First week in Colombia

My first week in Colombia was very intense. For those who think that Colombia is only sex, drug and salsa, I can tell that Colombia is much more than that. As soon as you cross the border, you feel you are already in another world. People talk a different Spanish (I'll have to get use to their accent), they eat different food (here is much easier to find something vegetarian), they are more friendly, they smile all the time, at every question they answer "con mucho gusto" or "que le vada bien" , cities are very colorful, from every shop/restaurant/house you can hear music, everywhere you can find good coffee, but not chocolate (I miss Perù ), buses are little (less confortevole than Perù) and distances are huge. The first city I visited is Popayan. It's a nice colonial city, but one day is more than enough to visit it and to buy a new camera. Yes, finally I did it. I bought a new canon just before my trip, but I completely ruined the lens during my hikes in the mountains. Unfortunately in Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador they sell only bad quality cameras. On my first day in Colombia I found exactly the camera I wanted and after discussing for 2 hours with the seller that wanted to convince me to buy a Nikon, I went out from shop with my new Canon and a big smile. The day after I got a bus to San Agustín with a girl met at the hostel. On our way to the bus station we walked under the rain (lot of rain), our clothes got completely wet and we had to travel with wet clothes all the trip. When we got near the town a camionetta of the same company of the bus picked us up. The funny thing is that the owner of the camionetta also owns a hostel and a tour agency: he knows how to do his business. We arrived at his hostel (very beautiful and cheap), then we went to the archaeological park of the town, where you can see numerous statues used to adorn tombs in pre-colombian period. This is one of the most important archaeological site of Colombia. The place was much more beautiful than what I imagined, completely immersed in the vegetation. The day after we walked to other archaeological sites : El Tablon and La Chaquira. Very impressive! I could stay in San Agustín for a week, it's a very beautiful place, but I need to get to the north as soon as possible to attend the carnival. It's the first time since the beginning of my trip I feel in a hurry. But most probably after the carnival I'll go back south to visit all the places I have to skip now. A curious thing about carnival : in Colombia only one city celebrate it, so the only way I can see the colombian carnival is going to Barranquilla in the north. This was quite surprising because in Brazil as in Italy, every city, every little town has its own carnival (even in Lavena Ponte Tresa we celebrate carnival!). After San Agustín, we decided to go to the Desierto de la Tatacoa. It was an exhausting 8h trip,picking up people on the way with their furniture (yes, furniture), waiting for people (once we even stopped because a woman wanted to buy 3 chickens) and taking every person to their home. We arrived to the desert when it was already dark, the driver of course brought us to his friends hostel. We decided to sleep in the hammock instead of renting a room. At the beginning it was very comfortable, then in the middle of the night, the wind didn't let us rest. I woke up very early to see the sunrise, but some clouds hide the sun. After breakfast, we walked into the desert. The first view of the desert was quite disappointing, maybe because I have this idea that a desert needs to be desert. I explain better : the path where we had to walk was an unpaved road for cars, on the sides of this road there was barbed wire, some hostels and restaurants can be found in the way and the land was rich in vegetation. I had to expect something like this, because to get to the desert we had to cross big forests (just one hour from the desert). Besides this, this desert has two main places to visit, both of them very beautiful. One is the Labirinto, a red sand labyrinth. The other one is Los Oyhos , a white desert. On the way, green and yellow vegetation colours the landscape. During the evening we took a tour at the astronomical observatory. The professor showed us some stars, satellites and nebulae at the telescope and then he gave us an astronomy lesson. The morning after I was already on my way to my new destination : Salento (no, I didn't come back to Italy)