Horses and ruins

Met a guy in the hostal in Bogota who lived in San Augustin and said that it was perfectly safe to take a night bus despite all the warnings in the Lonely Planet.  The only thing I was really worried about was not being able to sleep on the bus as I'm rubbish at sleeping on most forms of transport.  Anyway, the combination of tiredness from living it up in Bogota for the past 3 nights and some sleeping pills soon had me snoring loudly.  As it turned out, I missed all of the fun on the journey - the freezing air-con, military 'stop and search' checkpoints, annoying music all night long and all sorts of other goings on.  The I was travelling with didn't miss any of these exciting things and had a thoroughly crap journey.  I slept really well, thanks.

Had enough time to dump our bags at the hotel, have a quick shower and shove some food down our faces before going out on a jeep tour of ruins and waterfalls in the area.  Saw some nice rock carvings and some pretty rubbish tombs - kind of getting bored of ruins.  The waterfalls were good though.

Each block contains approximately 4 times your recommended daily intake of wasp

Also went and had a look around a Panela factory.  Panela is poor-mans sugar found all over Latin America and is made from crushed sugarcane that has been stewed for hours.  And when I say we toured a factory, what I actually mean is we walked round some blokes backyard that has a load of big saucepans over various fires and about 3 people who's primary task is to busily stir wasps and other insects into the gooey stuff and then scoop it into blocks to harden.  Each block contains approximately 4 times your recommended daily intake of wasp.

The evening was spent trying to sort out horse riding for the next day.  More specifically, I spent a fun hour hurtling up and down really bumpy roads behind some fat guy on his lawnmower-powered scooter to try and find various people who had horses we could rent.  And all because the bloody hostel was miles away from town and didn't have a phone.  Well, long story short, I soiled myself a few times and almost died but did managed to secure 2 horses and a guide for the next day.  So all was good.

Had a good day on the old caballos.  Some good ruins and great views.  Loads of mud too.  Our horses didn't like mud.  They stumbled and slipped and we nearly fell off quite a few times.  Love the rainy season.  Oh, also, 4 hours of horse riding does hurt you arse.  Fact.