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As I mentioned at the end of my last episode, I am at the start of the 14 kilometer trail to ... the Tierradentro Tombs! So what are they? They are Colombia’s third-most important archaeological site, after Ciudad Perdida (which I have already described), and San Agustín (which I will visit later). Tierradentro consists of about one hundred (discovered so far) underground tombs, the only examples of their kind in the America’s. Because they are so hard to get to (as you might tell from my troubles in my previous episode), they are seldom visited: I saw only two other tourists at the site.
After breakfast at the Posada la Portada across the street, I am off to the first of four tomb sites, Alto de San Andres.
Here is the view down the steep steps leading to one of the tombs (do you see the toe of my shoe?)
And here is the view looking back up from the bottom of the stone steps. As you can imagine from these two photos, part of the charm in visiting these underground tombs is climbing down into them.
Little is known about the tomb-building civilization other than that it flourished around 600–900 AD. No large population centers have been discovered; one theory is that the original inhabitants were a dispersed group of loosely related farmers.
The tombs at the next site, Alto de Segovia, had the advantage of being illuminated. This made the staircases a lot less dangerous - but they still didn’t have any guard rails:
These tombs were richly decorated...
...including the ceilings...
Notice the faces in the tops of the pillars? Here are two more examples.
Over a thousand years old, the red and black painted images on white background are remarkably well preserved.
Here is what the tombs look like from the surface (the roof structures protect the tomb entrances):
The last site, El Tablon, had nine statues, similar to those found at San Agustín (which I will visit in a few days), collected together under one roof.
On my walk back to San Andrés I came across a group of Nasa kids. Colombia’s largest indigenous group, with over 120,000 members, the Nasa (also known as the Páez), are scattered across the Central Cordillera and Cordillera Occidental of the southwest, dominating the region around Tierradentro. Most Nasa still speak their own language, Nasa Yuwe, which is even taught in schools. I asked one of the kids to count to ten in Nasa Yuwe, which he promptly did, to the delight of his friends.
Continuing on my walk back to my hotel, there were great views of cultivated fields...
... bamboo forests...
... and a final view from afar of the tombs of Alto de Segovia.
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