South America’s other ‘Easter Island’

The mysterious statues of San Agustín and underground tombs of Tierradentro, in southern Colombia, are finally rising from the dead after being off-limits for decades.

A decade ago, death stalked my drive to Parque Arqueológico Nacional de Tierradentro. The road from the town of Popayán over Colombia’s Cordillera Central mountain range was infamous for ambush and kidnap. Lonesome military posts hinted ominously at the presence of Farc guerrillas. I gripped the wheel tightly as I negotiated the unpaved road through a bleak, windswept Andean landscape, and cold fog swirled around me like a funeral shroud.

Thankfully, I arrived at one of the world’s largest necropolises alive. Unsurprisingly, I had the vast pre-Columbian hypogea of Tierradentro to myself.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181209-south-americas-other-easter-island