Colombia: Ciudad Perdida

This post will probably turn into a long ramble. But it's a post about a long ramble, so I suppose that would be apt...

I wasn't going to do the trek to Colombia's Lost City. I'd already spent nearly three weeks in the country and felt it was time to move on. I'm so glad I changed my mind.

Gerard (aka Chewie) and I were picked up early in Taganga on the Monday and met our travelling companions for the next few days:

Left to Right:

Anne - American
Stevie - her travelling companion, also American
Martina (in green) - German
Simon - Welsh
Dieter - Martina's husband
Wilson (in front of me) - our tour guide
Me
Kalle - Belgian
Mila - Korean
Bailey - American
Gerard/Chewie - Australian

Eight of us were bundled into a rickety old jeep, driven by a large smiley bloke, and we set off from Taganga. We had an hour on the road, passing the entrance to the Tayrona National Park on the way, before pulling off onto a dirt track.

The next hour was spent being bumped and shunted around as we climbed slowly up to the small village where the trek would start. The driver was an expert, guiding us round muddy hairpin bends - sheer drops down the mountain within inches of the wheels.

Relived, a bit squashed, and slightly nervous, we set about doing final preparations for the days ahead. Because I decided to do the trek at the last minute, my preparations up to that point had been virtually nil.

With an hour left of trading hours before leaving Cartagena I had frantically rushed round the shops and bought a bit of sunscreen, a small rucksack (for four quid) and, after chatting to Welsh Simon (who I shared a room with in Cartagena), bought some sandals that would enable me to walk through rivers.

I hadn't checked the weather forecast. First mistake.

As we were digesting our Last Supper (or lunch) of sandwiches in the village, another tour group returned from their five days. They were exhausted and looked like they'd spent the week in toe-to-toe combat with a wall of mud.

I asked them if they thought my sandals would do the job. They laughed. Luckily I had bought along my trainers which I was planning to wear in the evenings. Would they do the job? They laughed, again.

As it began to dawn on me that this would not be a walk in the park - or the rainforest - I thought it would make sense to take a 'before' picture. And here it is:

Note the fake 'I'm shitting myself but trying not to show it' smile.

Before we set off, I re-arranged my bag as it was bursting at the seams. It then literally burst at the seams. Before I'd even set off a tear had appeared along the zip of the main pocket. Second mistake: buying a bag for four quid off the market.

The first part of the walk took us out of the village, through some fields and across some streams. All well and good. Then the real stuff began: a mammoth hike up a slippery, muddy mountain.

It was a struggle, and sweat was pouring. The ascent probably took the best part of 45 minutes and Mila at one point felt nauseous and looked close to fainting. No, definitely not a walk in the park.

My shoes were holding up ok though, and we eventually reached the top where there was a fruit stop (which would become a common theme). We ate lots of watermelon, met another tour group, and I got a couple of pics:

Mmm, sweaty.

The rest of the first day was a good walk across a mountain ridge and then an evil final descent down into Camp 1. My trainers are over a year old, have no grip left, and when faced with a muddy, slippery path like this...

...they throw in the white towel.

Several comedy slips later and we made it to the camp. Hurrah! We immediately dumped our stuff and walked a couple of minutes to an amazing waterfall and swimming spot. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera, but it was a perfect way to soak knackered bodies.

We had hammocks to sleep in, and the camp was in a beautiful spot at the bottom of the valley:

Our chef rustled up some chicken and rice, we had a couple of Aguilas to wind down, and were all in bed by 9pm. Rock n roll!

Day two started with mud. It then featured some more mud. And we finished off with a load of mud. In Sesame Street style, the colour of the day was Brown.

But in amongst the mud, it was also a brilliant and challenging day of trekking across mountain ridges, down a humungous hill (more of which later) and swimming in freshwater pools:

We got to Camp 2 at about 3pm, and saw we had beds to sleep in. I enjoyed sleeping in the hammock, as a one off, but after a couple of days on the road a bed was fantastic. We got stuck into some beers straight away and settled into camp.

Anne had brought along a stack of stuff to give to local kids (putting the rest of our meagre offerings of sweets and crayons to shame) and they had fun playing with the balloons, particularly when filled with water:

They weren't as sweet and innocent as first appeared though. It felt quite uncomfortable to see kids as young as 6 and 7 drinking beer. This photo, including several sets of dead eyes, probably says it all:

We played cards and dice, chatted to other tour groups, compared battle scars and I took my Day 2 picture of the shoes:

Nice hole! Luckily the American girls came to the rescue, as they did several times, and I patched up my bag and shoes with Duck Tape.

Trekking boots? Who needs them.

Day 3 in my diary reads like this:

Good walk. Legs getting stronger. Last 30 minutes excellent - scaling boulders, negotiating mammoth tree roots, river crossings and narrow paths. Led into camp by guide's dog. The new Littlest Hobo. Sarnies and juice for lunch at Camp 3, then set off for Ciudad Perdida. Steep steps. Legs like jelly. Wilson does guided tour at the top. Final arrival at peak of CP incredible. Wow!! Views, paramilitaries, fascinating archaeologist. Speedy descent, rain back at camp, drunk Anne's rum, no generator so candlelit evening, more games of rummy.

Probably sums it up fairly well. Well, in my head anyway! Here are some pics:

Bingo butterfly

Chewie making friends

Ants crossing a wire above a river with their leaves

At the top of Ciudad Perdida. Like the socks?

It was a great day.

On day 4 the aim was to walk all the way from Camp 3 to Camp 1 in one day, stopping at Camp 2 for lunch. And that's exactly what we did.

By this stage my legs and lungs were feeling good and I enjoyed going fairly fast. We weren't being shepherded along the route like schoolkids, so if you wanted to go ahead of the pack Wilson was fine with that. There was one instance on the final day where he caught up with me and asked me to slow down, but it was understandable as the group had spaced out a lot.

Anyway, back to Day 4, and we got to Camp 2 for a lunch of sausages and beans (cooked by our ever-smiling chef) and had a great dip in the river.

The afternoon was mainly spent walking up a beast, a bastard, a joke of a hill. It was the same one we'd come down on on Day 2 but I didn't remember it being so ridiculously big and steep. It was almost farcical as the sweat flowed off our faces, our legs on auto-pilot, our lungs praying for the end. One of the most exhausting things I've ever done, but also one of the most rewarding.

The walk back along the mountain ridge, with amazing views and now-packed mud (following some sun. Woohoo!) was great.

We got back to Camp 1 and headed straight for the piscina by the waterfall. Never in the history of man has a more refreshing dip taken place. We dived in, washed, exhaled. A mammoth day of trekking but the sort of day I have taken a sabbatical for.

The evening, our final one, was a mix of good food, a few drinks, some unrepeatable conversations and staying up waaaaay past our bedtime. I think we turned in at 10.30pm. 

The final day was a relatively easy 3hr walk back to the start. We passed through some amazing butterfly swarms, crossed more rivers, descended the last huge hill. I walked back into the village accompanied by the three dogs that had been with us for the five days. I'm not a big animal fan, but they were great.

We had lunch, met the next tour group (fear in their eyes), had a quick game of football with the locals and met the cutest little girl in Colombia:

All that was left was to take an 'after pic' of Chewie and I, and of my battered shoes:

Chewie wore those fetching thermals all the way back on the final day after making a drunken promise the previous night. I wore the same clothes every day because I'm a scruffy bastard.

Seriously though, it made sense to wear the same shirt every day as within 15 minutes of trekking each morning I was caked in sweat. When I got back to Taganga, I hung the T-shirt on the line to dry and by the morning, the hostel staff had obviously decided it was an unwearable specimen and had chucked it away!

We had a bouncy 2hr ride back to Taganga, including carrying Wilson on the roof. Spot the feet:

That evening, most of us ended up in an outdoor disco/club place that had zero other patrons in for the first couple of hours. We shared some rum and gave our legs one final piece of punishment, this time on the dancefloor:

It was a great week, and the trek was one of the best things I have ever done. It was far, far better than I had expected, and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't know much about it, hadn't seen any pictures or read up on what was going to happen.

We got quite lucky with the weather - a bit of rain here and there, and then some sun - and I got really lucky with my tour group. My shoes just about held out, as did my bag, and even the lurgy (that I'd had at the start of the trek) cleared up. Spot on.

This post is already huge, what with all the pictures, so I'll only add a couple more below. I've just put over 200 on my Flickr page though.

I'll do another post soon, as I'm now in Quito, but that's the Ciudad Perdida covered. I could have sat here and written all night about what a fantastic time I had, but attention spans can only sustain so much.

Job done. Aaaaaand relax.

Colombia: Taganga

Americans. Dontcha just love 'em?

I'm sitting here at my hostel in Taganga having already had a long and tedious conversation with a 60-year-old from Montana about 'real estate' and how much money he made out of poor families when the recession hit.

Now I'm overhearing him and his two cronies discussing war, 9/11 and Eyeran (Iran, as we would say).

They're racist, myopic and generally a bunch of assholes (as they would say).

Anyway, in other news, I'm all set for my trek tomorrow to Ciudad Perdida. We had a fairly uneventful 3-4 hr bus journey to Taganga after a fairly eventful start to the day.

A bunch of crossed wires meant that I was waiting at one Exito supermarket for the pre-booked coach to arrive, while the coach and Gerard (my travelling partner) were at a different Exito. Some phonecalls and traipsing-around-in-the-heat-with-backpack later and we were united and on our way.

The coach driver spent approximately five out of every ten seconds physically turning his head to chat to one of the passengers sitting next to him. Now I'm all for people multitasking, but when you're careering along at over 80mph round fairly sharp bends AND with the worst backseat driver in the world (ie, me) in the back, just keep your eyes on the bloody road.

Thank God for iPods, window scenery and an ability to stay calm under pressure. Kind of.

Taganga is a dusty little fishing village that has embraced tourism in recent years and is the starting point for trips to the Tayrona National Park and the lost city trek, which we are doing this week.

We booked with Magic Tours after several recommendations and they seem competent enough, except for the guy who was taking our details (and our 170 quid) was more interested in watching Shakira on YouTube than filling us in on the minor details, such as the time of departure.

We will spend the days carrying our own stuff, so I have some decisions to make on what clothes/footwear/toiletries to take. The Going Out Shirt will stay at home methinks.

And that's about it for now. Not the most riveting text I've ever written, and if you feel you've just wasted two minutes of your life reading this then sue me. Or the Americans. They made me write it.

And apologies for no photos in this post. This PC has a weird operating system and doesn't seem to recognise my USB stick. In the absence of any, here's a picture of a book:

Colombia: Medellin and Cartagena

Dodgy internet connections. They're all the rage in South America.

I've just quietly fumed through about 17 unsuccessful attempts to buy a plane ticket online. On the 18th time, the purchase was made. I hate those situations where you've entered your credit card details, pressed 'pay'  and then the page hangs for eternity as you sit there, pleading with the Internet God* to make it work.

When it finally did work I felt like leaning forward and kissing the monitor. But I'm in a room with three other guys, and they might have thought I was weird.

The flight I booked is from Bogota to Quito for next weekend. Earlier I booked another flight from Santa Marta to Bogota, so now my route out of Colombia is sorted.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. What has been happening since my last post?

I followed in the footsteps of the world's biggest drugs baron, ate enough barbequed food to feed a small country, got blasted by freezing air-con for 14 hours, did too much partying, and got the lurgy.

Sunday night was my final night in Medellin, and the hostel put on a fantastic BBQ:

I ate so much meat that I probably wasn't far off the onset of gout. Pork chunks, chicken legs, different types of chorizo, amazing steak, plus onions, salads, fried bananas, cheese and potatoes. Bleurgh. But good bleurgh.

The following day, a group of four of us went on a Pablo Escobar tour. Pablo, or El Patron - as he was nicknamed in his heyday - was named Forbes' seventh richest man in the world in 1989. He also enjoyed shooting policemen, building ostentatious buildings and getting the world hooked on cocaine.

The tour was great. We were driven round in a little van...

...by the guy who started the tour a few years ago, and his translator guide. She had only been doing the job for a fortnight but had expert knowledge of Pablo and Medellin.

We went to several properties that he built during the '70s and '80s, like 'Monaco' - his first:

All the buildings he built were white (with obvious connotations to the stuff that paid for them!) and in the 'Miami' style, with palm trees and blackened windows.

He moved out of 'Monaco' after the Cali cartel blew up a car outside it, killing two of his security guards and leaving his daughter with partial deafness. That was the first strike in a war between the Medellin and Cali cartels that went on for several years and reached its nadir between 1989 and 1991, when there were car bombs and assassinations on a daily basis.

We also saw some of his planes that were used to transport the drugs overseas, and visited the house where he was finally captured and killed - as he tried to escape across a roof:

In the picture are members of the FBI who helped the Colombians to finally capture El Patron.

Some of the stories we heard were bizarre. When one of the cartel was killed, his mates used to drive the corpse around the city, taking it to strip clubs and fancy restaurants - to give him a happy send-off... He also once offered to pay off Colombia's national debt, but only if the police decriminalised his operations.

We ended the tour with a visit to his grave:

After the tour, I took a trip to the botanical gardens but forgot that most tourist attractions close on Mondays. Gah! But there was a mini garden outside, that I took a few snaps in:

That night, Paul (a Manc) and I got a nightbus to Cartagena. The bus itself was pretty good. Comfy seats, fairly new, no strange smells and quite a smooth ride.

All good, except I happened to have a seat that kept righting itself to the normal sitting position once I'd put it back to recline. So I spent the night being blasted by freezing air from a broken airvent above me, while constantly having to move my seat back. I've had better journeys cramped up in a National Express.

After that, and with a heavy cold (brought on my an evil combination of multiple nights out followed by air-conditioned bus torture), I got to Cartagena, checked into my hostel and went straight out for something to eat.

If there was a doctor to administer a cure for a bad night's sleep and a flu-y head, and he was looking at a restaurant menu, this would be just what the doctor ordered:

Since that first day, I've spent the days lazily wandering around Cartagena in the scorching (32-35 degree) heat, doing very little and trying to get over this bug that I have. My first hostel had really surly staff, no comfy rest areas and was expensive. It looked pretty though:

After a couple of days, I was wandering through a slightly more rough-and-ready area of the city called Getsemani and came across the Media Luna hostel. It has a pool (woohoo!), is housed in a beautiful old building and has little things that elevate it above a lot of other hostels: air-con in the internet/TV room, a massive kitchen, a great roof terrace to watch the sunset:

I moved in.

Once a week, that roof terrace plays host to a big party. A few of us went along this week and had a good night. At one point we were accosted by a group of camera-toting Chileans:

The party normally ends about 4am, but at 2am the music was turned off and we were ushered out. It turns out that some guy had fallen off the wall of the terrace and smashed through the tiled roof of the hostel next door. His weight took him through the floor below, and he ended up landing on a bed. Here's the evidence:

A night on the tiles turning into a night through the tiles.

BOOM BOOM.

And Cartagena itself? It's stunning. I've been to places with similar architecture, particularly in Spain and Portugal, but this place has street after street after street of perfectly-preserved houses, shops, museums and plazas:

 

My visit has also coincided with the 51st International Film Festival of Cartagena Des Indias (to give it its full title). This movie bash is Latin America's biggest, and one of the biggest in the world.

Last night, Sarah (American) and I went to see Black Swan, or El Cisne Negro, at the big convention centre. We had the full red carpet treatment as we went in and were given special Black Swan glasses to pose in...

The film itself, starring the eternally pouting Natalie Portman, was great. The only strange thing was that the projectionist (if such a word exists) was having problems with the reel, and the sound kept going weird. I felt a bit sorry for the organisers as the audience groaned after the screen temporarily went blank for a second time.

Today I'm going to probably watch one or two more low-key films, might try and watch a bit of Premier League football on TV, sit by the pool for a bit, eat some good food. That's the kind of day you take sabbaticals for.

And tomorrow Gerard (Australian) and I leave for Santa Marta, and specifically Tiganga, up on the coast. We will have a night there before doing a 5-day trek to the Lost City (Ciudad de Perdida) up in the Sierra Nevada next week.

So I'm not sure when the next post will be, but in the meantime here's a few more pics from the past few days:

Cat chilling at the hostel in Medellin

Graffiti on the Escobar tour

Spaceship lands in Medellin

Cartagena

Pigeon shitting on sculpture, Cartagena

Yet another attractive plaza, Cartagena

*presumably this position is currently held by Mark Zuckerberg.