Ciudad Perdida

I just finished a 6 day hike to the ciudad Perdida, a lost city in the jungle just east of Sta. Marta, Colombia. It belonged to the Tairona people, and now there are Kogui Indigenous people living in the area. It was quite interesting, and made me realize it is once again time for me to be doing more hiking and getting into shape. In any case, I will post pictures shortly. Just wanted to let everyone know I was ok.

The following image is a Kogui village, which is actually used.

The dog in this picture is named Fortunato, and lives with the gentleman who cuts the wood and lives by himself at the camp on the second night. He is 71 years old, and has a wife in Sta. Marta he returns to, I think about once a month. He delighted in telling me how crazy all the tourists are, making teas of various hallucinogens, and doing too many drugs to recall.

This picture is of the government soldiers which patrol the area. A couple of years ago there was a kidnapping of people on the trail for over 100 days. Our guide actually led the military as a guide to track the guerillas, but the president ordered them to not open fire.

There were several butterflies. As can be seen below, and the one below that on the dung.


Below is the bus we took to get to the hike, which is just a converted landcruiser.

This picture shows an ancient map of the area, with the verticle grooves representing rivers, the horizontal ones representing trails, and some stuff about a sun and moon and the mountain ridge. I started to think much of it was bunk when the guide explained on another rock that a crack represented a tunnel, and how he told me that some of the guides said some scratches from archaelogical tools were really ¨ancient writing¨.

This is the sunset at our final destination. It was beautiful, and we are actually spending the night in the lost city.

This metal box is used to cross the river when the current is too strong. When we went, the water was a bit over waist high, so the thing wasn´t needed. I asked to use it anyway though, as it looked like a lot of fun. As several bolts were very loose, I did inspect it thoroughly to insure safety before I was released, sailing over the river.

These guys are the guide and porter. The guide´s current girlfriends´ brother is the porter and is named Gabriel. We got along great. Rodrigo is the guide, and is an expert BS´er. Very funny, good hearted, and lover of the ladies.

This boy I met on the trip, and taught him how to spin his top and coins without the use of the string he had. We had quite a bit of fun.