After chowing down on some DIY breakfast at the hostel, we
made our way to the Wiwa Tour office where we met our traveling companions for
the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) 4-day trek. Our group was small, consisting only
of a jolly Aussie, Pete, our Wiwa guide, Luis, and a translator, Alejandro,
who was added last minute and had no idea what he was getting himself into. After
a long drive in the back of a Land Cruiser, we arrived in Machete Pelao, where
we had a surprisingly decent lunch of lentils and rice before starting the 29-mile
roundtrip trek. Between poor Alejandro huffing and puffing up the mountain
trail and an incident with Pete, it took the group 4-hours to make it to the first
camp. What happened with Pete you ask? Well, as you may know, chewing and
brewing coca leaves is quite common throughout many countries in South America.
It is used as a mild pick-me-up, to ease a headache, or in the case of the
natives, chewed continually, simply because it is tradition. In the case of the
Wiwa tribe, they mix the coca leaves with ground seashells to assist in activating
and transporting the drug into the blood stream. While chewing the mixture,
they suck on a stick and rub their saliva on the outside of the gourd they use
for holding the seashell powder. They carry a gourd seashell spit vessel with
them for their entire adult life and claim that every man’s gourd can be read
like a book. I regress, back to the story: In steps Pete, center stage. Pete had previously been chewing coca
leaves with sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda and “bicarb” to Aussies) when
Luis suggested he try some seashell powder. What nobody could have predicted was
that bicarb and Wiwa seashell powder react terribly with one another. Within
seconds Pete’s mouth was burning and his lips swelled, making it look like the
jolly Aussie had gotten into a fight (and lost). Luckily, many many hours and a heavy dose
of Benadryl later and his mouth had mostly returned to normal. First crisis
averted.
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| Day 1 along the road to the Lost City. |
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| More Day 1 photos. If you'll notice, Mom is typically leading the guide. |
Although the mattresses were very well used (it had the
permanent imprint of a shorter person) and pretty much everything smelled
faintly of mildew, the first camp was not so bad. After getting settled, we
made our way to a waterfall pool where we jumped off of a short cliff into crystal
clear cool water. It was spectacularly beautiful and the water felt incredible!
After an early dinner (prepared by our potentially 17-year-old chef), some cards,
and 20 minutes attempting to get a picture of a toad eating a bug, we went to
bed and were all asleep by 8pm.
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| Home stretch of day 1 and the first (and best) camp of the trek. |
We woke up early the next day and continued hiking another
10ish hours. Apart from birds, bugs, cows, mulas (Spanish for mules and Mom’s
only solid Spanish vocabulary), and horses, the wildlife
scene was pretty bleak. At least the scenery was spectacular! Just as in Salento,
there were massive portions of the jungle with only grass where coca plantations
used to be. Up until this point, we had believed that we were mostly isolated,
enjoying the quiet nature and beautiful surroundings. Our beatific backpacking
bliss came to an abrupt end when we passed the hoard of people coming the other
way. By hoard, I mean literally 200 people, walking and talking on OUR trail!
We were even more disappointed to find out that for the rest of the trip we
would be joining the approximately 200 people making the trip with us at the
future camps. If you couldn’t tell, we tend to be a bit antisocial in the
outdoors. Luckily, our asocial tendencies were appeased before lunch when we
stopped at another swimming hole. While all the other groups went to a big
waterfall, Luis brought us to a different swimming hole that was surreal
beautiful and completely abandoned. Before we made it to camp that evening, we
first had to endure a 2+ hour long monsoon. By the time we arrived, even our hand-made
plastic trash bag jackets had soaked through!
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| Day 2 and the hoard of people we endured at the break spot. |
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| Lunch spot on day 2 and Luis with his seashell spit gourd. The yellow portion is accumulated dried seashell spit. |
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| The Kogi village along the way. |
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| More pics along the trail. Notice how the tourists took the bridge while the locals and their mula forded the river. |
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| Monsoon, our trash bag raincoats, and day 2 camp. |
Not only was the day 2 camp crowded with damp talkative
people (including a 20-year-old that kept hitting on my mom), but there were also
mosquitoes galore! I’m talking GALORE! Even with a cancer-full dose of 100% Deet
and Picaridin we were still being eaten alive. To make matters worse, we were
the last ones to get dinner (I guess our child chef was low on the pecking order),
the showers were crowded and freezing (cold water is typical and expected, but it
doesn’t make it warmer), there were no pillows, and the beds were equally
worn-in and stinky. Oh well, early to bed and excitement about visiting the
Lost City the next morning cured (or at least mollified) all of our
discomforts.
After a quick, very early breakfast, we hurried off to be
the first group at the Lost City. After 1 hour of hiking and about 1200 pre-Incan
steps, Andy, Mom, and I had arrived. Too excited to delve into the awesomeness,
we ditched the rest of the group and started exploring on our own. Mom took off
so fast that we didn’t see her for at least 20 minutes. When she eventually
returned she was red faced and laughing. Apparently, she had been stopped by an
armed soldier who had spoken in Spanish at her for 10 minutes while she stood
staring at him in a dazed stupor, not understanding a single word. She
eventually just walked away, assuming she was in the wrong place. When
Luis finally reeled us in, he explained that we were supposed to ask the
gods for permission before entering the ancient city….oops. Slightly annoyed, he led us through
a tribal ceremony at the entrance to the Lost City. Unfortunately, our disgrace
of the gods continued when I took the instructions “blow on the coca leaves”
literally and blew all of my coca leaves (which had all of my virtual
belongings transferred to them) out of my hand and onto the ground. Luis just chuckled,
shaking his head. At least I didn’t do what Pete did and attempt to eat the coca leaves. Apparently, the gods forgave our blatant
cultural ignorance because after teaching us a little bit about the site's history (from
the tribal perspective) we were finally allowed to explore the extensive ruins
on our own.
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| Early morning trek to the Lost City on day 3. |
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| Early bird gets the worm! - First to arrive, we had the entire place to ourselves! |
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| Views from the Lost City ruins. The top-left photo is the stone circle we stood around for the entrance ceremony. |
The city was founded around 800 AD by the Tairona tribal
people. It was and continues to be a spiritual site for the native people, who
believe that the circular pads, located on a series of 169 terraces, are for
praying for specific entities (animals, harvest, hunters, etc.). Each year the
Mamos (spiritual leaders) of each tribe meet at the site to pray and
cleanse the ruins from all of the corruption that has tainted it over the past
year. Interestingly, archaeologists and, particularly, the archaeologist that
happened to be conducting a dig when we passed by and spoke with for 30 minutes, have a very different story to tell. He said that the circular pads represent a
network of huts which housed 2,000-8,000 people before the Spanish conquest. Due
to these contradictions, the rapport between the archaeologists and the tribal
people is strained to say the least. Luis was not happy that we were speaking
to the archaeologist and stormed off about 5 minutes into the conversation.
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| More views from the Lost City ruins. |
1,000+ photos later, we made our way down the steep jungle
steps to the camp where we had slept the night before. After lunch and another feeble
attempt to dry our soaked shoes and clothes, we continued backtracking to our
final camp spot. We rushed the return hike and made it just in time to avoid
the next monsoon. Although the site and surrounding jungle was extraordinary
and much larger than we expected, it was occupied by swarms of mosquitoes and
sand flies. Mom and I counted 94 and 110 bites EACH and that was through our
clothes and excessive amounts of bug repellent. Andy must be way less sweet
because he escaped with only about 25.
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| Return trip along the trail to the Lost City. |
Rather than stop for the day, the 3 of us decided to take
Luis up on his offer to hike to the most ridiculously beautiful jungle waterfall
imaginable. It was no kidding, beyond words incredible! Unfortunately, by the
time we left it was raining substantially and we decided to hike the whole
thing in swimsuits and sandals, leaving the camera behind (hence the lack of
photographs - use your imagination, it was implausibly stunning). Right when we
arrived and were busy gawking at the waterfall, Luis abruptly stopped and put
his hand up, signaling me to stop dead in my tracks. He pointed at the ground,
at which point all 3 of us started gawking at the ground instead, oblivious to
the fact that there was a deadly camouflaged snake one step in front of us. Luis,
like a superhero, bent down, grabbed a stick, and thwacked the snake dead in
one strike. Later, he told us that if you get bit by that snake you have about
2 hours to live. Um… terrifying! Another crisis averted (not sure death is a crisis,
but the 2 hours before imminent demise would be full of crisis for sure). After
taking a very quick dip in the cold pool below the falls, we made our way back
to camp, and settled into the most disgusting sleeping arrangements yet. Mom’s
bed was actually crusty with mold and the pillows were visibly covered with
mildew.
With all of the excitement over and thoroughly disgusted by
the living conditions (not to mention being dirty and itchy), we were more than
ready to get out of the jungle on day 4. We essentially raced back to the starting
point where we ended up waiting over an hour for the rest of our group to
arrive. Impatient to be on our way, we scarfed down some grub, licked our
wounds, and tried to relax when we were forced to wait for another ride because
our Land Cruiser broke down. It was an incredible trip, but we were more than
ready for a shower and some bite relief ointment.
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| Blisters, bug bits, exhaustion, jungle flowers, and views! |
