The Lost City
Colombia
April 2023
In the spring of 2023, whilst in Colombia I met up with two friends, Ed and Ruth. We had signed up to a four day trek into the heart of the Sierra Nevada jungle on the north coast to find the famous Lost City.
We were told to prepare for eight hours walking a day in heat, humidity, rain, mosquitos - across rivers and through mud. I’m not sure what the right packing answer was, but I decided to take a gamble on less being more. Any spare clothes I changed into, would immediately be drenched so would only be carrying extra wet laundry.
I’d hike in swimming trunks and a t-shirt, wash in the river each day, and one set of dry pair of clothes for sleeping in wrapped in a plastic bag. I managed to squeeze it all into my tiny camelback rucksack along with other small items such as micro towel, mosquito spray, and a toothbrush. My camera wouldn’t fit so just prayed it wouldn’t get soaked in the elements carrying it the whole way.
At the time I was carrying a Canon 80D and a couple of lenses to choose from.
My sigma 18-200 was a good jack of all trades and as I might spot some wildlife I could do with the zoom, plus not overly cumbersome. It’s also its my oldest lens so least I feared to get wet. Packing complete.
Ed’s brother in law made the trip a decade before us and wrote an amusing short diary of each day, and so I tried to do the same in the same spirit.
DAY ONE
Truth be told, day one really started the night before. We opted for a lie-in over luxury so stayed close by to the park entrance in Buritaca, the estuary town to the river we would follow for the trek. It turned out that Buritaca was a truly Colombian sea-side resort without a foreigner in sight. Reggaeton boomed from gaming halls and herons leaked from the crevices of our dilapidated hotel. A noisy check in (reception staff having to shout over the sound of their own music), followed by a dip in the merciless crashing grey swell of the Caribbean sea, a fried fish for dinner and we were ready for bed. The music thumping from the empty bars across the road not only penetrated walls of the hotel but also our souls. Ear plugs aren’t much use against a vibrating room. At 2am in a sleep deprived frenzy Ed ran out of the hotel in his pants to try and shut the music down from the source, but returned unsurprisingly with a tail between his legs. The music finally surrendered at 4am which gave us two hours sleep before the hotel staff turned the reception speakers back on at sunrise. Enough. My turn. I ran down in my pants, unplugged the speaker in the lobby but it lasted 5 minutes before it was fired up again.
With very little sleep we were picked up by a man with the complexion of chicharron, and as old as his 1950’s jeep. He took us to the park entrance to settle our debts and meet our compadres for the coming days. 12 of us in total. We all piled into the minivan, bags strapped onto the roof, and entered through the Jurassic Park style entrance gates to begin our 1hr journey directly south from Buritaca to Mamay, the end of the road where the hike begun. At Mamay we were served lunch: rice, beans and a fried fish. Whilst making use of the ablutions I looked down and spotted an enormous tic the size of a garden pea on in my groin area (to keep it PG), Dr. Ruth kindly operated on me with tweezers and Ed the camera…
Bellies filled and tics removed, our assigned guides (Gabriel, Pilar and Sandy) gave a quick briefing before we set off. Three hours of steep uphill dust track, a couple of pit stops for some watermelon before a breath-taking decent into a magical valley. A small tributary to the Buritaca river, erupting with wild Dahlias, Devils Trumpets and other unidentifiable flowers all fizzing with hummingbirds. How apt, the name of our group: El Colibris. Corrugated clad sheds complete with waterfall and plunge pool was our home for the night. Beans, Fish and Rice. Early bed in mosquito net covered bunks at 9pm when they shut off the solar cells pulling us out of our visual paradise and into an auditory experience of cicadas, croaking frogs and the gargling river.
DAY TWO
After a semi-successful night enduring the crinkly cacophony of plastic bed sheets, our dawn chorus was the crashing of pots and pans as the kitchen crew fired up the stoves for breakfast and coffee. Lying in bed with my eyes closed, postponing the inevitable start to the day I counted the sound of 100 eggs being individually cracked into a pot. At 5am alarms sounded, scrambled eggs, arepas, and mugs of coffee appeared after which a few minutes spare to get ready before hitting the trail at sunrise. The whole hike is a linear out and back route to the lost city, two days out, two back, directly south, diving deeper into the jungle.
Today’s mission is to reach the lost city base camp - 8 hours walk away. We were now on a single-track mule path and the jungle was significantly denser although still broke out into the odd fields of grazing cattle created by ‘slash and burn’ techniques. The Sierra Nevada national park is still inhabited by 4 indigenous communities, 2 of which our path intersected with: the Wiwas and Kogis. Most of the people (around 2,500 although exact numbers are unknown) have retreated deep into the jungle, away from western civilisation, however a few choose to stay near our tourist trail for the well-trodden access to the outside world and to trade food and handmade crafts with us outsiders. We had an organised talk from a Wiwa native who explained some of the traditions of their people.
At our lunch stop (beans rice fish), the path met and intertwined itself with the Buritaca river, a gentle giant in the dry season, about 20m wide chewing its way through the dense jungle like an anaconda. The path was well trodden by both man and mule, carving through red clay gulleys, meandering around car sized roots, teetering on cliff ledges, and squeaking over metal bridges.
Finally arriving at camp, not too weary, we had a spring in our step as we’ve managed to avoid rain thus far. We were graced with another riverside spot for a bathe however this night’s digs were a world apart from the previous night. Ed coined this stop as ‘the goose farm’ with wringing wet beds, mud and the smell of a hundred sweaty travellers is what greeted us for the night. The moisture trampled in from other groups clearly has no time to dry.
We sat down for dinner (rice beans and fish) before the news of “not enough beds” was broken to us, a landslide a few months ago had wiped out one of the camps. Luckily this was a blessing in disguise as I had an extremely pleasant slumber in a cosy dry hammock that was rigged up between the rafters.
DAY THREE
Lost City Day.
Another wake up at 5am: coffee, fruit and arepas around the table whilst discussing who out of the 12 had the dampest night. We were instructed to leave most of our belongings at this camp whilst we hiked to the city. Half an hour along the river before scaling the 1500 original misshapen steps to the lost city. Each double the height of a normal step, polished from decades of inquisitive boots, distorted and displaced from the very roots holding them in place, and lubricated by mud and rain - these steps weren’t for the faint hearted. Twenty minutes later, we ‘topped out’ and took stock on the first of the ancient terraces whilst Gabriel and Pilar unfurled a large map and gave a brief history lesson.
We then settled into a peaceful 3 hour amble round the vast site. A few local Wiwa actually live at the lost city, in beautiful adobe huts and surrounded by rambling vegetable gardens.
A couple of yellow and black birds torpedoed past our heads directly down the mountain at a couple of hundred miles an hour with an ear piercing whistle. We agreed that we had seen a surprising lack of fauna on our travel but presumably the birds and animals have better places to be in the vast national park than sitting on our well trodden mule track.
After we’d filled our boots with the lost city (now found), we headed back down the staircase. Impatient Ed and I decided the most efficient way down would be to jump down, 10 steps at a time, leap frogging over groups at our potential embarrassment (and peril), but made it down in 5 minutes instead of 20 unscathed and made best use of the spare time by stripping off and sinking ourselves into the river at the bottom. Back past base camp, we collected our bags but still had a 5 hour hike retracing our steps to a midway camp for the night.
This reverse leg of the journey we had a renewed appreciation of where we were: in the belly of the whale. Insignificant human insects scuttling underneath the majestic rainforest canopy arching over us. It was 30 degrees, humid and sticky but at least the ground was dry and fingers crossed still no rain. We were so deep inside the dripping jungle canopy I don’t think we would have even noticed if it was raining.
Just before we hit camp the three of us found a delicious lagoon and slow-moving portion of river formed around a boulder the size of semidetached house - perfect for our afternoon swim. We scuttled down a rocky outcrop and dived in.
Night 3 was a much cleaner camp, but a similar routine of rice beans fish, hot chocolate, lack of beds (hammock again for me) and desperately waiting for the roar of the generator to turn off at 9:30 so we could all finally sleep. For Ed it was a rocky night of Montezuma’s Revenge and an innovative method of recycling loo roll...
DAY FOUR
Home time. Time to check in with the team. Spanish couple looked a tad bedraggled with some aches and pains. British Columbia couple, had seen better days – they had overpacked and Sean’s feet were in ribbons and he also popped a knee on the way down, there was talk of a mule to take him back. French Canadian family of four (all sharing one backpack) looked the same as day one as if they hadn’t walked a mile (their son just wearing Vans, kickflipping off logs). Yolanda of Germany was busy chasing a puppy so assumed fine.
With the finish line in sight, the three of us seemed to have a renewed energy for the last day too. Ed hadn’t quite got his appetite back from the previous nights terrors, and clearly delirious with jungle fever, decided it would be fun idea to jog some of way home.
Yolanda had showed us that if you stroke a pigs belly it will roll over and fall asleep (which was proven to be 100% accurate) and a large sow we found on the path didn’t even need a belly rub, just approaching it with the intention of a belly rub caused it to keel over, legs in the air, eyes shut ready for a scratch.
We made it back to the first camp we slept at for some elevenses’, to sit amongst the flowers and hummingbirds again. It was a sight for sore eyes as this was the end of the jungle mule path and start of the dirt road, and the final descent back down to Mamay the starting village.
Little did we know however that this road seemed to last an eternity and was exposed, with little tree coverage to the midday sun. After what felt like 5 years of dry dusty walking we finally made it back to Mamay. I found Ed and Ruth in the river for a final cool off before our parting lunch. Beans rice and fish. We had all made it, no rain, no mules, and minimal mosquito bites.
After a final tic check and saying our goodbyes, we piled into the back of the van and off to our respective onward destinations with some weary heads. For us, Jungle Joe’s in Minca.
