We spent 2 nights in Selinas Cartegena, on walking tours and visiting torture museums by day, and blagging salsa by night. We enjoyed Cartegena so much we decided to book another week there for when the boys joined us. After 6 weeks as a trio, we had two more caballeros coming out in Jay, Henrys housemate, and Mike, Davids brother. We booked the fanciest Airbnb I had ever seen for when they arrived, but more on that later. We got a transfer to Santa Marta, where we intended to spend one night before we began on our voyage to Ciudad Perdida; The Lost City. An ancient city that was swallowed by the jungle and only rediscovered in the 70s. It required 4 days of trekking through the to get there and back.
We had an early night, and the next morning found ourselves on the bumpiest car ride imaginable to the start of our trek. We all introduced ourselves to our crew for the next few days. We were led by a tour guide who only spoke Spanish, a translator and a local guide who acted as a sherpa. Our group was a mix of ages and backgrounds. We had Timone and Fabian, a Swiss couple who we had taken the boat with from Panama, a few English, an Australian and a German family. We all grew quite close over the next few days, particularly with the German family. Two doctors and their daughter, an eight year old who essentially became the de facto leader of the group.
The first days walking was fairly straightforward, the sun was out and we stopped for water regularly. We clambered up and down muddy trails, making our way through a cleared area in the jungle to a small camp where we jumped over waterfalls into pools of freshwater. We had dinner and were up drinking and chatting with some of the other groups, when we were essentially sent to bed.
The next morning we woke at 430, ate a quick breakfast and set off at dawn. We walked for a couple of hours before we arrived at an indigenous town. Here we were taken through the lifestyle of this particular group of people. The main focus of their life was survival, as you would expect from tribal people living a hunter gatherer lifestyle. From what I could gather, the rest of their time was spent on two main endevours. For women, it was the knitting of bags, made from the shavings of a plant similar to bamboo, and which they wore using a strap around their forehead. For the men they spent their time crafting pipes of various sizes, which they used to consume cocoa leaves. Also when a man turned 18, he slept with an older widowed woman to lose his virginity. There was a high rate of infant mortality, with women having many children and expecting to lose some of them to illness. They were very shy people, only briefly meeting your eyes if you said hello, and there seemed to be a sadness to them, in stark contrast to the impression I got from indigenous people on the San blas islands. I wondered what impact tourism was having on their way of life. Although, as I later learned, prior to organised trips to the Lost City, there was initially a gold rush, with grave robbers fighting over and looting gold from the ancient ruin, followed by years of ganja and cocaine farms, so perhaps tourism isn’t so bad.
The walking on the first half of the day was similar to the day before, and, as we swam and ate lunch at another camp, I was feeling pretty confident. I shouldn’t have been. The next part was an hour of uphill walking on wet muddy terrain. We powered through it, and I reminded myself that it was nowhere as hard as the volcano had been. Whether that was due to the altitude, or the lack of the vape, or a combination of both, I don’t know, but it was definitely easier. We eventually made it to our next camp. The food was getting worse the further we went into the jungle. So were the mosquitos. No matter how much deet we used, we were being bitten to shreds. We took it in turns keeping our little leader entertained, she taught me bits of German, “faultier, lazy animal” is sloth, we taught her to play fives and encouraged her mischief in general. Another early night was on the cards, and we were all shattered from our day.
We woke again at dawn, tracking alongside a river to a tiny cable car bridge that looked as if it would break from carrying a grain of sand. Once we crossed the river, we ascended 1200 stone steps to reach the lost city. It was a large area divided by sets of stairs, with various platforms. Our tour guides explained the layout, which areas were for living, trade, religious and so on. As we were the first group to get up we had the whole site to ourselves. It was stunning, and we marvelled and why and how the place was constructed, supposedly over 1000 years. Who were the people who built it, and where were their descendants now? Spending their days making pipes and bags? We will probably never know, but as I sat on top of a secret city hidden in the jungle I was content to enjoy my imagined story of events. There’s infinite possibility in the unknown, but only one in the known, and a journey into the unknown is where the real magic of life is to be found.
