The San Agustin Archaeological Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Huila Department of Southwestern Colombia, a mountainous region near the headwaters of the Magdalena River. Within the park is the largest complex of funerary monuments and statuary on...
Cartagena, Colombia is one of my all-time favorite cities. It has a gorgeous setting, on the shores of the Caribbean, and with the battered walls of the old town, and the Spanish forts with their rusty cannons still in place, it has a swashbuckling history you can...
Through the course of this series I’ve been referring to the Tumaco Culture as if it was a single, clearly defined native population, but that isn’t exactly the case. The area inland from the Pacific coast, north and south of Colombia’s present day...
Click any map or photo to expand the images When I was living in Colombia, in the early 1970’s, pre-Columbian artifacts were a commodity, a form of luxury goods for the amusement of wealthy travelers. The best hotels had jewelry stores right off their lobbies,...
The ancients of Tumaco created quite a comfortable home for themselves. Their villages were well organized and prosperous, spread across a wide valley at the foot of the Andes, in the place where the Mira River and its tributaries come together and meet the sea. They...
The primary occupation of all early humans was the gathering of food. For most, it was a full time job, while others had it easier, but none of them ever advanced beyond the basics until they found a way to solve that basic problem, by creating a reliable, sustainable...
Colombia is the only country on the South American Continent that touches both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. The northern, Atlantic coast is considered a part of the Caribbean, and it’s much as you might expect: white sand beaches and palm trees, an azure sea,...
October, 1971 The first time I saw Bahia Concha was in October of ’71, when my buddy Paul drove me out there in a borrowed Land Cruiser. He’d been talking about the place for as long as I’d known him; it was like his personal holy grail. A dig that...
Bahia Concha, “Shell Bay,” is a sheltered cove on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, located in the Tayrona National Park, just ten miles as the condor flies from the city of Santa Marta. It’s part of a protected ecological preserve where development...
Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, is a 500 year old complex of ruins located deep in the Andes of south central Peru. In 1983, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in 2007, it was voted as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. In gaining...
The Amazing Mayan Murals of Bonampak
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