From Popayan we took a local bus to the town of San Agustin, a 6 hour journey over rough roads. We were a little perturbed to see a league table in the bus terminal listing each bus company and the number of accidents and the number of deaths in the last month as well as a cumulative total for the year. The company we were going with had had a good season with only 2 injuries and no deaths so we felt it was worth the risk to see one of Colombia's most important sites.

The area around San Agustin is dotted with pre-Colombian burial grounds and ruins. They include a wide variety of stone sculptures carved between 100 and 1200 AD. The statues have a great deal in common with other cultures especially the Egyptians and the Polynesians and thus provide evidence of either a land bridge to the Americas via the Bering Strait or a Kontiki-style spread across the Pacific from South East Asia. Most of the human figures have thick African noses and lips, and there are carvings of Gorillas and Elephants, both of which are obviously not native to the New World.

We left Popayan on Independence Day, having watched a celebratory parade in the main plaza. This was essentially a display of military strength and included some bizarre looking riot police dressed up like robocop. Being a national holiday everybody was in a good mood and we had plenty of encouragement on the road. The police were out in force on the road too; holidays are prime travel time for the rich city folk and so extra patrols are often laid on to give a sense of security. Having said that we have felt remarkably safe in Colombia, even though we have been travelling through what is considered a fairly high risk area. We are avoiding camping, however, which is not a problem because hotels are common. Most of the cheaper ones also double up as brothels- but at 2 pounds per night you can't complain. (That's 2 pounds for the room before you start asking questions). In one of these hotels we chatted to the owner's daughters about the current guerrilla situation, we then asked them "¿Donde viven?", which in Spanish can mean both "where do you live" and "where do they live". It was only a few days later that we discovered that the particular village was a terrorist stronghold and when they had replied "here" they had probably referring to the guerrillas!

Most of the violence in Colombia stems from a Marxist revolutionary group called FARC (so named because that is what most people say when they meet them). They have approximately 18,000 members and are present in 40 percent of Colombia's territory. They claim to represent the rural poor against Colombia's wealthy classes and oppose US influence in Colombia, privatization of natural resources, multinational corporations, and paramilitary violence. It is funded through kidnapping and the drugs trade, which supplies it with well over half a billion dollars every year, meaning the income for Colombian guerrilla fighters is at least 40 times the national average, a fact that makes their communist ideology slightly laughable. At the moment they are holding about 60 people captive, including 3 Americans and a presidential candidate.

Gary has continued to be plagued by punctures- around 10 so far since the border. In the heat and humidity the glue does not stick very well and so we have been on the lookout for some new tubes to fit his wheels. We were greatly aided in Cali by a man called Ramiro, who took us from shop to shop and rung around other places in town and with his help we managed to find some suitable replacements. Because of the perceived danger Colombia doesn't receive many tourists and as a result the locals are always very eager to talk and help you out. We were even handed 4000 pesos ($2) through a car window on the way into Pereira so that we could buy ourselves a drink.

In Cali we were interviewed again for the lunchtime news. We didn't catch the piece but Gary did get recognized the next day (a six foot four blond is easily identified in Latin America). To celebrate our new found fame we hit the town with a few people from the hostel, including Franki who we had met in Mendoza. Cali is the Salsa capital of South America and so unfortunately we failed to find a club playing any S-Club or Robbie. Salsa is a bit of a spectator sport for us- it is enjoyable watching the locals who have been learning all the moves since they could walk, but little can persuade us to join them on the dancefloor. Whilst looking on with all the other gringos from the safety of the bar area, we managed to make 'friends' with a drug lord who was very keen to become chummy with us, buy us bottles of expensive drinks and generally show off his massive wadge of dollar bills. All very kind of him, but when one of his heavies mentioned that he liked to "cut people up" we decided to call it a night, despite his assurances that he leaves tourists alone.

From Cali we had some blessed relief from the hills with 170km of totally flat cycling- the first since the Bolivian Altiplano. This area is the prime coffee growing region, and the laden bushes cover the surrounding hills in neat lines. The Andes in Colombia split into three Cordilleras, forming the Cauca valley in the west and the Magdalena valley in the east that both run north-south along the length of the country. We are heading northwards down the Cauca valley, but the Andes have a final trick up their sleeve before we finally leave them having more or less been in them since Tierra del Fuego. Into Medellin the road peeled away from the river and took us up 2000m over a pass, a climb that took over 4 hours of continuous tough pedalling. After a few thousand miles of cycle touring you begin to stop dreading hills, then start not minding them until finally you reach the stage we are at now when you prefer going up to going down. Unfortunately we only have one hill left before we descend all the way to sea level for the final stint to the Caribbean coast and the historic city of Cartagena.