The Lost City

Crazy Jake

Crazeee Jake

One of the Three Young Americans' most repeated pieces of banter related to an idea that one of them had, to take lots of video clips of them dancing at various locations in the jungle to Jungle Boogie (see how they did that?), which they were going to have to sing to keep time. They had been talking about this incessantly throughout the trek so far, and often singing little snippets of the song, yet by day three they hadn't yet taken one single movie clip; they just kept talking about it. At one point I told them I would be very disappointed if they didn't actually go through with it, after having to put up with listening to them go on about it so much. Jamie had said that he would kill them if they sang it one more time, but he never did. But during the third day, near the top of Ciudad Perdida, they finally took a couple of little clips, though it was still nowhere near enough to fill three minutes or so of the song.

So green

After a couple of hours we stopped at an old traditional mill, which was used to grind grain, much of which would be made into aguardiente, Castro explained. I asked if we would be able to try some, or at least buy some, but he said that they don't bother making it any more because, with the tourist money, the men just get the bus to Santa Marta, where they go drinking in the bars, as well as spending the money on gambling and prostitutes. He moaned about them losing their traditional way of life again for a bit, but it was becoming clear he did not have a very high opinion of the Kogui.

Old mill

The next bit of the trek, he told us, would entail several river crossings. I wasn't looking forward to this bit at all because, although I had been enjoying getting into the rivers and swimming, my new boots were more substantial than most people's footwear so took longer to put on and take off; also I was finding the stones very uncomfortable on my bare feet, which clearly needed hardened up. I really should have been walking around with bare feet as much as possible while I was away to combat this foot sensitivity, but because of flip-flops I probably had bare feet less than at home. I tried one river crossing with flip-flops on, but my remaining pair aren't very easy to keep on in a powerful current, and I had to react fast to stop one from washing away. The shallower parts of the river tended to be rapids of varying intensity, which was fun when swimming, but makes crossing a bit harder. I had to give up on the flip-flops and take every river crossing with bare feet, cursing the whole way across to help cope with the pain. Meanwhile Ali's feet had become so blistered and painful that Castro was carrying her on his back over every crossing.

Start of the steps

Finally after loads of uncomfortable, hassley, river crossings (I think there were nine in quick succession) we reached the infamous 1200 stone steps up to The Lost City. All the way along the route there had been sections paved with large stones, where Castro always stopped to draw our attention to the original piece of Tayrona road. The entire track used to be like that, he explained, but most of the stones have been taken out so that mulas can use it more easily. The higher up we had got, though, the fewer mules we saw and the more original road there was. Castro told us that there is a large network (I think he said thousands of kilometres) of road like this, built over a large area of the north of Colombia, which was the Tayrona kingdom. But now at the steps, it was going to be paved the whole way.

Alex near the top of the steps

Everyone was moaning about how difficult it was going to be, but I was just relieved the lumpy river stones weren't going to be driving into my soles any more. Anyway, climbing steps is much easier than climbing a hill, so I didn't understand why everyone was complaining. Matt suggested we count the steps to check the number was right, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. It was over in a flash and sure enough everyone started to make remarks that it was much easier than they had been expecting and so on.

More steps

As we approached the top of the steps we started to come across some stone walls and stone platforms alongside the steps. It was very different from Machu Picchu in that the stone was really dirty and covered in green moss, whereas Machu Picchu's stones look like they are regularly washed down. Someone since told me that, in fact, Machu Picchu is mostly reconstruction, though they have done a good job of it, whereas this Ciudad Perdida is all original, except that they have removed the overgrown undergrowth. All around though, it's still thick jungle and it really does look like a lost jungle city: it's easy to see why it survived for centuries without being discovered.

Near the top of the Ciudad

I've been asked which I preferred. Well, it's a very different type of ruin to Machu Picchu, but like it, the location is incredible: where Machu Picchu is mountains, Ciudad Perdida is jungle – but it's also in the mountains, though not as spectacularly near the top. The major difference in Cuidad Perdida's favour is the journey. I really love walking, especially up (and down) hills, and the scenery and swimming spots were fantastic. I think the location and the remoteness of Cuidad Perdida edges it in front as far as I'm concerned, though the ruins themselves are more impressive at Machu Picchu (reconstructed though they apparently are). Still, the ruins of Ciudad Perdida are lovely in that all of the impressively done stonework is really old-looking and covered in this nice green fur. Maybe it just reminded me of Glasgow, which is so damp that everything goes green eventually: all the Victorian sandstone buildings have a green tinge to them, no matter what the original colour of the stone. However nice and green, though, the ruins are only platforms on which they built their wooden buildings, of which nothing remains, of course. The scale of the development is really quite impressive though, even though there are no buildings per se, and to wander around the hundreds of old platforms on old stone paths on a mountainside deep in the jungle is amazing.

Green I tell you!

Alex and his halo

Castro pointed out to use that all of the paths were clean, and free from the green fur growing on the platforms, because the Tayrona people were such clever architects that they built all of the paths to be waterways as well, which sounds daft at first, but they are designed so that the water doesn't pool anywhere and just washes down the paths then off the side of the mountain. So not only does it prevent flooding, but it also keeps the paths clean and prevent moss from building up and destroying the stonework, which is part of the reason the site is still in such good condition, he claimed. In some places, there are steps to nowhere, which start off down a very steep hill, then just end. These steps were built just to act as drainage and were not even intended to be walked on. Next Castro pointed at the soldiers who were stationed everywhere and told us that they were there for two reasons: the first was to protect us, the tourists; and the second was to prevent the site from guaqueros.

Holy sapo statue

GREEN!

Next we were taken to our accommodation, which is just off from the main ceremonial platform; a shack with a corrugated steel roof, but perfectly OK for us, since there were mosquito nets. Our group was put on the top floor, where all eleven of us were going to have to squeeze onto seven foam mattresses under one giant mosquito net. I hadn't been having a great sleep on the hammocks we had been given up until then (because we didn't get to tie our own, so I wasn't able to use the skills I learned in the Peruvian jungle), so I was looking forward to a proper sleep.

This is now closed apparently

I was the first to take my luggage up and, when I got there a girl not of our group was already lying down there. I realised immediately it was the one we had come to refer to simply as "crazy girl", who I forget to mention in previous entries. We found her on the first evening, when she asked if she could join us because she had lost her group. She said she had gone for coffee while waiting for her group to leave, but when she returned they had set off without her, meaning that she had to hitch and make her own way. Her group had been at the accommodation at lunch time she said, so she would probably catch up with them the next day and certainly by the top since they would be there for a day and a bit. It sounded a bit odd, but Castro seemed happy enough to feed her. From then she kept popping up on her own, scavenging fruit at the stops or hanging around while we had lunch. By the third day, we had decided that her wild-eyed wanderings and badly mosquito-bitten legs suggested that she had been in the jungle much longer than two days. She had also let slip that her boyfriend worked as a chef at one of the accommodation stations, so with the continued absence of her group, we had become convinced she was a blagger. When I saw her in our sleeping area I told her that she couldn't sleep there because it was for our group, after all eleven people on seven mattresses was already going to be a squash! She got up and went downstairs but later, when some others took their stuff up she was back again. So someone informed Castro and two minutes later, she was putting on her rucksack and heading out into the jungle at dusk. On her own! Castro and the other guides had already been discussing her and had come to the conclusion that she had not paid. And considering how much it costs it really is quite a major blag.

After we had dumped our bags upstairs and showered, it was time to eat. The showers had been cold the first two nights, but up a bit higher where we now were it was freezing. As with every meal so far, it was really good hearty food and there was loads of it. This time I did refuse seconds, because I had to break Castro's perception that I was always going to be the guy who took seconds. Instead, Matt stepped up to the plate.

Castro tells his stories

After food Castro started to tell us lots of things about the Lost City. At this point, several people's Spanish gave out and Alex was called upon to translate. I have to say that my Spanish was still coping, but I don't know how long my concentration would have lasted at that intensity. After a bit he invited us to take a stroll with him to look at the Lost City. I thought he was taking us on a tour, but we just sat down overlooking the ceremonial platform and waited for the TYA to come back from their own wanderings, at which point Matt took over the translation work; all the Americans had really good Spanish, actually, and I was very jealous. I have a suspicion that most of what Castro told us was made up or guess work, because much of it contradicts what was in the guide book and what I've been able to find online. The people had no writing, so a lot of what he was telling us about the culture seemed to me impossible to know in the kind of detail he was telling it. However, he claims that his information comes from Kogui the people who live there now who, according to him but contrary to everyone else it seems, are not descended from the Tayrona people. Castro's claim is that archaeologists came to examine the site and made assumptions about who the people descended from but did not actually speak to them. I couldn't help feel that his belief might be reinforced by the obvious bigotry he felt toward the Kogui, when it simply does not fit with the romantic story he believed about the Tayrona people, who according to him were the most respectful of, and in tune with nature people ever to have lived. He said that the Kogui people were the slaves of the Tayrona, which is why they use slash-and-burn farming method and don't care about nature. He said that the Tayrona died out completely, this huge civilisation, to a man, after some of them brought disease back from meeting Conquistadores at the coast. At this point the slaves escaped and ran away, which is why the city was never discovered.

Ceremonial platform

He told us that the people came from Panama to Colombia, he gave us dates during which the city was built, and he told us a bit about the social structure. This city was just one of many that are dotted around the huge area the civilisation covered, and there are apparently more lost cities in the jungle. The head of each city was a man called the Mama, who was a shaman. The Mama was chosen by selecting three children from the population and putting them in boxes with no food or water, the last one surviving being the winner and next Mama. He said that for a while after they arrived they were just hunter-gatherers, which is pretty unusual for an advanced civilisation capable of architecture, but after they had been settled there for a while they started domesticating potatoes and some animals, however they never cleared unnecessarily large areas of the forest for farming and certainly never burned it down; they remained very much living in the forest. The techniques he described that they used to "micro-clear" the forest sound ridiculous, but he says they obtained acids from some or other plant, which they then applied around the bark of the tree. They would wait months, perhaps reapplying weekly, I can't remember, until the tree was sufficiently eaten into by the acid and then they would push it down. Subtle, yes, but very slow.

Unfortunately I can't now remember much more that he told us, which is a shame since I'm sure he is the only person who would give us that version. We did ask him how he knew so much and he said that, apart from speaking to the locals, he used to be a guaquero with his brother. He then went on to describe in great detail how you go about identifying a good grave to rob and how you do it. Of course you can't do it these days with all the soldiers around. He did say that recently, for his 45th birthday, he and his brother had gone trekking all over the area covered by the civilisation looking for burial sites, for old times' sake, he seemed to be saying; not too worried, obviously, about the fact that it is illegal never mind sacrilegious.

By that time the mosquitoes had already been out of hand for longer than we could tolerate and people started to move back towards the accommodation, so Castro called the meeting adjourned, and we went back for long sleeves and trousers before buying some of the first nice chilled beer of the tour, thanks to the same ice cold water that had made the showers so unpleasant. The beer was now more than double its usual price though. Chatting to some people from other groups we began to feel like we had got the best guide by far. One other group had not had any fruit at all along the way, and their meals were small and not great, but nobody apart from us had been treated to these fantastic accounts Castro had been giving us: little nuggets of information the whole way, culminating in this grand story-telling that night. Most guides hardly told their groups anything apparently, and the others could not believe that he had thrown a birthday party with free booze and a cake for Ali. It had been a great tour so far. A couple of people commented that it had been a really nice group as well, and everyone had got on well and seemed of a similar mindset. People often say this sort of thing on tours and I always think it's really just because people do tend to get on, and most people are basically quite nice, and you don't really get to know the people well enough to make that judgement. However a few days later I had reason to think back to that and realise that I've just been very lucky with the groups but, yes, this was a particularly nice one.

It was bed time, so we retired to our upstairs slumber party under the giant mosquito net, where we giggled about the crazy girl coming back and murdering us in the middle of the night, or her being somewhere else in the room, which was actually full of other people, all presumably wishing we should shut up and stop giggling.

Slumber party

Slumber party

written by  The Happy Couple on January 10, 2010 from Ciudad Perdida, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
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