Atun Rumi

During the Cartographies in Yurayaco we walked to the stone of Taita Apolinar. Gonzalo, an elder that grew up here told us the story of Apolinar. He was an elder in Gonzalos childhood who had arrived in Yurayaco after fleeing from Mocoa into the Amazon with the arrival of catholic missions. He walked all the way here passing from river to river and decided to settle by this stone. Apolinar had told Gonzalo that the stone was the house of the spirits of the ancestors. At that time there was still a small stone laying on top of the stone which was said to be a lid. Apolinar warned him that when the stone were to fall he should flee the territory because all the spirits would gush out of the stone and the whole area would be cursed.
Now the stone is fenced off in a private property. It has become a local tourist attraction. People take selfies with it and engrave their names on it.
When we approached the stone with the cartographies we stopped at a distance to ask for permission to enter. The stone is a sacred site.

While walking back to Yachai Kuri I waited for Gonzalo as he stayed behind. As we walked side by side he told me the story of the few weeks he had spent in school before quitting. He and his fellow Inga classmates would joke around in Inga as children usually so. The teacher was not fond of their behaivour so since she did not understand Inga. She asked them to bring some lianes on the next day, which they did. One of the classmates the next morning had jokingly mentioned that she would use the lianes to hit them.
On that afternoon Gonzalo decided to drop school and work for the family during that time since it did not make sense for him to learn in a place where he would get hit for speaking his own language. He said that he learnt spanish much later in life as more and more spanish speaking people arrived in the area.

We could not wrap our heads around how the stone arrived there. They say one can see the power of a river by looking at the biggest stones it dragged. But this stone was not far from being a hill. We even imagined it could have been a meteorite that impacted on the equator. Maybe the glaciers had dragged it here during the ice ages? Or is it a mountain that had was slowly shaped into this form?