Day 1: Woke up at 7:00am to prepare for our Jeep ride to the base camp which departed at 9:00am, we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get there in order to have a nice big breaky and a morning cuppa. We had to run to the bank before hand as well as they didn´t accept credit cards for the trek. 7:30am- all packed up, we put our bags by our room door and made our way to the bank which was 8 blocks away. 7:45am Dave´s bank card doesn´t work, I realize I had left mine in the room. 8:00am- We arrive back at the room to retrieve my bank card. 8:15am- get money out with my card. 8:30am- Realize that I had forgotten my our room key at the bank machine. 8:40am run back to the bank machine to find it not there... try to explain without success to the bank tellers and a few customers of our delema. No success. 8:50am- try and find a cleaning lady to let us back into our room when Dave finds the key in his pocket... 8:51am- Dave OWES ME BIG TIME!
We finally made it to our Jeep with a quick enchillada breaky from a street vendor. When we got into the Jeep we shared our morning story. They were all really pleased that they had been so fortunate to be put in our group since we had such good luck! We went on the tour with 3 Aussies, a Swedish guy who I still cannot (Chacult?) pronounce his name and our guide Jose Garcia. We started our drive out of the city in our 1989 Land Cruiser. We were both just so happy to be in the car and actually starting our adventure, until the car broke down the first time.... We all got out of the vehicle and watched the driver pull plugs and switch gadgets and blow on tubes... sure Dave could give a better explanation but I´m pretty certain none of us knew what he was doing anyways. Miraculously he got the Jeep working and we all jumped back in! We made it another couple of kms before it sputted and trembled and broke down again... We watched him work his magic and did this a few more times and even tried ¨Little Miss Sunshining¨ it and getting the boys to push to vehicle to get it going and then jump in.. Didn´t work :( We had to call for another vehicle. We waited as our group glared at Dave and I for adding our special touch of luck to the drive in!
Soon enough our next Jeep arrived and drove us down the highway to what will be known as, ¨the road of death¨ The new driver stoped at what he called a gas station to fill up before the road of death but it really turned out that it was just a man with a Jerry Can and a tube which he sucked to get the gas flowing into the Jeep. We then started our way up the road. At first it was really fun, bumbing from side to side over the dirt road but as we got further up the mountain each corner got a little bit scarier until you would look out the side and see no road at all and just a landslide cliff 600m high. We did a lot of praying that first part! Then we got over the crazy cliff parts and onto the horrific mud. Our driver was apparently pretty qualified as he did this drive twice a day every single day but I swear that he was choosing the most impossible routes. He got us incredibly stuck 3 times and we all had to get out and take turns shovelling and pushing the car. (and by turns I mean the boys!) So our drive in took a little bit longer than anticipated and we finally started treking 3 hrs later than intended.
The first part of our trek was incredibly tough. We hiked uphill for a good two hours right off the get go in the blazing sun. Thankfully I had prepared myself for tons of hikes and what not and tried to get myself in reasonable shape before the trip. David saw things a little bit differently and figured he would eat as much pizza and drink as much beer and stop at as many McD´s as possible before he left Canada. Didn´t come on one run or do one sit up with me. So when I looked down at Dave after the first fifteen minutes and noticed that there were no dry spots on his shirt and that he was gasping for air with everystep I realized I had made the right choice! In his defence he carried the pack up the entire way. He was a pretty good mule that day! It started to flatten out afterwards and then we started decending to where our first camp would be. Unfortunately the sun goes down really early here, around 4:30pm and as we had been delayed so much the sun started to sneak away. Jose was trying to rush us but the mud was so deep and slippy and it was getting so steep that every step we made we had to be careful not to fall down a cliff or into the jungle. So we hiked the last hour in the pitch black dark! Boy was that fun! After a few falls and a mud covered bag we made it to our camp. Our group just loved being in our precence. The camp was awesome though, fully equipt with showers, running toilets, a ton of hammocks with mosquito nets, big tables and a kitchen. Our guide made us a delicious meal and we slept pretty reasonably aside from the fact that you cannot move in a hammock and I was scared crapless of being attacked by Harry Potter spiders.
Day 2: Woke up with the first sign of daylight as there was no possible way I sleep another wink without a toilet break! We were told that we could take a quick offramp from our trail to a cocaine factory to see how the opperation all went down but we would have to wake before the milatary because this was strickly forbidden. Naturally David was all over this. Unfortunately the milatary were onto us and woke just as early as we did. We spent the second day hiking with about 40 milatary troops. At one point I was hiking infront of the swedish guy and a soldier fell into him, gun first into his back! It was kind of scary when all you could see in front and behind you was camouflaged soldiers with AK47´s, bazooka´s and tear gas launchers. They were a little bit intimadating but I´m not gunna lie, I was a little more scared of what they were protecting us from... We had a few river crossings on the second day, the guides would all hold my hand and walk me across while standing behind Dave and watching him cross, until they lost confidence in him when he fell over in the 2nd river crossing filling his raincoat with river water, drenching our bag and taking out a guide! It was pretty funny, not gunna lie! Didn´t matter that much though because it poured down on us the entire day! The path was sooooo muddy which made for an extra slippery walk. Dave and I had a ¨who can get the muddiest¨competition while everyone else was trying to jump and skip across. We ended up getting to the second camp the fastest and thankfully there was also a shower there!
Day 3: We finally had a clear morning! This day was my favorite hiking day. We went throw tons of river crossings and under lots of waterfalls and actually climbed up them in parts of the trek. We were covered by the jungle all day so really it wouldn´t have mattered if it had rained. It was so beautiful in the jungle with massive trees and pretty flowers. We also passed through a few indiduous tribe villages of the Cogi people. The Cogi´s still live in similar style houses as their Tayrona ancestors did, follow the same rituals and customs, the only difference is that now Santa Clause- Jose Garcia, comes to visit them every few weeks to bring them lollipops and chocolates! We reached our camp just before the rain began to fall and then it poured and then the soldiers wandered into our camp. Apparently they hadn´t planned for this either and then soldiers didn´t have anywhere else to stay other than our camp. We all just kinda watched as they unloaded their 60pound bags off their backs and put their guns on the ground. Later on they sat down at the table next to us and eventually everyone started to go to bed, apart from Dave and I and a few soldiers. We spent the next two hours learning spanish swear words and slang through charades. It was hilarious! Got some pretty awesome photos as well!!!
Day 4: We made our final crossing over a river in a cable car, which wasn´t a cable car at all. It was more like a wire with a steel rectangle with boards that were once screwed down hanging from it. It was way scarier than the spiders! We did end up making it across though and once we got to the other side we only had 12000 stairs to climb to get to Ciudad Perdida! I tried to get Dave to do the Calgary tower stairs a few yrs ago and he refused so imagine what he was thinking!
The climb was well worth it when we got to the top! Jose Garcia had worked at restoring and uncovering the ruins so he was extra good at explaining everything to us and taking us to places other tour groups didn´t get to go. When we first arrive there was 2 other groups up top but as Jose took his time we were the only ones left at the top. It was pretty incredible being alone among this massive historical city. We then made our way back down to camp, grabbed our bag and decended to the camp we stayed at on day 2. The hike down was much easier and Dave and I ran the majority of the way.
Day 5: We woke up a 5:30am to get a good head start as we were covering 80% of the hike in one day! Again it was a nice day and we ended up running downhill through the mud! It was good fun! Pretty uneventful except for the swedish guy was running ahead of us and fell off what looked like a cliff but ended up having a muddy pool on the other side! We made it down in half the time and then waited around for our ride out. We had the same driver as the one on the way in and the bad part about this was that once he makes it up the hill he celebrates with a few shots of whisky... It made for an incredibly funny decent and he giggled at every bump we hit but when we got to the cliffs it wasn´t so funny! Oh I almost forgot that he was answering his cellphone and having 10 minute convos during this!!! Dave and I kept our eyes closed most of the way down and we only had to get out once to get up a muddy bit so that was good, except when David opened to door to get out he hopped into what looked like a shallow pool of mud which was actually knee deep! The Aussie followed Dave and thought it would be better to jump further and he got it even worse! We finally made it down and the driver was so proud of himself that he stopped at the gas station to fill the Jeep up as well as the rest of his belly with beer! We sure felt safe for the 25km drive back to Santa Marta on the windy highway! We ended up arriving safely somehow though and enjoyed our cold showers and warm beds! I would for sure recommend this trek to anyone, it was the best hike I´ve ever done and for sure the most rewarding.
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