A couple more pictures...

I have been trying to upload a couple pictures when I come to internet, but its SO slow that I have decided it is a waste of time. When I arrive in the city I will post the rest of the pictures.

A crooked bridge between El Tablon and La Chaquira: The Magdalena River valley in its splendor:

Mal de ojo, dulce de pata de vaca and a sugarcane theives

A cool tree and roof in San Agustin: Jam session in the Hare Krishna temple in Neiva:

Lourdes, Alma del Viento, Maxi and I heading to town for our big concert in Macizo Cafe and the Plaza... everybody with their hair-do´s:

Well, the news of the day is that someone has given me a ´´mal de ojo,´´ or cast a spell on me. That means that I have a really bad headache in just one little spot above my ear. How do you know when you have mal de ojo? You put some oil on a plate and crack three eggs onto the plate. If all of the yolks come together in the middle, you have mal de ojo. Soon I will find out what the cure entails.

I also came to discover that the people here, other than inventing the best peanut candies in the world, have come to develop the most disgusting kind of candy in the world... dulce de pata de vaca. Yep, candy made out of sugar and... cow´s feet, not just the hooves, but the whole bottom part of the leg. The result is a gelatinous flabby thing, it doesn´t even smell good. The people at the store tried to convince me that it was vegetarian AND that it is very good for you. Needless to say, I didn´t bother trying it.

Our concert last night went very well. There was a great turn-out, everyone stayed until the very end, including the mayor and governor. Quite the event, I might add. We had a great time and after we headed to the lookout over the town to share a little bottle of rum amongst friends.

The highlight of the past few days was two nights ago. We arrived to the house pretty late, Lourdes, Alma del Viento, Maxi and myself. Around 9pm we started to make dinner in the kitchen which is in the back of the house. Maxi and I were preparing polenta, a typical Argentinian dish. Lourdes decided that it was a good night for a bonfire so she was making a couple of trips around the perimeter of the house looking for kindling and just checking things out. The house is on a farm which consists of 11 square kilometers (aka, a TON of land) and there are also a few cows, chickens, etc. All of the sudden I heard Lourdes yelling the names of the neighbors saying, ``there are two guys here, Miriam, Maria, there are two guys here.´´ It seemed to be a pretty weird form of telling the neighbors that they had a visitor. We walked outside of the kitchen and Lourdes was in the middle of the back yard, yelling, ´´theives, theives, I`m going to get you, bring the machete.´´ She was jumping up and down like a wild woman.

In her walk around the yard, she noticed two guys laying in the grass and made a scene. She scared the living daylights out of them by screaming until they ran towards the back of the property until they realized that leads to nowhere, then one turned around, they ran into eachother, almost fell, jumped the fence and took off. The police came, checked out the house for us, fired a couple of shots into the air, and we locked ourselves in the house for the night. The next day we discovered that they had been there for hours eating a mountain of sugarcane. The good news, is that with the scene that Lourdes made, its pretty unlikely that they will ever return.

Neiva, San Agustin

The tree in front of Lourdes´ house: Tree tomato, a fruit that makes a really good juice:
Sunset in San Agustin:
The church in the main plaza in San Agustin:
No need for a caption...

So I got my vis renewed for another sixty days, with my sailboat shirt on, of course. After that I immediately headed back to San Agustin (I knew that the people at the hotel were wondering what in the world happened to me since I had left ALL my stuff there). Back in San Agustin, I hiked to some of the ruins, including El Tablon and La Chakira. The walk to the ruins takes you out of the town and down a rural road, followed by a muddy path with a few houses scattered along the way. The houses are all very simple and humble, a lot of them just constructed of mud and sticks. El Tablon is on the side of a mountain and consists of several huge rock sculptures of bodies with giant heads. There is a little museum in a house that has a lot of ceramic artifacts and tools that were used in the ancient cultures.

Following the path from El Tablon takes you to the side of a lush green canyon. One little area of the canyon is covered with huge boulders, several with images carved into them. This is La Chakira. The day was beautiful, sunny and with a blue sky. On my way back I stopped to drink guarapo (those of you who read my blog from last year might remember that when I made my solo trek to Gocta waterfall I also stopped to drink guarapo on my way back to town.) Guarapo is a fermented sugar cane drink. This one was especially potent and seemed to take on more effect as I walked back under the mid-day sun.

After I spent a few days in San Agustin, Maxi sent me an email from Neiva. In the end, he decided to stay in Colombia a little longer and was staying in the Hare Krishna temple. I headed back to Neiva so we could play music together in a few restaurants. We played during the lunch hour in the Hare Krishna restaurant and at night in a juice bar and sometimes in a cafe. I ended up meeting a girl who plays cello and offered her cello lessons. She was totally siked and I ended up teaching her two cello lessons in a week.

Since then we have been back in San Agustin, staying at a friend´s house, Lourdes, with her daughter Alma del Viento (Soul of the Wind). We are preparing for a concert that we will give tomorrow in a cafe in the Plaza. Its a big deal, they are cleaning the plaza now, they invited us to be on the radio and the whole town is talking about the event. We will have a good time for sure. Staying at Lourdes´ house is great. Its on the road out of town, has a town of land all around, goiaba trees, hens and roosters, tranquility and she is SUPER cool. We have been cooking good food every day and telling lots of stories.

Sunday I will add some more pictures that relate a little more directly to the blog. These are the ones that I had left on the computer a few days ago!