San Agustín, Cartagena and being ill.

Arrggh I despise mosquitoes. I will not miss them when I come home (in three days). I think they'll miss me.

I also won't miss having to buy food out all the time. I'm struggling in Colombia, there are hardly any veggie options. You ask them what they have in the restaurants and they say, "Everything! Rice with beef, rice with chicken, rice with pork, arepa with beef, arepa with chicken, arepa with..." You stop them and ask if there's anything without meat. "Without meat??" I've been eating so badly this last week or so. I'm sure that's why, for the first time in these entire seven months, I've got ill. Maybe I boasted about my stomach of steel one time too many. Nearly fainted today in the hostel when the receptionist was explaining the house rules, I had to go and lie down. Will be having an early night tonight.

Our visit to the Santa María on Tuesday was a great day out. It's located in some more beautiful Colombian countryside in the Valle del Cauca, in the foothills of one of the mountain ranges sheltering the valley, affording great views of the rest of the area. It's the gorgeous colonial house of a Colombian writer, Jose Isaacs, who wrote the Latino equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, so they say. We had a tour of the well-preserved elegant mansion, which included a summary and snippets of the tragic romantic story, supposedly based on the writer's own tragic love affair with his cousin. I bought the book on a whim. A silly whim. It's not only in Spanish but antique Spanish. I doubt I'll get too far. But I hear there's a film.

That night we left for San Agustín, a pre-Hispanic archaeological site two bus journeys away from Calí. Along some very windy, nausea-inducing roads. It's located in some of the many pretty Colombian hills. I now understand why guerrillas are such a pervasive problem in Colombia. Much of the country seems to be a network of interlocking hills covered in dense tropical vegetation - impossible to track people down in, but very lovely from an aesthetic point of view. The monolithic statues, carved into the shapes and faces of cartoon-esque indigenous people, are really impressive, and the tombs which they guard are eerie. As well as numerous statues, we also visited some fantastic waterfalls spouting out of the lush green valley walls of the Magdelena, the longest river in Colombia.

The town of San Agustín is really pretty too, full of lots of colonial style white houses with red rooves. Carlos made sure I tried lots of typical food, which often took the form of delicios exotic fruits (including the "snot fruit" - literal translation), but sometimes involved trying to make me eat meat.

I wanted to go back via Popayán, a well-preserved colonial city along an alternative (and considerably shorter) route back to Calí, but Carlos thought it was too dangerous for a white English girl to attempt. It seems that the guerrillas often come down from their mountain hideouts in the region and stop vehicles along that road. Whilst they usually don't kidnap normal Colombians, Carlos seemed to think that they might make an exception for me. So instead, we had to take the long bumpy windy way back again. Which was agony with a very sore bruised bum. Whilst hiking down to see some waterfalls, we had to negotiate a particularly slippy muddy downhill section. About 20 minutes after scoffing to Carlos, "No me voy a caer!!", I slipped about two metres and landed hard on my bum with my legs in the air. Funny, maybe, but sooo painful!

We were going to go out on Saturday night, but I was feeling dodgy with a fever. I never got to try salsa in it's homeland. I'm in Cartagena now, an historic colonial city on the Carribean coast in the north of Colombia. Carlos and his family persuaded me that it was unmissable, so I splashed out an bought flights, since buses were unviable with so little time. I've been wandering round the impressive, elegant walled part of the city today, with it's lovely colourful balconied houses and pretty plazas. There are some really nice churches, and I've been cultural and visited a few museums. I especially liked the instruments of torture in the museum on the Spanish Inquisition. It wasn't so much fun with stomach cramps, light-headedness and nausea though. Hope it passes soon.