2012-08-07
I was unlucky enough to get the rearmost seat for the bumpy bus ride to San Agustín. If you've never been on a bus in the third world, trust me when I say that the people in the back get tossed around by the bumps much more than everyone else. This combined with the fact that the back row of seats were raised above the others meant that when we hit a bump, I sometimes got thrown up so hard that I hit my head on the overhead compartment. It wasn't a fun ride.
Surrounding San Agustín there are archaeological sites filled with stone statues guarding empty tombs, long ago raided. Unfortunately, the raiders scattered the statues all around, so they're no longer at their original locations, but archaeologists have reconstructed the sites to be fairly representative of how they once were believed to be. I found it interesting that the expressions of the statues varied quite a bit. Some looked liked they were scared, others unhappy, and others fearsome.