Saturday, August 12, 2006. The day my right index toenail fell off. Not a very auspicious omen for my trek to the lost city but I steeled myself and got on with packing up my knapsack. I'd spent the last two days holed up in front of computers trying to update the dive center's website. In some ways I do missing being holed up in a cube programming for hours on end. That's the geek in me, I suppose. My last night in a real bed in a real room with a real fan for six days. I should have savored it more. Woke up early enough to order breakfast at the hostel before getting picked up in a big open air jeep. We stopped at a few more hotels to pick people up before I really noticed all the Hebrew chatter. Ten Israelis and me. I started to panic. We were waiting on the beach road for 2 more trekkers when I rushed over to Fanny who works in the tour office and made her swear that she had not booked me on a trek with only Israelis. When you meet Israeli travelers on their own, you find out that they are some of the nicest people in the world but in groups they simply ignore you and unless you can speak Hebrew you simply can't break in. Six days of being ostracized wasn't sounding that great to me.
We were joined by two Spanish girls and a Belgian/Peruvian couple when we reached Santa Marta. We headed out on our two hour car journey to then small town where we would start our trek. A short break and then it began. The first 30 minutes were quite leisurely until we we came to our first big uphill. It was rough but we took it slow and steady and made it to the top in under an hour and then it was another two hours of walking before we reached our first camp. Our two mules went on ahead so that they were already at the camp when we arrived and we didn't have to wait so long for dinner to be prepared as it was starting to get dark. the food was surprisingly good and there was much more food than we could have possibly tried to eat. I headed off to find a hammock as far away from the common area as possible as the Israelis had started up on the guitar playing and singing Hebrew songs. To be honest, they were quite good. 
Up with the dawn on day two and rolled out of my hammock to find fresh coffee and hot chocolate brewing. Eggs and lots of bread for breakfast before we were sent off on a tour of a cocaine factory. A bit of a misnomer. It was really just a little open cement pit with lots of plastic drums and bags of chemicals. We each paid out $8 and a guide walked us through the whole process which while time consuming required the most basic of ingredients and catalysts. Salt, calcium, gasoline, sulfuric acid and lots of manual processing takes a kilogram of coca leaves and turns it into a single gram of cocaine.
When we returned, everything had been packed up and we were ready to head out to the next camp. We passed lots of green mountains as we followed the well trodden path. We walked at quite a relaxed pace but for the last portion I sprinted ahead with Juan Carlos and an Israeli guy named Shauli and made it to camp a full 30 minutes before the rest. After a nice refreshingly cold shower, however, I started to feel quite bad. My stomach hadn't been great the day before but it had definitely gotten worse. I asked for my hammock to be strung up early and tried to sleep it off but it just got worse and worse. I wasn't even well enough to eat dinner. Thank heavens I'd brought a few Cipros along in my emergency kit. I popped one and tried to tune out the guitar playing into the night. Day 3. No eggs for me thanks, just bread. I felt better than the night before but still not great but at least my ailments didn't bother me too much while I was trekking. We forged up a long uphill section before heading down to a fast flowing river that we had to cross eight times. It was slow going as we were each helped across the more difficult bits but a hell of a lot of fun. 
We stopped to have a quick lunch of sandwiches before tackling the 1200 stone stairs up to the lost city. It was tough going but the ethereal feeling you got when you reach the top and saw the lost city terraces in the mist was well worth it. We relaxed up there waiting for everyone to make it up to the top before heading to the near by camp. No hammocks this night, instead we were given thin mattresses on the floor of a three story hut. Rodrigo, our guide, snuck me into a really good location and I hit the hay. I was woken up for dinner and force fed myself a little rice to wash down another Cipro pill before heading back to my little bunk. It had started raining quite hard and even the Israelis were tired of staying up late so I finally had a nice quite restful night.
I woke up feeling better, finally, and we headed out to after breakfast for a walk around the lost city. It's mostly large terraces and stone platforms which have been designed incredibly well. Well enough to last through the ages. Back to camp for lunch and then trekking and then back down the 1200 steps to retrace our steps cross river eight more times. After a bout 30 more minutes of backtracking we split up into two groups. All Israelis except for Shauli continued on retracing their steps back to where we had started while hit a new trail which was the original route. We were greeted with a steep uphill which had gotten slippery from the light showers sprinkling down on the foliage. We had to fight our way up the hill using our hands, knees, and any root or branch we could use for leverage. Once up it was a beautiful walk along a more well formed trail and then a small uphill before reaching our camp at Altamira. a family mans the outpost there and was very friendly and welcoming and telling us about how few people come though this route these days. As there were so few of us we didn't feel so bad making a few special requests for dinner:) It got dark quickly and we headed off to our beds which were infested with mosquitoes. Our mosquito nets only trapped them in nice and close to us. I tucked into my sleep sheet and hid my head as best as I could while Juan Carlos made a fire in the middle of the room to try and smoke them out. When I woke the next morning I found that the mosquitoes had made mincemeat out of my knees which must have been poking out just a smidgen.
Day 5. My bed happened to be facing east and I was woken up by a gorgeous multi-pastel colored sky. Slept a bit more and then headed down to a the main cabin for a long relaxing breakfast. We didn't leave until 9am as we only had about 4 hours of walking to Little Cartegena. Definitely the easiest and possibly the most beautiful day scenery wise. The downhills were horribly scary though and I turned my ankle a fair few times.We made it up the last hill by 2pm but the Belgian/Peruvian couple were over 2 hours behind us and got stuck stuck in a terrible rainfall. Our camp that night was the nicest by far of the trek. 
Real beds in a solid wooden structure. We thought we were having chicken for dinner but it was a some other type of bird (pictured here) which had a very very chewy consistency. We had a long time to wait before dinner was ready so Shauli taught us to play an Israeli card game called Yannif. I impressed everyone with my spectacular Yannif skills and had to fess up that I'd been trained in Brazil by some friends (Thanks Bob and Dee!)
The final day, I couldn't believe it. Time passes so quickly in Taganga but this trek has really taxed me. Up early, of course, and popped my daily pain killer (just a little Tylenol/Paracetamol) to get my joints moving. We headed out super early to make it to our destination by noon. We took the first past slowly walking all together behind Rodrigo but the Belgian/Peruvian couple were taking forever so Rodrigo hung behind while to wait for them while we kept on keeping on. Shouli and Juan Carlos took off at a fast clip and I headed out behind them with the two Spanish girls not too far behind as we tackled a killer one and and half hour uphill and then another hour of light ups and downs past waterfalls and more amazing Columbian mountainous landscape. I saw a small house peeking out of the top of the hill but I could not believe my feeling of shock when I saw the bright red jeep waiting for us. The same feeling I remember when having in the theatre when I saw the jeep pull up in the M. Night shylaman movie the Village. It had been so long since I'd seen anything remotely modern. We had to wait 3 HOURS for the Belgian/Peruvian couple to finally finish so we sat around and tried to kill the time as best as we could. A group of Guerrilla passed though our area and stopped to chat with us and let us take their picture. They were really nice cool guys, kids really. And quite cute to boot!
As we were leaving an intense rain storm started up and the air turned very cold. The Jeep kept getting stuck in the mud and we stayed very quiet in the back with fingers crossed that they wouldn't ask us to get out of the car so they could maneuver it more easily. We finally made it out and headed down the hill back to civilization. Before heading home I stopped at the dive shop, my home away from home, with one of the Spanish girls so she could check on starting a course the next day. While I was away it seems that Max has found me another job doing a website for one of the swanky hotels here in town where I could get free room and board (and air conditioning!) while I work on it. So he's upped the ante. Will Sanyu ever make it out of Taganga? Stay tuned?
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Posted by: DicEcomia | December 11, 2011 at 12:02 AM