Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon

Earlier in the morning that I would have liked I got up and crossed the road to the hostel that were running the Ciudad Perdida tour, who were kind enough to offer to look after our bags while we were away. The two Australian girls, Ali and Mel, were already there (why do Australians shorten every name?) and they had been joined by the two English friends, Gemma and "Fraggle", who they had been waiting for, and who had in turn brought a friend of theirs, Jamie. As we waited around the jeep we were joined by a group of three young guys from the USA, Matt, Jake, and Colin; another slightly older guy called Alex, also from the States; and a girl from Kazakhstan, who is now living in England, called Marina. Everyone seemed to have much larger bags than the tiny day-bag I had squashed five days worth of stuff into, but since I had used the same bag for five days in the Peruvian jungle including a hammock, I was sure I'd be OK.

Soon all the bags were on the top of the jeep and all eleven of us were squashed into the back. Not long after we set off we were off-road and a couple of times I was almost pitched forward right into Marina who was sitting opposite. Soon we realised that the three people on their own, Marina, Alex, and me, had recently continued their trips without their significant other: in my case my wife, Marina's case her English husband, who had just gone home, and in Alex's case his new girlfriend. The Lonely Hearts Trek, we decided.

Finally we arrived at the place where the trek began and sat down at the restaurant for lunch. A group who had just finished were also having lunch but they all looked pretty fresh, leading us to believe that the trek was going to be pretty easy, though they claimed otherwise, saying that the second day in particular was a killer. On the wall a map also showed the profile of the trek, so I could see that the total distance to our destination was only 20km and the total ascent, including a few ups-and-downs, was only about 1600m. I was glad again that I had gone for the five-day option since to do that over six days was madness, in fact five still seemed pretty crazy. The return trip was about 40km and 2000m total ascent, which I've done in a single day on a few walks among Scotland's Munros. They were difficult days at the time and I was much less fit now, but surely we could have taken one day up, one day at the site, and one day down? Oh well, plenty of time to look at the scenery. And take photos.

Our guide, Castro (who did not speak English) told us that the jeep track we had travelled on to get there was part of a road network built by the Tayrona people, who had also built the Ciudad Perdida. The Tayrona civilisation was very early by South American standards, and so the ruins we were seeking are also very old by South American standards, building having begun in the 9th Century, some 650 years before Machu Picchu. Finally something in the Americas that is actually quite old by European or Asian standards!

The lunch was quite nice and rather large, and as a bonus beer was much cheaper than I expected at the end of a several hour jeep ride along an ancient Tayrona road. We speculated on how much the price of beer would rise with our altitude and some people abstained because of the trek ahead, but I knew it would be dead easy so I wasn't bothered and had a few.

After lunch we set off and the pace was predictably slow. After what seemed like only ten minutes, and it can't literally have been much more, we stopped at a deep slow part in the river we had been following. I couldn't believe we were stopping so soon after the start, but I hadn't yet settled into how easy we were going to take it. The Three Young Americans had been promised jumping spots by Castro, they told us, and sure enough found the deepest place and jumped in. I gathered that there were going to be a lot more stops like this and instantly regretted saving a tiny bit of space by bringing my very tight, hotpants-style swimming trunks, usually only worn under a wetsuit, instead of sensible baggy shorts-style ones. I had thought we had to bring swimming stuff "just in case" we felt like a dip, not because we'll be stopping every fifteen minutes for one. I wouldn't like to wear them under normal circumstances, but with the extra up-to 14kg I really didn't want to. But my choices were to sit at the side while everyone else had great fun splashing around in the beautifully pure and cool water, or else make a joke about my hotpants and get in.

Cooling off

Not long after we stopped again, this time for some very nice fruit, and I had begun to accept that it was going to be slow and I wasn't going to get the kind of exercise I had been hoping would kick-start my weight-loss plan! When we set off again, the TYA had already gone ahead, so I took the opportunity to put on a burst of speed and catch up with them. They were making quite a good pace, which I was able to keep up with quite easily, but soon Matt fell behind, and then Colin. It was just me and Jake now, and he was really setting a good pace. My heart was thumping and I was getting a great workout – probably for the first time in over a year. For a while I kept pace with young Jake, but it had already been mentioned that he was a semi-professional cyclist, so there was no way I was going to be able keep up with him if he kept going, so after a short time I started to tire and fall behind. At the next bend he was waiting for me. How you feeling? he asked, seeming quite concerned. I'm sure what he was seeing was a fat old guy with a purple face, working way over his limit, rather than the recently very fit, Munroist I knew myself to be. After all he was only 21, so I must have looked ancient. I told him I felt great, but his concern remained, though he was satisfied I wasn't quite ready for a heart attack and shot off into the distance, leaving me now quite tired, but feeling much better than I had walking at the snails' pace we had been doing before. At the next fruit stop, our reward was a very long wait, where we were encouraged to take photos of the lovely green view. Already lazy (or just unfit I suppose) people had resorted to mulas to carry them up the incline.

Lazy people

The TYA were constantly bantering with each other, the way young people do: it was mostly gibberish and in-jokes, but quite harmless. I soon noticed that they were actually being really nice to each other – as well as everyone else – the whole time; they often checked that the others were feeling great, or at least good, and they even went as far as being really polite and well-mannered to each other. Now this might not sound so strange to some people, but in Britain, Scotland in particular I believe, and therein Glasgow in particular, friends, particularly young guys, just don't treat each other like that: you express your close bond by constantly taking the piss out of each other and saying cruel things; the closer you are the more brutal you are permitted – and expected – to be. So one of the first acts in getting to know someone is usually some gentle teasing, leading to some remorseless slagging if you really hit it off. When I thought about it, I remembered that there are simply different social rules in each culture, so that we all value this exchange of pleasantries in different ways: at one end of the spectrum you have the Americans and at the other, perhaps, Mediterranean culture, British somewhere in between. I wondered how this overuse - from a Scottish perspective - of pleasantries would be seen by my Greek friends, who had actually been offended once because I was being so polite, as they saw it, in their company; their attitude was "we are friends so you don't need to ask and you don't need to say thank you; just take – of course you can have whatever you want". As far as they were concerned my automatic, ingrained, politeness was actually rude, as if questioning the bond of friendship. It's similar in Glasgow: if you are anything less than merciless, it means you are putting a distance between you and your friends. It's possible this attitude is where a minor cultural misunderstanding came from: after sitting among the boys' chit-chat for a few minutes, Jamie piped up that he just couldn't believe them and all day he had felt like he was in an American sit-com. Following his lead, I said that I knew what he meant because I used to think that American actors were all really bad, until I met some Americans, when I realised that they are all really like that. At this point the three Americans looked extremely upset and offended, as if I had just slapped them out of the blue. Matt said Wow I wish I knew some really good put-downs for Scottish people… hey don't you guys still wear skirts? and I felt really awful. I hadn't meant it, but I had apparently really hurt them.

Green

Anyone knows me is aware that I generally do not have much time for the Americans. Mostly this sentiment is political: after all in recent history they elected Bush twice, Iraq, and as a country continue to behave very badly on the world stage. Of course I feel the same way about the English for Thatcher and the Scottish for Blair. Obviously I have never applied this at an individual level: everyone is different and may not be someone aligned with the national characteristic I despise so much. The big difference is that, even taking them individually, I rarely meet an American I like: their opinions are usually so very different from mine – they usually seem ultra-conservative – that it doesn't often happen, and the biggest problem of all is that they don't seem to be able to criticise their own state and become very defensive if someone else does. This I cannot understand or tolerate: I am more than happy to acknowledge defects in Scotland and the UK. When I have expressed these opinions to friends in the past they have often responded, but forget about America - don't you think that Americans are just so nice? and until this trip I had always responded in the negative. However that is exactly what these three guys were: they were really nice. Clearly I had never met the right Americans before, or perhaps my travelling had made me more open-minded, who knows? Aside from being so damned nice-and-polite they were also pretty critical of America, not just Bush, but America the state. I was very impressed. Socially, though, I must admit that I still find Americans very strange and somehow really different from most other people on the planet. However, strange is no reason to hate anyone, so here it was: these three young Americans had changed my mind about Americans. And by the way, Alex, who was not part of their group of three, was also really nice though much quieter, which wasn't hard considering how loud they were! However there remains a paradox: if the USA is a country of such nice people, then how could they have voted in Bush twice, or so many of them go off to murder innocent Iraqi children, or indeed any other non-white people whose country dares slightly obstruct their all-powerful global dominance? I genuinely don't get it.

Anyway, after my teasing insult I tried to explain that it was a friendly thing to do where I come from, and sure enough they took it onboard and for the rest of the tour I was peppered with playful insults, though they were far too polite to say any of the really obvious cruel things I so deserved. Or maybe they just didn't like me enough.

First night's dinner table

First night's bedroom

The first night's accommodation was very nice and the view was astounding before the sun went down. After the sun went down the stars were astounding. The food was also really good, and there was plenty of it. They had told us the accommodation was going to be basic, but this was obviously the standard spiel that they need to give everyone, even people who haven't been travelling for months, because all of us were really happy. At dinner Melissa proved that she was half Chinese when I brought my camera out. Apparently it's really obvious to some people, but I just didn't see it – until her "Chinese salute". After dinner Castro tied together Jake and Gemma in what I guess was an ice-breaking exercise, though he claimed it was a puzzle they could solve by getting out of it. We were all pretty sure it was impossible and he never provided a solution. And neither Jake not Gemma are the sort of people who need ice-breakers!

OK, Mel, now I believe you're half Chinese

Bondage

We were too slow arriving so all the beer was gone by the time we arrived, though we were told the price it would have been, and it was still reasonably cheap despite having increased since ground level. Luckily the TYA had some rum and were willing to share. Otherwise, how would I have slept through the mystery snorer?

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The Happy Couple on January 8, 2010 from Ciudad Perdida, Colombia

from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon

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Day three, Castro had told us, was going to be the longest, and it started out with more of the same: a nice easy track, another beautiful swimming spot, more gorgeous jungle scenery – incredibly green, and regular fruit breaks, all at an easy pace. I was really enjoying being outside, being somewhere remote, and getting away from the city again; far too much of my time in South America had been spent in the unremarkable cities, when it is obviously in the outdoors that the continent excels.

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

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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Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon

a travel blog by The Happy Couple

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