On Sunday we drove over a beautiful rural road to one of the main archeological sites of Colombia called "Tierradentro" which has unique displays of pre-Incan burial sites. The views along the rivers in the region during the two hour drive never bored one minute...
We arrived at the national park and archeological site and visited the two small museums, one with explanations on the pre-Incan culture and one on the current indigenous communities populating most of this region. While beautifully structured, much remains to be done for international visitors.
The region is declared a UNESCO heritage site (one of four in Colombia together with the nearby San Augustin pre-Colombian site with the many statues, the salt cathedral near Colombia (see one of my previous blog posts of May) and the historic city of Cartagena).
You can make from half hour treks up to four hour treks to the various burial sites. We took one of the shorter trails but it was a stiff half hour uphill...
The reward was an assembly of twelve burial sites. The pre-Inca communities had a very strong belief in the "after-life" and they put a lot of work in the creation of the burial sites of their loved ones. They carved out in the rocks burial shrines which one can enter via pretty steep stairs. A few impressions below: most of the sites are covered by structures and horizontal doors to protect them from the natural elements (and from robbery).
We went down in a few of the burial sites and it amazed me to imagine how long and hard they had to work to create these burial sites in those long ago times...
One more view of the site on top of a mountain....
No comments:
Post a Comment