Hi All! This is a short last minute post... I was reviewing my Colombia Travel Blog's traffic charts and I realized that the most sought after keyword today is "San Agustin Archaeological Park" and the Top Hidden Colombia Destinations entry the most popular one, which is strange, because what I usually get is tons of hits on the topics of "safety in Colombia", Cartagena, Medellin, "Travel to Colombia", etc...
Intrigued by that fact, I researched a little more and discovered that today's Microsoft's search engine ( Bing) frontpage featured a beautiful picture of one of San Agustin Archaeological Park's statues! This is so amazing! One of the most well keeped secrets of Colombia in an extremely high traffic page!!!! , as I have said before the San Agustin Archaeological park is an amazing collection of hundreds of impressive precolumbian head stones in a huge natural area of southern Colombia , bigger than - for instance - the Machu Picchu national park in Peru.
So I thought I'd take the opportunitty to give you some more details on San Agustin archaeological park:
How to get to San Agustin Archaeological Park
The closest mayor town is Neiva south of Colombia. From Bogota you can fly with Aires for about US$40 and get there in about 1 hour or, take a bus from Bogota’s bus terminal and enjoy the 326 ks and 6 hours of beautiful scenery. Once there, you need to take another bus, but this time going to Pitalito (212 ks) and once there take a local bus (US$0,5) or a taxi (US$3) to San Agustin. The bus from Bogota to Neiva costs about US$15 and from Pitalito to San Agustin another US$10.
Entrance fees are: free for kids under, from 7 to 17 years old is COL$5.000 (US$3) and COL$10.000 (US$6) for adults.
What to bring
It takes about 3 hours to complete the park circuit, so I recommend to take with you:
- A day pack
- Plenty of water
- Sun screen and a hat
- Walking shoes and light clothes, the average temperature there is 18 centigrades.
What’s there
Apart from the main park – San Agustin – there are two more archaeological sites closed by called Alto Lavapatas y el Bosque de las Estatuas which you can also visit paying a little bit extra; and a second one called Tierradentro located very closed to a town called La Plata 126 ks from Neiva.
But that's not all… from Neiva you can also visit the amazing Tatacoa desert too!
Marcela
marce I really loved San Agustin And most of huila as a matter of fact so much we rented an adobe hut on the Rio Naranjo (6KS PAST ARCH PRK)rustic no electricity etc. basic stuff felt like a reg. local returned to the area a few years ago. After 30yrs found the spot but the hut was gone brought a tear to my eyes many fond memories. we rented a jeep & a guide for a couple days to visit the sites I missed so many years ago.The only thing missing was tourist marce glad to see your promoting the many not so hidden gems of Colombia that the tourist have seemed to forget saludos Playa
ReplyDeleteHola Playa and thank you very much for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, that area of Colombia is magic. I was so happy to see Colombia in Bing's front page with full colors and finally getting the message across.
I think is now time for you to come back, so you can tell me how much the country has evolved since you last saw it!
Abrazos and hope to meet you soon.
Marcela