DAY 1

We booked onto the adventurous four-day trek through the jungle with Expotur to reach Cuididad Perdida ‘The Lost City’. We were picked up from Minca around 8am and taken to the office in Santa Marta where we met the rest of our sixteen strong group and headed off in a plush, air-con, 4WD bus to El Mamey. We ate lunch and then begin hiking towards the sacred place of Tayronas. It was scorching hot as we walked up the dusty road, crossing rivers and farmland on the way.

 

We stopped at a beautiful vista of the mountains and valley below. Our tour guide (Briener) explained some of the local history of the land: his father was a grower of the coco plant as were many of the farmers of this area because of the lucrative nature of the business. Our translator (Carlos) grew up Cali and was in his late thirties. The drug war in Cali (after the fall of Pablo Escabar) during the 90s was endemic, he described a childhood of hiding indoors because to outside (whether in a gang or not), as a teenage boy you would be killed. This has resulted in a lost generation.

 

In 2008, the president at the time dropped chemicals on the mountains to kill the coca plantations, which for the most part was effective in destroying the production of Coca but has left the community with large areas of unfertile land. The Guerrilla and the drug cartels were finally removed in that year also. After the demise of the industry Briener described the loss of income “If before you had a car, now a motorbike, if before a motorbike, now a pushbike”. Despite this loss of income, locals were happy to feel safe again and out of the clutches of the cartels. Now the land is farmed for cattle and crops such as cocoa and coffee. The coca leaf is still used in daily life by the tribes for offerings and ceremonies.

 

https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/sierraindians

 

 

At the end of the afternoon we arrived at the first camp, we covered 9.38km over 3.5 hours, after dinner (rice, beans, plantain) we played cards (Palace and Yaniv) and went to bed around 9pm ready for our 5am start.

 

 

DAY 2 

The day began just before sunrise and we had breakfast at 5am, then we started walking by the riverside of Buritaca River where we saw round mud and wood houses, part of a Kogui indigenous village called Mutanshi. Here houses are built in a circular shape meant to represent the sun. The coned roofs had two ‘peaks’ to replicate the two snowy mountains in Seirra Nevada nearby. There are four Indian tribes native to the Seirra Nevada, the Kogi, Wiwa, Arhuaco and Kankuako.

 

The descendants of these tribes live harmoniously with their surroundings and are connected with their ‘mother earth’. Usually they sleep in hammocks but when a mother is expecting, she sleeps on the floor to feel closer to the earth. The Kogi usually walk barefoot because of a belief that if they are walking barefoot, they generate a greater contact and relationship with the land. This custom has been maintained by men and women of different generations of this tribe for centuries.

 

https://expotur-eco.com/en/indigenous-people-of-the-sierra-nevada-de-santa-marta/

 

The philosophy of the tribes is a peaceful one, they don’t react in a violent way and their vocabulary doesn’t contain any offensive words. This article explains a bit about how members of the community repent.

 

We had a break for lunch and a cooling swim in the natural pools of the river. Some local children were enjoying the river too, swimming, splashing and washing in the clear water.We trekked for 9.5 hours in total, going through the jungle of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the afternoon was the toughest part of the hike, to finally reach the third camp. Again, we swam in the river and rested after an adventurous day.

 

 

DAY 3 

Early in the morning we had breakfast ready to start climbing up the 1,200 steps to our main destination, the beautiful Lost City. Once we got there the guide showed us everything related to this magic place full of relics and ancestral stories. At this site the local cheif and his family are the only ones who inhabit the site, other than the military. His status, as the head of the community, gives him the right to reside in such a sacred place overlooking the mountains and valley. We had lunch at the third camp and then went back to the camp two for dinner and spent the night. We were so tired we went straight to bed after dinner (around 6:30pm) and slept right through until the 5am wake up call, not surprising as we had covered over 35km up and down steep terrain over the last couple of days.

 

DAY 4 

The last day began with our final 5:30am breakfast at the camp to give us energy to continue back down to the point where all it started, we made good time so our guide added in another couple of breaks to slow us down so we didn’t arrive too early (the coach wasn’t due to collect us until 12:30 and at 10am we were almost there! Finally, we reached El Mamey, had a final lunch with our group and a beer, already talking of nice showers, comfortable beds and fresh clothes. We had some great people in our group (from various places; France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia and London) which always makes experiences more enjoyable, especially when the going gets tough in the heat.