La Cuidad Perdida

Lo siento, chicos y chicas! Four days without internet in the jungles of the Sierra Nevada mountains has made it hard to keep you up to date. So let's catch up!

On Wednesday, we left the coastal bliss of Santa Marta to join a 4 day expedition to find The Lost City (and rather than boring you with history here, I will provide some light historical reading about the city separately below for those interested). As I am now comfortably by a pool with a cocktail (where I actually belong), I can reflect on what an achievement this was. Without a doubt one of the most physically challenging things I have done, yet perhaps because of this, also one of the most rewarding. And certainly one of the most spectacular! In total, close to 50ks of hiking, by which I mean climbing up mountain peaks only to then immediately descend into spectacular jungle valleys, before immediately climbing again to reach the next peak.

The track was chaotically uneven most of the time and ankle deep with mud the rest of it. This was useful as it helped to ensure we kept our focus. Other pluses were the friendly mosquitoes which kindly kept us company the whole trek, the deadly snakes and parasitic wasps we had to watch out for, the torrential downpours every afternoon that helpfully kept everything we owned sodden, and the cacophony of bodily noises from our dozens of bunk mates in our open shelters (more on these below) which meant we fortunately didn't need to set morning alarms. But plunging into a pristine river or under a cascading waterfall surrounded by thick jungle had us invigorated again every few hours, and so on we went each day. And when we reached the top and the jungle parted to reveal the city atop the mountains and the valleys below, it was truly breathtaking. Of course, then we had to walk back the same way, which was also breathtaking, but in a less pleasant way...

Why The Lost City? A likely inaccurate history, but you'll get the jist.

The city was the ancient spiritual and commercial capital of the indigenous peoples of Colombia, the Tairona people. They had settled here having come to the Americas from Asia, across the (then frozen) Bering Strait in search of the heart of the planet. They found exactly that here in the Sierra Nevadas as they could see that the snow covered mountains being so close to the coast (the closest snow to a coastline, so I'm told) encompassed all the seasons in one place, and the mountains being largely made of quartz suggested a means of transmitting from the planet to the heavens. Thus, from approximately 800AD they toiled to build their holy city. At its peak (so to speak), the city was home to only 400 permanent and very holy inhabitants, but it welcomed up to 16 000 people a day to trade goods and seek the wisdom of the Mamo (spiritual leader). Such was the good life, until the godly Spaniards came in 1630 and the lives and ways of the Tairona, like so many other indigenous peoples, were threatened. They abandoned the city, which was quickly reclaimed by the jungle, and fled to even higher peaks, splitting into 4 tribes that would not have contact with one another (or with the modern world) until the 1970s. It was then that the city was rediscovered by farmers, who quickly became looters. And the descendants of the Tairona people came back down from the upper mountains to reclaim and protect their lost city.

It was also at this time that the Sierra Nevadas were thriving in the drug trade. So how did the Colombian government manage the competing interests in the area of both the cartels and the newly re-emerged indigenous peoples? After some unsuccessful efforts coordinated with the Americans to blanket bomb illegal crops hidden in the mountains to drive the cartels out (evidenced, still, by scars of cleared land on the hills that even the jungle can't reclaim), they decided a better solution was to offer employees of the cartels opportunities to make just as much money by opening up the area to tourism. They turned the cocaine labs buried deep in the jungle into shelters for trekkers (read that again) and offered cartel members jobs as guides and porters. Then, they charged tourists to come visit, guaranteeing a share of the income directly to the indigenous peoples to support their way of life and the preservation of their rediscovered city, and a portion to the cartels to make it worth their while to up and move. The cartels received their share by the year 2000, so today, it works like clockwork. If you visit, you'll find there are just 6 companies permitted to run treks into the mountains, and all tours are run by a member of the indigenous community. Tourism brings in so much money for the communities, the cartels are not welcomed (being a threat to tourism) and this part of Colombia remains largely free of their influence. The indigenous peoples still live in the hills, and you get to see them living their lives and to learn about their culture directly from the people themselves. From my experience, they are an incredibly warm, welcoming and friendly people and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to visit them and marvel at their ancient creation.

By the way, it is worth noting that while the city is no longer a metropolis, it is still considered an active cultural site (and not an archeological one - and hence ineligible for UNESCO protection). The four tribes convene here annually and it is still home to the Mamo and his family. He was not home when we called, but we did meet the promised wife of the chosen son of the current Mamo (chosen from amongst his 28 children to be the next Mamo). A lovely young girl, though given the effort we went to to call in, she could have offered us a cup of tea or something...