Trekking to the Lost City

The Lost City - sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, doesn't it? Its a collection of pre-Columbian ruins buried deep in the rainforests of the Sierra Nevada, on Colombia's north coast, only accessible by a reasonably tough 5 day trek.

The 44 kilometre trek winds through lush hilly farmland, pristine virgin rainforest and finally a cloud forest. The actual city itself is a series of hundreds of circular stone terraces covered in various varieties of moss. The site was only "discovered" by treasure looters in 1972 - although indigenous groups have claimed to be living in and around the ruins, the descendents of the Tayrona people who are thought to have built the site somewhere between 600 to 800 AD.

The ruins themselves were interesting, but let's face it; its no Machu Picchu, a far more breathtaking and complex structure that was built hundreds of years later. The best part of the Lost City is that it is so far away from civilisation that it is only possible to hike there - so the journey that matters more than the destination.

Our group was pretty exhausted by the time we arrived at the ruins on the third day. We had been hiking mosly uphill for five hours, then had to scramble along the river banks and up a punishing 1200 stone steps to reach the first set of stone terraces, the entrance to the city which was once used as a marketplace to trade goods with other tribes.

The hilarious Maria

We ummed and aaahed between two tour operators, eventually opting to go for the upstarts Magic Tours rather than Turcol, who until recently had a monopoly over the treks. Our guides were a highly entertaining and friendly husband and wife team, Luis and Maria, as well as Jordan, the master chef who walked ahead of us in order to arrive at camp early to prepare delicious meals.

Overall the trek was quite well organised, however my one gripe is that they severely overloaded our group. The day we left was the last possible departure date before a five-day long indigenous festival, and the tour operators seemed to try and pack as many people into the group as possible. The first day we started out with eight people - a great number - but at the end of the day were joined by another eight people.

Considering the numbers, the guides did a great job, but refused to split up the groups so we often had to stop and wait for up to an hour for other members of the group to arrive at a rest stop or a river crossing. On the first and second days the distances covered were ridiculously short - 3.5 hours on the first day and and just 2 hours on the second day - these could easily have been combined into one day.

Trying to force a smile after climbing all of those stairs!

Minor complaints aside, it was a spectacular experience. The scenery was breathtaking, especially as we ascended through the steep mountainsides adorned with pristine rainforests and up beyond the clouds. The trail was interesting and varied - it started off fairly easy on day one, but included a number of long, steep seemingly neverending climbs to get the blood pumping!

It rained for a few hours every day, so much of the path was wet and slippery, and in some cases, covered in squishy ankle-deep mud. We crossed through a number of farms, and at these points the sloppy mud was intermingled with mule and cow poo, which had everyone concentrating extra hard not to slip over!

We crossed an inumerable number of streams, mini-waterfalls and larger rampaging rivers where it would have been easy to be swept away. On the first river crossing, I saw Luis casually wade across without taking his shoes off, so I thought that was the thing to do. I crossed over first, not realising that the rest of the group were carefully removing shoes, socks, shorts and anything else that might get wet. After the crossing was an intense 45 minute climb which I suffered through with my squishy wet hiking shoes.

Fortunately with all of these rivers around there were plenty of places to strip off and have a swim. Each place we camped had a really cool swimming spot, many with rapids to jump into and float down, and a couple with 10-metre high boulders that some of the braver souls enjoyed launching themselves off.

Aside from said river crossings, much of the third day involved scuttling along rocky paths that clung precariously to the river. In many places we had to cling to slippery wet boulders and negotiate piles of mossy rock and slippery tree roots.

Each night we stayed in purpose-built camps - big shelters with wood-fired stoves, long bench tables and rows of hammocks to sleep in. At first the whole hammock thing seemed like a novelty - I mean, who hasn't fallen asleep in a hammock on the beach? It felt quite nice at first, being enclosed cocoon-like in a hammock with a mosquito net over top, but the cozyness quickly turned to mild claustrophobia, especially as we were all packed in like sardines, with barely a few centimetres between each hammock.

The hammocks

Sleeping in hammocks puts the difficulty of getting up at night to go to the bathroom on a whole new level. One time I tried to put it off for what seemed like hours, then eventually I tried to silently swing myself down to ground level, avoiding the mud and into my flip-flops. This went ok, but trying to get back into the hammock was the hard part. I sat down on the material, lent back but somehow failed to get into the middle part and I went right over the back, and stacked it on the muddy floor!

One of the camps we stayed at was right behind the home of an indigenous family, but it did not turn out to be the authentic "meet the tribe" experience that we had been promised - we were told we would be introduced to some of the Spanish-speaking ones, but all we got was a quick talk about them from one of our guides, which was translated into terribly broken English by one of the people in our group. We tried to say hello to some of the kids and women that we saw, but for the most part we were pretty much ignored or avoided. At one point a little girl even started throwing rocks at us, compounding the feeling that we weren't very welcome there.

We did benefit from our guide's explanation of some of the more bizarre points of these societies. Men generally marry twice in their lives - the first marriage is an arranged one where an 18-year old man shacks up with an older, more experienced woman who teaches him the lie of the land, so to speak, as well as the duties involved in being the head of the household.

These marriages are short-term, lasting from three months up until a year, at which point the man is able to take a wife of his choosing, who doesn't get much say in the matter and is generally 12-14 years of age. Basically as soon as a girl gets her first period, she is marriage material. Once married, the sole aim of this couple is to procreate, and have as many children as possible to maintain the tribe's population - which took a major hit when the Spanish invaded.

The Tayrona are one of the few groups in Colombia that are permitted to grow coca leaves for personal consumption. Since the US cracked it a few years ago and started spraying poison on coca plantations, the Colombian government has tried to stamp out coca plantations, but indigenous people are allowed to continue the ritualistic practice they have followed for centuries.

Basically it involves chewing the coca leaves after they have mashed them up with crushed snail shells in a wooden pipe-type object called a poporro. Only males over the age of 18 are allowed to indulge, and our guide seemed to think that they weren't just getting high willy-nilly, that it was more of a special occasion thing.

Being in a tropical part of the world, the mosquitoes were ferocious. Everyone returned with a join-the-dots picture of itchy bites all over their legs, despite collectively spraying on mountains of repellant. We all stank too, thanks to the mud and the oppressive humidity, we were bathed in sweat the entire time, and had trouble drying our clothes overnight. Most mornings we were pulling on at least one wet slimy item from the day before. By the end of it everyone had garbage bags full of dirty laundry that smelled like toxic waste and were practically racing each other back into town for a shower and a bed that wasn't a hammock!