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Published: October 10th 2009
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Despite my lack of money and VISA cards, I managed to get on the trek to Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City), thanks to a good travelling friend who acted as "sugar daddy", so much that I had to take him as hostage, as you can see in the pics ;o)
Actually, about ten years ago this was a place full of guerillas, but it has been cleaned up and now you can every now and then see some militaries patrolling the grounds.
The trek to Ciudad Perdida goes over five days in a tremendous landscape of some kind of jungle up to an altitude of 1300m.
In short, the history of The Lost City was built and used by the Tayronas (indigenous people) and dates back to the 7th century.
The civilization was destroyed by the conquistadores and was forgotten until grave robbers rediscovered it in the 1970's.
The trek was great, we were a group of seven, plus two guides and we had tons of fun and laughs along the somewhat difficult hike. We pícked bananas from the trees, took tons of swims in natural pools every day, slept in hammacks (ah, I love it so much),
learnt many card games in the dark after the sunset, and got thousands and thousands of mosquito bites... Nothing to do about it, cintronella, DEET, natural insect repellent - nothing works on these mosquitos!
In one day we had to cross a river nine times in waist-deep water (and our clothes of course never dried since it is cold in the night and awfully hot and humid during the days). On the third day we had to walk the 1260 steps up to the actual city - but the view from the top was nothing but great, so it was definitely worth it.
We also met tons of indigenous people, living like you would imagine, in huts in the middle of nowhere, cultivating their grounds and living from their animals.
A beautiful hike, that I would recommend anyone going to Colombia to do! Bellisimo!!!
And the title of this entry is a funny story - we had a stop with the bus who drove us from the end of the trek in the National Park to Santa Marta and suddenly a guy says that the white bag on top of the roof is moving (you probably know that
both people, bags and animals travel on the bus roof in this country when there is not enough space inside the bus). Of course we did not beleive him, but when looking further, we realised it was moving!!! One of the guys adventured up to the roof to give the bag a poke, and came down saying it was hard!!!
We did not ask anything more and continued the ride. About ten minutes later, we stopped and were supposed to leave the white, moving bag to a lady - only that the bag was missing!!! Actually, it contained an armadillo that had jumped and moved until it fell off the roof!!! We all had to make a chain, and together with the people living along the road search for it - apparently it is a delicacy here - need to try it!!!
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Åhh...
... Jag VISSTE att jag skulle missa något när jag bestämde mig för att inte åka... :( :( Härligt att du kom iväg, jag är superavis!!! Puss å kram från Kung A och mig :)