After we arrived, we spent the day doing sweet fuck-all, as it was as hot as expected of a place called a desert. We did go for a little walk around the place to check it out:
The outside of our lodgings (which were outside - hammocks for cheap).
In Salento there was a restaurant which had amazing peanut butter brownies, one of which we took to Tatacoa. Who would've thought that ants could chew through gladwrap to get to the delicious ground peanuts within. Fucking ants. In any case after we moved the brownie most of the ants left, and there was only a few extra units of protein to eat.
Goats and goat products were everywhere. Sadly we forgot to try the cactus wine...
In the morning we went on a tour around a few places in the area, starting with the 'Pink Zone,' which was rather aptly named:
Silly bird, you aren't pink (pretty sure this photo wasn't taken in the Pink Zone anyway...
I like cacti.
The bear's hand.
Mountains in the desert!
Or nah... The distance from the bottom to the top of the bits on the sides was something like 9m.
Next we went to a place which is supposedly one of the more important archaeological sites in Colombia (I'm guessing paleontologic rather than anthropologic). Our guide found us this fossil:
I believe it was a piece of turtle shell. I can't remember much of the story of how the desert was formed, nor find it online, but it was fascinating. Basically it boiled down to the same way most deserts form: at some point there was a sea, then for whatever reasons the sea dried up. Now it's fucking hot.
We also saw a turtle and a dog's head:
The turtle's a little tricky to see...
The dog's head was a bit more obvious though.
The last place we went was also the only place we saw water, running or still. In the end we swam in a nice cool pool, but it wasn't really photo-worthy. In any case, the landscape was completely different in each area we visited.
Apparently all of these were put up by tourists. I can't imagine being out in the heat long enough to do something so pointless, but I guess it's kinda cool...
Water!
I was considering staying in the desert another night to do some mad stargazing, but it was still cloudy in the afternoon so I decided to leave with the others. I can't remember where I wanted to go (the others were going north), but I was told that I'd have to wait for a bus that left at 4am to go there. Fuck that biz. In the end I went to San Agustín for a couple of days and sat around doing not much.
After San Agustín I needed to get to Cali to catch my bus to Quito, so I tried to catch a direct bus there. Surprisingly, the bus had left early, and there wasn't another for several hours, so the guy working in the office offered to drive me to a crossroads where buses from another town would pass and could take me to Cali. While we were waiting, 2 of the guy's friends stopped for a chat, and said that they were driving to Cali come hell or high water to see a sick family member, and offered me a lift. Their determination ended up being key, as a piece of road just to the south of Cali had been washed out and we had to take a rather circuitous (though scenic) detour to get there.
In Cali I spent a couple of days wandering around the city centre checking out the street art which was everywhere:
"Dreaming forbidden."
The grates between the planters were vents for a road directly underneath.
There was an exhibition of cat sculptures by different artists. I later found out there was 17 or so, but who knows where they were...
There was a real cat too!
Bugs and Bean.
"Less bazooka, more yuca" (yuca, or cassava, being a root vegetable)
"Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth."
"Life is a work of art."
And then I just had to wait for my 24 hour bus to Ecuador...
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