoughout the landscape, in jungle clearings, on flat smooth hillocks and alongside streams. And very spooky they were too. Although the archaeological stuff was amazing, my highlight was a butterfly that flew up and landed on my finger. It must have been from a racing team because on the undersides of its wings, seemingly written in perfect calligraphy, was the number 89.

After getting back to the guesthouse we were glad to discover that Mary had temporarily diverted her gaze from our physical well-being, so we were able to stock up on rum at the shop. The evening passed quickly in a blur of silliness and the next thing I was aware of was a knock on my bedroom door and a voice telling me that horses were waiting outside for me. It took quite a few moments to emerge from my dream about the battle of Balaclava and remember that we had booked a day´s pony trekking.

Things didn´t get off to a good start when I tryed to get on the thing. I heaved my leg over the beast and followed it over myself, ending up in a heap among some suspiciously wet grass. I´m not sure if I didn´t kick the poor beast in the head on my final descent, but either way the guide was very careful after this to be on hand whenever I started flinging my carcass around her pony. Usually they have to worry about the horses hurting the riders.

The trot itself was quite inspiring, and took in some of the loveliest countryside I have ever seen, anywhere in the world. The rolling hills were separated by steep ravines that glittered with long silver waterfalls, cascading hundreds of feet down to the Rio Magdalena. Stands of trees and open pasture were complimented with fields of beans, coffee, banana, tomatoes, sugarcane, lemon trees and, of course, coca plants. It really is a very nice place, and it´s easy to understand why Colombians have spent so much time fighting over it, something we were constantly reminded of by the sound of gunfire in the distance.

After exploring a few of the more remote statues, we trotted off down a muddy path to a sacred site that hangs over a precipitious gorge. (At first sight it´s just a big pile of volcanic rocks, but as you look more closely carvings of faces and animals seem to emerge from the surfaces of the stones.) As we approached the site I was somewhat alarmed to see a man outside a decrepit finca waving a machete at me. I struck my best cowboy pose on the horse and tried to look nonchalant. Then the chap ran towards the path shouting: "Hey, George, how´s it going? Fancy a drink?" Then I realised it was a Swiss chap I had met at Platypus a few months ago, who had gone through with his plan to buy a farm here. It seemed quite incredible that after driving ten hours from one´s usual haunt, then trotting for miles along muddy paths, one can still find a friend with a bottle of rum. But, as they say, "estamos".

Later that night we met up with this chap, Philip, and tried to find some diversion in San Augustine. It´s a quiet sort of place and we didn´t expect much, but we were steered to a bar in the industrial area of the town, behind some derelict-looking warehouses. Absolutely the last place you´d expect to find a Tarzan-themed rock bar complete with varnished trees and vines for swinging on. On stage was a band from Bogota, who played rock and blues with a latin twist. We hadn´t been there for more than a minute before a face appeared at my shoulder: "Hey George, how´s it going?" it said. The face, the sort you´d usually expect to find attached to a medieval horse thief, belonged to a Colombian hippy called Rene, who had also been knocking around Bogota a few months ago before retreating back to his shed hidden deep in the countryside. By the end of the evening we had all decamped to a local girl´s house - Rene and the band and Uncle Tom Cobbly n´all - where we enjoyed several hours of mutual incomprehension. I always find that after a few drinks I speak Spanish with considerable confidence, but the looks of confusion, pity and, sometimes, horror, suggest that I may be losing something of the sense of the words. Estamos.