Journey to the Lost City
21.3.10
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It sounded irresistible. The LOST city. Like something from a crazy 1900's adventure novel or an Indiana Jones movie.
(After drinking a not insignificant amount of Rum in Barranquilla and sipping Pina Coladas and Micheladas in Cartegena it also seemed appropriate from a health point of view!)
Indeed, it was a little like an Indiana Jones movie back in 1974 when Florentino Sepulveda and his sons uncovered La Cuidad Perdida. They were Guaqueros or Grave Robbers and their spoils were soon spilling into the black markets of nearby Santa Marta. It wasn't long before other Guaqueros were on the scene duking it out for the gold in the graves. The government finally cottoned onto the situation and sent in the army but not before many people were harmed and killed and not before the ancient city had earned its name "Infierno Verde" or Green Hell.
As I made my first of more than 1200 steps up the staircase to the Lost City from the River Buritaca I reflected on a time gone by. A time when 1000's of people travelled these stairs each day and a time when the rock steps were not green and moss covered but rather worn clean by the constant traffic. I wondered if the people were short as some of the stairs were hardly as high as the length of my fingers.
A place like La Cuidad Perdida really comes to life when your mind begins to imagine the people that have traipsed these same stairs. Did the Tayrona wear tunics like the Kogi we have seen over the last few days? Did they look the same? Have the same facial features? Did they eat the same plantain and hunt the same bush meat?
It is likely the Tayrona had the same or similar Poporos (or Totuma?) that the Kogi men carry today. Inside the Poporos are ground and "fired" seashells. They put the ground seashell in their mouths with a stick and in combination with the Ayo (Coca) leaf. The lime from the seashell helps generate salivia and helps to extract the special juices from the leaf. Just like in Bolivia and Peru the Coca leaf helps reduce hunger, allows the Kogi to work longer and harder, and to increase concentration for story telling and reflection. It is a little disgusting but then they wipe their stick on the outside of the Poporo or Totuma and the resulting residue builds over time. After about 2 years there is too much and it's time for a new gourd or Poporo. (The photo of the Kogi man with his Poporo has had about 6 months of use.)
The archeologists and paleontologists believe the Lost City was the capital of the Tayrona people. While the construction techniques have nothing on the Inca, there is certainly a mystic beauty to the layout and design of the Lost City. The jungle envelopes the city. The air is almost green because of the cloudy skies and the surrounding vegetation. Each "neighbourhood" has its own charm and unique outlook. Central Park has many buena vistas - views to die for.
The Tayrona people fought a decent fight back in the 1500's when the Spanish arrived to confiscate their Gold but by the 1600's the Tayrona were pretty much obliterated. And they took the secret of their city with them...
The Spanish Conquistador's supposedly never found La Cuidad Predida and after 450 years, the jungle had swallowed it up. In the late 1980's and early 1990's the area became interesting to the outside world because someone figured out that the Ayo that the local Indigenous Kogi people were chewing is actually a variation of the Coca from Bolivia. And Coca is of course necessary for Cocaine.
There was a short time while tourists were able to visit The Lost City but really it wasn't until President Uribe started up his hardline against drug trafficking that the trail to La Cuidad Perdida really opened up in 2003.
And since UNESCO named it a World Heritage site on February 1, 2010, it is destined to become La Cuidad Encontrada. The Found City.
Access to the trek is quite restricted. This is primarily historical due to the Coca growing and drug trafficking in the region making the area unsafe. Now however it ensures that the tour companies, local campesinos and Kogi indigenous make a decent income off of the gringos how come here to do the trek.
We chose Magic Tours based in Taganga. It had a good reputation in the guide books for using locally based guides, for its well prepared food and its general professionalism. At 500,000 Colombian Pesos (COPs) or about $250USD it isn't cheap but as time would tell it was good value for a 5 day adventure.
We were a little nervous on our first day when we counted 13 of us and we had been promised that there would be a maximum of 10. One fellow in particular, Liam, from Watford, UK seemed to be a particularly unsavoury character but in the end he turned out alright. We soon realised that the pace wasn't severe, that they were all a good bunch and just as importantly, there was plenty of food to go round.
The Group was made up of:
- our guide, Saul, from the starting village of El Memay
- our cook, Javier
- a multitude of locally based helpers and mules along the way
- our unofficial and self nominated Spanish-English translator,
David from Germany
- our primary humour provider Liam and his verbal-filtering-censoring partner Angie from Watford, England
- Stefan, the pace smasher, from Austria
- Bryan and Bridgeen, the freedom fighters, from Northern Ireland
- Sangita who ate a snail pace from the USA
- Sam I Am (Osamu) the buddhist from Japan
- Lars, the wanderer, from Germany
- Nir (or Neil), the experimenter, from Israel
- Avi, the aspiring movie.avi...star, from Israel
Day 1 took us about 3 hours of walking after lunch. The 590m of climbing (in total) wasn't so tough but it was hot and sweaty. We had a great swim in a natural pool and chatted and got acquainted. The pace was tough for some but it wasn't brutal. Saul stopped a few times to regroup with fresh pineapple at the top of one particularly nasty pitch.
The rain forest was largely cut away and had been replaced by small Finca's or farms run by campesinos (not indigenous). The earth was very dry, and red. Some of the track was cut so deeply that the groove was greater than 2m. Ahead however we could see many mountains pushing up and out of sight into the mist. Saul said one of them was 3000m tall. Further inland is the peak of Santa Marta and at 5xxx?m it is the highest coastal peak in the world.
When we're arrived at our shelter for the night we were all impressed with the basic but clean lines. There were 4 sections - a kitchen, an eating, a sleeping and a toilet area. There were no walls and only a very weak looking rafter and strutting beam structure to support the tin roof. The Kitchen had 4 wood fired clay ovens that we all agreed would make perfect personal pizza's. Instead of pizza we were served rice, chicken and salad and it was demolished as soon as it arrived. Desert was a GOL bar; chocolate covered wafers. Pavlov's Dog syndrome had us drooling at the mention of them for the next 5 days.
The sleeping was all in hammocks with mosquito nets. They were all clean and new looking. And it wasn't long after our dinner that we were tucked away inside of them getting the hang of sleeping in a hammock.
The hammocks hung from the same weak roof structure and we soon learned that when one person moved in bed, the rest of us all felt the resulting tremors.
Tip #1. Don't try to lay flat or on your stomach. Just go with the flow and accept your bent back!
Tip #2. Lay half the blanket in the hammock and wrap the rest on you afterwards. This keeps your back warm when it gets cold at night.
Tip #3. Always mark your hammock before you leave it to go to the toilet at night so that you don't try and hop into the wrong one on your return, as Anita's neighbor attempted.
We slept pretty well and thankfully the roosters and bird calls didn't really get going until about 5am.
The walking on Day 2 was cooler and easier. We were joined by a black dog I called Suerte (Luck) but we later found out was called Toni and/or Coni. He ran with us all the way up to the Lost City and back to the start. Saul the guide said he joins up with groups at random and the tourists fall for him, feed him and then he says goodbye waiting for the next gang to head off.
Along the way, we got to swim in the river with a massive jump from a rock and delicious watermelon. The day finished with rain so the afternoon was spent relaxing in the hammocks, listening to the birds and rain fall on the tin roof.
On our third day the jungle became more interesting with a cacophony of bird sounds calling around every corner. The jungle grew darker, the air cooled, and the track became more "technical". Soon we we're fording creeks up to our knees and reflecting on our good fortune we weren't attempting this in June-August when the rains are on and the crossings get to chest deep.
As we rolled into Camp 3 we found a number of military personnel there. It was a strong reminder of how recently access had re-opened to the Lost City. Only back in 2003 was the area essentially shut down because the left wing guerrillas, the ELN, had kidnapped some trekkers. There goal was to supposedly request an official investigation into human rights abuses. Somewhat ironic Nir said the hostages were Israeli and when they released they commented on how well they were treated. As we were to learn later in our trip, the Colombian government doesn't have the best reputation....
The military fellows were friendly enough. We have heard that the posting is dreaded by the young men, not because of any danger but because their time there is so boring!
We decided to walk up to the Lost City on Day 3 as the weather had been a bit unstable and rainy. We didn't get any rain but the clouds and dark skies created a mysterious air.
We saw many platforms on the way up that were the foundations for the wooden houses and neighborhoods that had long since disappeared. The stone stairs and foundations were covered in a heavy moss. The green colour varied subtly from the trees, vines and undergrowth that had only until recently enveloped the whole site.
At the top, after taking many different poser shots of ourselves individually and as a group, Saul sat us down like school kids and gave us the Lost City history lesson, ably translated by David.
While grave robbers aren't normally viewed as useful contributers to society, I couldn't help but think that if it wasn't for them the Lost City might still be hidden away.
It was only after many curious treasures were turning up on the Black Market in nearby Santa Marta and that competing "gaucerros" started killing each other that the government stepped in and took control. If not for the grave robbers, who would have ever found and climbed those stairs the first time?
We returned to our Camp 3, quietly reflecting on our achievement. All of us were pretty thrilled with the day. It had been pretty cloudy so the photo opportunities had been limited but you can't have blue sky every day. And while the photos weren't going to win any prizes, we did see La Cuidad Perdida, how it normally is, dark, green, forbidding. It wasn't hard to imagine it as the Infierno Verde with all the nasty business going on in the early days along with the remoteness and the jungle the name seems quite suitable. It isn't the sort of name that pulls in the tourist crowd so it isn't surprising that La Cuidad Predida usurped Infierno Verde!
We had a pretty straightforward 2 days walking back to the start. By our fourth night, back in Camp 1, I had grown accustomed to hammock sleeping and slept through the whole night undisturbed.
About half the crew set off on our last night to visit a Cocaine Factory "museum". They raved about it for the rest of the evening. 30,000 Colombian Pesos (~$15USD) and you can watch "Colombian Pure" as Liam loved to describe it being made before your eyes. They took many photos of everything but the fellow's face so seemed the real deal. I suspect that it was a small scale operation for supplying "coke" to the Ex-pat Taganga crowd.
I think we were all a little sad to say goodbye to the Sierra Nevada but going bush makes you really appreciate the good life. We had dinner out at the Casa de Felipe (Yum!) to celebrate our trip and then drinks at El Mirador for Lar's and Sangita's birthday back in Taganga.
Stuart and Anita
Posted byStuart Kane at 10:48 AM
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