I am back from the multi-day 52km trek to Ciudad Perdida happy, healthy, and just a bit wiser. It was a great experience, I want to do more of this sort of thing. How wonderful to have someone else dealing with the cooking, cleaning, and setting up camp! When backpacking, I’m so used to carrying my own food and campware, that this was a luxury.
The story of this area is still shrouded in mystery. The local indigenous people (mostly the Koguis but also the Arhuacos) are not particularly friendly to outsiders – understandably so, after 400 years of oppression. First by the Conquistadores, more recently by Hispanic farmers, miners, loggers, drug runners, paramilitary, you name it. In fact, they believe that while they are the Elder Brothers living in the Center of the World, all the rest of us are the Younger Brothers, too naïve to take care of the Earth Mother. The BBC made an interesting documentary about all of this.
A bit of history, courtesy of another blog:
In 1525 the Spanish landed at what is now the city of Santa Marta, their first landing in what is now Colombia. They encountered indigenous people – the Tayrona – whom they noted had a lot of gold artifacts. So many in fact that they soon came back and subjected them to Spanish rule. The Tayrona were cunning, however: unlike the Aztecs, they did not take the Spaniards for returning gods by showing them directly to their major cities. Instead they allowed the conquerors to believe that their major populations were on the coast, all the while hiding away in their actual strongholds buried deep in the densely forested and imposingly lofty sierra nevada. Having just trekked in them I can assure you that these mountains amount to a fairly effective barrier to any would be conquerors, but obviously not even knowing of their existence is an even better one. Unfortunately the mountains offered no protection against the epidemic diseases which killed two thirds of the indigenous population of the Americas after the Europeans’ arrival, and so the Tayrona were wiped out. Their capital, Teyuna (the Kogui word for Ciudad Perdida), lay ‘undiscovered’ until it was stumbled upon in 1975 by gold prospectors. In fact, the local tribes, who are all descended from the Tayrona people, knew the location all the while and it was ‘lost’ simply because they didn’t want anyone to know about it. Likewise they claim to know the locations of various other abandoned Tayrona settlements – in fact there is a rock in Teyuna which is supposedly a map of the Sierra Nevada showing all the ancient Tayrona sites, but the local peoples refuse to decipher it.
There are four companies that lead the trips – Sierra Nevada Tours, Turcol, Magic Tours, and I forget the other one. I think they’re probably all about the same. I got signed up with Magic Tours by Hostel Miramar. Ours was a relatively small group – one guide (Nicolas, who has only been a guide for two years but has been doing the trek for 14 years), one cook (Pedro, a sweet guy who was always there with a cup of coffee or a snack just when you needed it), one mule (which carried the food and bedding except for the final stretch which was impassable by pack animals, so Nicolas’ nephew acted as porter), and five tourists: an Israeli couple who unfortunately reinforced the negative stereotype of their fellow countrymen by being rude, arrogant and standoffish. It’s no wonder their country has trouble getting along with other nations with attitudes like that. Then again, perhaps it’s simply cultural misunderstanding – maybe in their country, that behaviour is considered direct and normal. Besides the Israelis, there was an Irish woman named Eimeir, an English bloke named Jon (who hitchhiked through Central America a few years ago!), and myself. The three of us hung together and bonded over the week. So let’s start at the beginning, shall we…
Day One: Monday
Muddy jeep
After picking everyone up in a rugged Toyota 4×4, we drove an hour and a half to the start of a dirt track. Then another hour and a half on a “road” that I would not have thought drivable – 3′ deep ruts filled with mud, strewn boulders to ricochet over, rivers to plow through, you get the idea. Several times we were at nearly a 45 degree angle. We did get stuck once, but luckily some laborers were nearby with shovels and a pickaxe to dig us out. Ironically at the end of all this, the road reaches a nicely paved little town! The name of the town is Machete Pelao, loosely translated as “Machetes Out”, giving me pause. We had lunch, loaded up the animals, said goodbye to showers and clean clothes for six days, and began hiking. The trail on this day was big and wide, a horse track, really.
"Hi there!"
No jungle at this point, it was all cultivated land, farmer’s fields, which afforded nice views of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We happened upon a coral snake that started coming after me when I bent down to say hello. I wasn’t worried, I knew that he knew that I was cool.
Muddy track
I fell on my ass in the first of many river crossings. Because of all the river fordings, I did most of the hike in my sandals which was fine – I don’t need the ankle support a lot of people do, probably from all the years of skating. Jon got a big tick that held on tight when he tried to rip it off.
We passed a military camp, the first of many soldiers we would see. They are here to patrol the area, since it used to be controlled by the FARC and other paramilitary groups. In 2003, a group of 8 tourists doing this trek were kidnapped and held for three months. Others have said there was also a kidnapping a year and a half ago, but I can’t find anything about that on the net, so I suspect it’s another rumour. Anyway, the army boys get posted here just after basic training, and they’re out here in the woods for three months at a stretch. They must get bored out of their minds.
There was a nice soft “chipi-chipi” misty rain in the afternoon which I welcomed, since I haven’t seen any rain in over two months. Most of this day was uphill, in fact we gained so much altitude that our ears actually popped. After about three or four hours we arrived at a camp that was impressive in it’s structure for being out in the middle of nowhere.
First camp
There was electricity (hydro, we think), concrete foundations, a TV and a pool table! Crazy, considering all of this had to be brought on the backs of pack animals. I think at least one family lives there, and there is room for maybe 40 people to camp. Pedro got started on cooking, which is done cowboy-style in large cast iron pots over a wood fire. Dinner that night consisted of stewed chicken with tomatoes, veggies and rice. Nicolas set up our bedding, which consisted of hammocks with comfy warm woolen blankets and ingenious mosquito nets that are made to string from the ends of the hammocks, such that they form a cozy cocoon around the hammock but never touch you. By the way, while the rest of us were constantly applying 100% DEET (sure to cause cancer), the guides weren’t bothered in the least. I knew that it was possible to develop immunity to diseases like malaria, but to simple mosquito bites..? The plumbing in each of these camps is impressive for what they’re able to manage in the middle of the jungle. Water is carried from the river (or a spring?) to a series of PVC pipes which then run to various actual flush toilets, sinks, and taps. The whole thing is very Rube Goldberg and ghetto, but it works. The funny part is that usually the taps are just continually running. No need to shut them off, since they’re essentially just part of the river that comes up and goes right back down again.
Can I just say how happy I am to have my appetite back. This is the first day in over six weeks I’ve felt good enough to eat whatever’s in front of me. I hadn’t quite realized that I was subconsciously starving myself, since almost any food caused a war in my intestines, leading to a trip to the bathroom. But it appears that my extended bout of traveler’s diarrhea may finally be over. Hallelujah!
After dinner there wasn’t much to do so Jon, Eimeir and I got to know each other a bit, telling various riddles, talking about cultural differences, wondering how we were going to pass the time for the next five nights since none of us had brought cards. Being in the woods and reliant on the sun made us think it was about midnight when it was only 8:30. Being pretty zonked, we called it an early night.
The rest of the story after the jump… continue reading the rest of this post (and view the photos)…
