The Lost City Trek - Ciudad Perdida - Expotur

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Hot, Humid, Sweaty, Rainy, with Mosquitoes and sand flies, conditions that don't make you want to go for a five day 68km hike. Notable was our apprehension based on other peoples grueling reviews, Luckily it seems that everyone who has written reviews seem to want everyone think that they had achieved the impossible, and we were met with an enjoyable beautiful, even difficult trek, but far from impossible. That is the 4 night 5 day option, we noticed groups doing it in shorter periods where having more trouble with blisters and were generally rushed, for us and everyone we spoke to the trek itself is a main highlight so why rush, thats not to say that the ruins are not amazing.

We booked our tour with Expotur,who we found excellent. David the manager was nothing but straight down the line with us. He said he would try to get an English speaking guide for us, which he accomplished, this probably wont happen all the time as I don't think there are many. So we had Carlos, who was a our Porter / Guide / Translator / most importantly friend for the trek. We had two other actual guides and a cook, all of who where excellent for our ten person group. This was a better Guide to trekker percentage than I saw in other groups.
( This is a bit of plug for the company and I have made it a point to counter a bad review we found that bad mouthed Expotur. The bad review almost made us book with a different company, we are most glad we didn't)

The pictures will tell the rest of the story.

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Photos

2010-09-29 09-44-03
Cute kid on the way to the trek, looks like he wanted to come.

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The best Jeep in the world

2010-09-29 13-44-13
First of many creek crossings, this is shallow.

2010-09-29 14-10-55
I look so happy as I had little fish eating my dead skin, I was wearing shorts! don't get any sick Ideas.

2010-09-29 14-16-01
Dim and M

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Pigs

2010-09-29 14-50-15
The rain is starting on the first day, Strap on the garbage bag to protect your dry clothes. This is half way up the first 1.5 hour climb

2010-09-29 15-15-07
Tom and marjolein

2010-09-29 15-16-34
Dim with a backdrop of old cocaine fields

2010-09-29 16-12-42
The group.
We had Marjolein from Holland, Nicole, Burny and Sara from Switzerland, David and Rob from London, Flo from Germany, Michelle from New Zealand and Mariana from Argentina

2010-09-29 16-14-47
From an elevation

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Dinner on the first night, we ate like kings every night

2010-09-30 07-20-40
Jungle

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Jungle

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Tom in Jungle

2010-09-30 13-30-07
Native Kogui village

2010-09-30 13-42-53
Tom or is it Tarzan, ahhyahh

2010-09-30 15-30-27
Second night camp, trying pointlessly to get our cloths dry, they never got dry, ever.

2010-09-30 15-36-09
Dim in the Kitchen, if she is lucky we may get one like this when we get home.

2010-09-30 16-57-24
Native girl or boy, the jury is out. One thing is for sure he/she loves Oreos, not that I had any to spare, other more thoughtful people did though.
And one of the most mistreated dogs in the jungle.

2010-09-30 17-03-01
Someones hungry