Piedras del Tunjo Archaeological Park

Leo was home and we didn't have to go to the notaria (amazingly) so instead we planned a family trip to the Piedras del Tunjo Archaeological Park.  It was a gorgeous day!  

I was going to post more info about the park but what I mostly found online was the same rehashing of the wiki article over and over again.  The Spanish wikipedia article had more information and I think the original English wiki article is just a partial translation from that.  Both left a lot to be desired.

However, it appears that some of the pictographs could be about 12,000 yrs old, or as recent as the Pre-Columbian Muisca era.  

And every article says how deteriorated they are and that almost none are left.  That is not what I saw.  There was some vandalism for sure but many looked amazing and in great condition.  

Like this awesome frog.

Here's one bit of information the park actually had.  Feel free to translate it. 

And I love pictographs so there might be a photo of nearly all of them on this blog post.

Leo was shocked at how different the park was since he was a kid.  He said it used to be in the middle of nowhere (we heard the soccer game going nearby through a lot of our exploring and houses butted up to it on almost every side.). It also had like park rangers and entrance and much more official looking management than before.  

See a nice Colombian neighborhood.

We still just climbed all over and went wherever we wanted.  

A school class was having a field trip and my kids were practically celebrities when we went by.  A few brave kids ran up to ask where we were from.  

There were these beetles flying around EVERYWHERE in one section.

Do you see it all?

I thought it was interesting how different it was than other pictographs I've seen in Canada and the Western United States.  

I never saw anything like this in Utah.  

Sebastian's ants.  Of course.

I *LOVE* when there's hand prints.  It's so human. 

This little guy was one of my favorites too. 

I don't think these statues are original to the site, but I'm not sure if they were moved here from San Agustín or just copies from there.

I was a little worried we'd get in trouble for climbing everywhere and I tried hard to keep the kids behaving, but I swear it's a lost cause.

Caves are fun.

This is some old graffiti that I think was officially sanctioned at the time. 

I promised the kids if they behaved at the Piedras del Tunjo that we were going spend the rest of the afternoon having a picnic where they could climb on rocks to their hearts' content and do whatever they wanted. So we drove all the way down (well we didn't, we had hired a driver) to Piedras del Chivo Negro near Bojacá. I read online that it was really popular for mountain biking and off roading, etc. There's pictographs there too. 

It was rainy and we drove through thick fog for a half an hour on the way there.  But we arrived only to find some guys working near the entrance who informed us it was closed.  Apparently someone's camp fire had got out of hand the week before and a fire had swept through it.  So even though we pleaded, they didn't let us stay.

They did let us take these two photos though.  We had many, many tears from kids on the way back to Bogotá.  And of course it was hours and hours in stop and go traffic which is always fun.  So sad.  

But here's an adorable photo of Wyatt to end on a happy note.