Jungle Donkeys and Lost Cities

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Hola from Colombia!

Our journey here was a little rough - 6 hours in Calgary airport for US customs and security, what a gong show! We missed our connection in Houston, but somehow both us and our bags arrived in Santa Marta as scheduled. The heat hit us as soon as we got off the plane, love it! We got a cab to our hostel, La Brisa Loca, which was quite the introduction to the country. The cabbie would have been great on The Amazing Race - honking at everyone and everything, yelling at other drivers out the window, swerving between cars in front of him and oncoming traffic, as we held on for dear life because they don't believe in seatbelts. We passed many donkeys hauling carts on the side of the road, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

We spent the first day in Santa Marta not doing much, Vance slept for 18 hours straight. I didn't sleep much, the hostel is very noisy. There is a bar right beside our room that's pumping out tunes until the wee hours of the morning. The next day we took a collectivo to Taganga, a small fishing village nestled in hills with a nice beach. We tried some fresh juice, my favorite so far is maracuya. Vance had fish for lunch - they bring out a tray of freshly caught fish and you pick from that. Different prices for different fish. There were lots of stray dogs with stuff growing on them.

Next we started our adventure to Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City. It was built in the 700s AD, abandoned in the 1500s when the Spanish were conquering (they never found it), and discovered by grave robbers deep in the jungle in the 1970s (they ended up killing eachother over loot). The trek usually takes 6 days, but everyone else in the group wanted to do it in 5, so we did. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done (even harder than snowshoeing). My knees and hips hate me right now, I am covered in bug bites, and I was brought to tears by one of the long, unrelenting, uphill legs. It was worth it though, the scenery along the way was stunning, we got to swim in beautiful jungle rivers, meet local indiginous people (Kogi), and the city was very impressive. We saw lots of local farms - maize, sugarcane, coca, oranges, bananas, and jungle cows, pigs, and chickens. There aren't any monkeys though, apparently they all died when the Americans sprayed the jungle to eradicate cocaine farms. They were carrying yellow fever and when they died a lot of the locals got sick too. There are a lot of Colombian military guarding the area - in 2003 eight trekkers were kidnapped, so now the military protects the area. The one we talked to was only 20 years old and had been in the army for 3 years. The trail is lots of very steep hills up and down, scrambling over giant rocks (and along a cliff face for one short section), forging rivers (8 river crossings on the last day), and culminating in 1235 very steep, small, mossy steps leading to the city. And then we had to turn around and walk the same way out,which was somewhat demoralizing. The last day (yesterday) we hiked days one and two combined, 7 brutally hard hours.

When we got back to Santa Marta we didn't have reservation, as we had planned on the trek taking 6 days, not 5. The tour office brought us to a hotel she knew, La Posada. For some reason the owner seemed really upset that we wanted to stay there, he didn't even want to check with reception if there was room. She finally convinced him to check and even then he was grilling us with questions before he'd let us stay. Finally he let us stay but charged us more than usual for the room and told us we had to leave by 7 am. We were so tired and just wanted a bed so we took it.

Tomorrow we head for Parque Tayrona for 3 well deserved days on the beach!

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Comments

[Theresa]

so exciting!!
yay Nicole! Sounds awesome! I was waiting for an update before we head to Hawaii!! I'm so proud of your grueling struggle!! yay! And i bet it was harder than the snowshoe! haha! Shaun and I leave today!! We'll share adventures when we get back!!