After a short flight from Medellin to Santa Marta I arrived at a dream of a hostel, and a great spot for relaxing
before a 4 day hike into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The Lost City treks starts at a small town
nicknamed 'Machete' (it's actually called El Malmey) due to the towns
reputation of locals drunkenly holding machete fights in the streets, my guide,
Carlos, told us there were many deaths amongst the young men and severed digits
of the people who tried to get involved.
We set off from Machete around 2 pm, full of
anticipation to get going and make it to the 1st camp for the night. I didn’t
look up details or read about other people’s experiences of this trek so I
really didn’t know what to expect, so when we stopped after about 40 minutes to
swim in the fresh water river I was pretty happy, little did I know that we
have an hour ascent, the hardest part of the trek, yet to come.
Yes. It was hard. I think I got my first
blister on that part of the trek. After the initial pain and suffering of
having to walk uphill for over an hour the scenery is worth it and the path gets easier, allowing
us to pick up the pace abit. We did 6 km that afternoon and arrived at our
camp, Alfredo, at around 6 pm.
Day 2 involved a 14 km hike to the base camp
near the Lost City and after an awful night’s sleep in a smelly hammock, this,
to me, sounded horrible.
This day ended up being my favorite, after
walking over fields and mountains we eventually hit the jungle, making the heat
more bearable and the sounds around us more interesting. At lunch Carlos took
us on a cliff jumping tour of the river which was hilarious, he is like a big
kid (with a machete).
We got the chance to meet the (spiritual)
Shaman who actually looks like Naboo, the Shaman off the Mighty Boosh, but with abit
less bling. I bought a handmade bracelet off him and he said this would bring
me luck, so I'm not taking it off.... apparently he predicted that a village
would be flooded and told one of the kids to go and tell them, when the kid
went to the village they told him to stop being silly and to go home, they
didn't move and a year later they were wiped out by a flashflood, Carlos also
told us that he has predicted that 3 Cities on the coast will be wiped out by a
Tsunami, including Santa Marta.
Anyhoo.... Day 3 involved getting up at 5.30 am
to start trekking to the Lost City for 6 am. We climbed 1200 steps before 7 am!
I have NEVER done that before and will probably never do it again (I mean exercise
before 7am not climbing steps).
The Lost City is massive, the area that
everyone takes pictures of is where the richest people of the City used to live
and this is the most maintained area, it is also used as a heli pad for when
politicians want to visit.
There is so much interesting history here, but I’m
not going to tell you, you should just go! Our guide, Carlos has been running
tours since 1982 and is also a local farmer, he has hundreds of stories from
the area and the history of the Ciudad Perdida, plus he is a funny man
(I think. He spoke Spanish and I did not). Enjoy the pictures!
