Leaving the white city behind us, we’re once more engulfed in spectacular green scenery. Our new driver Marlio picks us up after breakfast to drive us over the Central Andes range to San Agustin. Both towns are about 1700 metres above sea level but to travel between them we have to ascend up to 3200 metres and pass through Purace National Park.
As we head into the countryside hills start folding into and over each other, with deep plunging valleys, glistening streams and rivers, and a profusion of vegetation in every hue of green imaginable. In reminds us in parts of the Lake District, but much grander, vaster, greener and even more beautiful, especially bathed in blazing sunshine against a bright blue sky. Cows and horses graze around little potato farms and avocado trees line the road. You don’t find those around Lake Windermere.
After an hour we come to a magnificent waterfall, Cascada Calaguala which gushes down the hillside and as we climb ever higher we see the mighty Purace volcano on the skyline, its summit shrouded in shifting clouds and its slopes green and fertile. We cross the altiplano, a beautiful plateau ringed by mountains where the air is fresh and cool and there are indigenous plants like the frailejones which are a cross between a cactus and a palm. In the Valle de Frailejones there is a whole reserve of them and they provide an essential function, soaking up huge amounts of water like a sponge which prevents the land becoming water-logged from all the rain that the area would normally receive.
Just before we drive through that valley, we pass through a tiny indigenous village called Paletera, which Marlio tells us is the final habitation in the department of Cauca. There will be no more houses until we are well inside the department of Huila because we’re now entering Parque Nacional Natural Purace, which connects both areas and is one of Colombia’s most protected areas.
Up until this point the road has been continuously winding its way around curving mountain ranges and hairpin bends with many parts of it un-tarmacked. We’ve been warned to expect a bumpy ride but it’s this 31km stretch through the national park that really puts the car’s suspension to the test, being completely unpaved. We bounce along the rocky path reaching the highest point at 3190 metres above sea level, which Marlio shows us in a handy app on his phone; just one hand on the steering wheel as we roll along the shifting, potholed road. From here we start our descent but still have miles of buttock-pounding mountain track to go.
Marlio tells us that occasionally he has seen tapirs as he drives through the park, mammals that are the size of a small bear but look a little like boars with a mini trunk. We keep an eye out but to no avail. He also tells us that it almost always used to be raining in the park, whatever the season, and the road would usually be muddy and slippery rather than the dusty, dry route it is today. He fears that climate change is irreversibly altering the area and while that makes the drive easier, it is a real cause for concern for the precious ecosystems here.
We stop briefly at the bridge over the Rio Mazamorras which is the dividing line between Cauca and Huila, taking photos of the sheer drop down to the rapids below, before we eventually leave the national park and rejoin smoothly maintained roads. From here the scenery changes again to become full of banana trees and coffee plantations once more.
Descending through the hillsides we come to a little bridge that crosses the mighty Rio Magdalena at a unique spot where the central ridge of the Andes splits in two and gives birth to La Cordillera Oriéntale, or the Eastern Andes range. From here, near La Laguna de Magdalena, which provides the very source of the river just a few kilometres away, the Rio Magdalena splits the east and central Andes mountains from each other and continues over 1500 kilometres until it reaches the Caribbean in Baranquillas, where we passed it a few weeks ago.
Almost exactly at midday we arrive at the pretty little town of San Agustin and our lodgings for the next three nights, Finca El Maco, a gorgeously rustic retreat about twenty minutes walk from the town. It has nine individual huts dotted around its gardens, and ours is a beautiful thatched one named Tiki with a huge double bed, lovely seating area, voluminous mosquito net and semi alfresco en suite bathroom where we can shower looking at the sky, surrounded by birds and plants. It all seems idyllic until we return later to find an enormous spider crawling over the chair, reminding us we’re essentially in the jungle, and various other bugs and creepy-crawlies visit us during our stay.
Finca El Maco is also the headquarters of Chaska Tours, the company we’ve used to help put together our entire Colombian trip, and while we have lunch, Michael from Chaska wanders over to say hi. After months of emails it’s good to finally meet in person and he’s delighted we’ve been having such a good time.
A young expat from Munich, he now lives in the property with his Colombian girlfriend and their one-year old daughter and loves the laidback lifestyle and perfect climate that San Agustin brings, although he does confess to sometimes missing having seasons. We tell him it’s currently freezing in London, and he counters that it’s minus 10 degrees with heavy snow in Munich so we all agree that being here in this little bit of paradise feels a lot more preferable right now.
However it’s much, much hotter than expected when we walk into the centre of San Agustin later, so we have to stop at a little cafe for iced coffee. While we sit in the shade with our much needed refreshment I see a poster for Coca Pola, a beer made with coca leaves. It’s part of an initiative by indigenous people to reclaim their sacred coca leaf from the cocaine traffickers and promote its holistic, medicinal purposes. We sip it as we continue into town and it’s fragrant and delicious.
San Agustin is reasonably small with just 18,000 inhabitants, and about another 20,000 in the surrounding countryside. It is also quite pretty with a lovely main plaza that contains a very beautiful church and replica statues of the pre-Hispanic cultures that we are here to find out more about. In the nearby Parque San Martin though, there is a very bizarre sculpture entitled Christ of the Broken Teeth, which was created to instruct local worshippers that every time you gossip or say something bad about someone, you break the teeth of Jesus. Naturally it sits right outside a huge Catholic Church dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
Leading to a hill above the town we see a steep set of multicoloured steps so, despite the blazing sun, decide to climb them to reach El Templeto at the top and drink in the views. We hadn’t bargained on it having a couple of guard turkeys though, and whilst the local dogs laze in the shade, these two turkeys, obviously emboldened by surviving the Christmas cull, aggressively march towards us, driving us back down the hill.
I manage to get a quick snap of the shrine they’re determined to protect and then we walk back to main plaza and have a drink in a little bar as the sun sets. After the edgy vibes of Cali and the slightly disconnected feel of Popayan it’s lovely to be back in a small town with a very chilled and relaxed atmosphere.
Everyone is smiling and happy and wanting to chat, including Santiago, a high school student who is working behind the bar and wants to practice his English. He loves his rock music and, looking at Coman’s t-shirt, is stunned and enthralled when I tell him I work with Iron Maiden. Like so many people we speak to, he’s learned a lot of his English language skills by listening to British bands, and everywhere we go in Colombia people tell us they much prefer to learn English as it is spoken by British people, rather than Americans, as they really like British pronunciation. We explain to Santiago that Coman is Irish and he’s even more intrigued, but Coman loses him when trying to explain the concept behind the TV show ‘Derry Girls’.
Back at the hotel we unpack and have dinner in the very nice on-site restaurant, which we repeat the following night too. The food is excellent and on our final night we learn that Chaska even have a separate ‘club’ in the finca’s grounds which opens at weekends with music, a cocktail bar and - as we discover - very good pizzas. We spend an enjoyable Friday evening there, chatting with Michael and his old-school friend Fabian from Germany, who has come out to do an internship with Chaska Tours for a couple of months so he can experience living in Colombia.
We’re not surprised to learn he’s loving it, and San Agustin in particular has much to recommend it as we discover over the next couple of days…
