The Lost City - Part I (including synopsis)

A quick synopsis captured well by another explorer and adapted by my personal experience: "Uphill, downhill, mud, more mud, lots of mud, slipping in the mud, falling in the mud, getting stuck in the mud, sweating, sweating profusely, getting bitten by mosquitoes, getting bitten by ticks, getting bitten by bedbugs, wading through the river, wading through the river again, slipping on rocks while wading through the river for the 10th time, climbing up and down a twelve hundred teeny tiny steep steps, sleeping in hammocks, sleeping on old mattresses reeking of jungle pong, feeling sick, being sick, chundering everywhar."

The lead up to our trek was all of a day and a night - in hindsight this was no good thing. I had the brilliant idea of getting our hair braided (which did actually make the trek slightly more enjoyable). Little did I know this would take up a whole day and leave us a few hours to run around Santa Marta to find the various bits of treking clothing we would need. Apparently Santa Marta doesn't do trek gear!?!? So we had to buy what we could from some beach hut by our hostel in taganga at 9pm and got severly ripped off despite some rather brilliant bargaining from the three of us. So we solemly walked out of this beach hut with a pair of swim shorts each and some Indiany looking gringo pants for £60000!!! ok not quite, but I really can't tell you how much they cost all I can say is all the stuff we bought probably amounted to half we spent on going in the trip!!


Exhausted we made it back to a meal cooked for us by out new English friends, who we had travelled all of Colombia with, our farewell meal. It was sad to say good-bye but we are sure to bump into them again soon.
And off to bed for an early night.

I had nightmares of the trip mum sent me on (without consent - a favourite of hers) when I was 13.  A trip to Snowdonia which had involved some walking, which I thoroughly hated. I had an epiphony - 6 days of trekking probably wasn't really my thang! Luckily thinking of Father Christmas soon sent me off into dreams... Plus there was nothing I could do now - deposit and gringo pants paid for - I was trekking whether I liked it or not.

An early start of 7am. Big bags packed to be locked away and just our little packs with our set of dry clothes, underwear, mozzie spray and toilet roll. Little did we know how important DRY clothes would be...

Our guide John picked us up from the hostel and we met Frank from Ireland who was also in our group. Then we made our way to Tahona Park in which the Lost City is located. A couple hours drive on normal roads and then a whole hour of what I can only describe as level 5 off-roading, where Alice would keep getting INSIDE the car. We did have to remind her we weren't actually rafting, but we may as well have been. There was a time when the car nearly tipped on it's side and I simply thought that wouldn't be a good start! Luckily we made it alive to the village where we were stopping to have lunch. Here we met the other group we would be trekking with. Alarmingly they were ALL wearing tshirts that were bragging about various other hardcore treks they had done - oh shit! This was a thought that rarely left my head the whole 5 days).

As we eat our lunch we wave our driver off and the three of us dwell on what we think is to come. Lunch over and time to go. From the corner of my eye I see flo having what can only be described as a mild panic attack... She had left her trekking shoes in the car -- by which point was half way back down the rapid. GOOD START! Our fellow Trekkers didn't seem to find the funny side so we had to start whilst John, our guide, stole someones moped to rapid it back down to the car to pick them up.

So off we went flo in her DRY shoes which were dry for all of five mins!
Apparently crossing rivers a million times a day is all part of jungle trekking?!

Five mins in we had lost all possible friendships with our honesty about lack of fitness, this being out first trek and us all hating walking. All said with a smile on our face and through our rather loud panting, which had started a bit too early or my liking. In fact id just like to say we were a lot more positive than I thought we would be - I was certainly putting a brave face on it, as on the outside I may have been laughing - but on the inside there were definate tears. Half an hour in, still panting but laughing - shit got serious. This was no walk in the park, even though it may have looked like one. All I could see ahead of me was a red rocky never ending vertical slope - and I was right about it being never ending. WHAT AM I DOING went through my mind constantly for the next hour.

I honestly feel it would be rude to fellow lost city trekkers all over the globe to try and recapture in words how hard the beginning of this trek was. No-one wanted to admit out loud that they were seriously regretting the decision to do this, but believe me we were all thinking it (It all came out at the end!)

Anyway after what I could call level 5 trekking for an hour or two we had a break with watermelon, how thoughtful. I would have rathered a lift home, but hey watermelon was great too. Then another hour and a half trek and we would arrive at base camp 1. It was a tough old slog and it reassurred me that our fellow hardcore trekkers were as red and panty as I was by the end of it. What a relief to arrive at camp and to discover we were sleeping in hammocks, which I was rather excited about.

SIDENOTE: Since I've been travelling I've fallen in love with hammocks, and Krissie and I decided if either of us ever became PM everyone will be given one for free.

Anyway our guide told us that we could go for a swim to cool off. He took us to a rocky cliff next to a waterfall which we jumped off into a natural pool. Bit nerve racking and reminded me of my near death experience in Spain, but jumped in all the same and it was extremely refreshing. Then dried off, sprayed a can of mozzi spray on my body and into my DRY clothes and hung up the wet ones to dry...

6am the next morning having learnt that I hate hammocks, the blanket theyd given us smelt like a gorrilas armpit, 3hrs sleep and intense jungle pong didn't make me a happy bunny- you can imagine my relief when I discovered that wet clothes don't dry in humidity!!!!! You what?? No. I am not getting into wet clothes at 6am!! Oh, apparently I am and I'm meant to do it smiling? I hate the jungle already - and to be honest I don't want to find the lost city now anyway...

To be Continued....



Cartagena

So after our rather scary white water rafting experience in San Gil, we took it easy the next two days we were there. The night of the rafting we went to play this Colombian game with everyone in the Hostel called Tahona or something. Crazy game! The idea is you have a very heavy rounded rock thing that you throw at a clay pit that has gunpowder in? The idea being you have to hit the gunpowder which makes a very loud explosion. Not sure that English Health and Safety would allow us to bring that game home.

We then bought some rum and all sat in the square - a serious tourist takeover. Over our time in Bogota and San Gil we made quite a large group. Two doctors, Jared and Phillipa - 4 Canadians: Ryan, Marcus, Eric and Evan, us six English girls, Bram and a few others - remembering names is a difficult one. But it was great, felt like a huge family me being the youngest and the eldest 34. It was sad to say goodbye to (most of) them at Santa Marta. But the English girls we´d met at Bogota are here with us in Cartagena. We say goodbye to them tomorrow.

Anyway so we just hung out in the hostel the next day and I made it to the local market and cooked us English girls a scrummy dinner and afterwards we all played the celebrity game - which Marcus took very seriously! The next day Al, Flo, Krissie and I made it out to a colonial town which was very pretty with some outstanding views of lush green mountains going all the way into the clouds.

That evening we had our 17 hour bus ride to Cartagena. Yes... 17 HOURS! Would rather not experience that again, they make the night buses over here artic cold and I was in my sleeping bag so as to not get frost bite.

The old city of Cartagena is beautiful, hard to describe but mum I would say its quite like Cadiz. I love it!
This is our third night here, but we havent done much. We had a good night out in the hostel last night and everyone is feeling a bit ropey today. Other than that a lot of wandering the pretty streets and drinking scrummy coffee. Tomorrow we are off to a mud volcanoe full of minerals, which sounds exciting and then tomorrow night onto Santa Marta, our stop-off before we embark on the epic adventure that is The Lost City Trek.

WOW am I scared. Its the rainy season here and when it rains it is mental - ive never seen\heard anything like it. And we are sure to experience it out in the jungle. Apparently the water we have to wade through can go as high as your chin! Il say no more... xxx

White Water Rafting

So, as I said the three of us decided that we were going to do the white water rafting tour, never having done anything like this before none of us quite knew what was in store for us. We made our way out of San Gil in a rickety bus on rickety roads for about an hour and into our sexy blue helmets and life jackets. Our guide started off the safety briefing by tell us that there are five levels of rafting and the rapids we would be attacking were between 3-5!! OMG... noone had told us this before we set off?! But no turning back now.

He then proceeded to tell us all the various scenarios that could happen, ie raft flipping upside down, if you fall out and don't manage to grab onto the rope on the boat etc etc. Fear probably doesn't even come close to what we were feeling. But no hanging around, after a quick pep talk and a swift rescue practice, we were on our way pretty rapido (excuse the pun)!

I was in a boat with Kristie, one of the English girls we had met in Bogota, the guide, and a guy called Bram, who was staying in our hostel. Al and Flo were in a bigger boat with four other people not including the guide. So our boat went first and right into the first rapid which was only small (PAH small, it was level 3) and all was well... it wasn't until rapid two (level 5) that shit hit the fan. All I heard was our guide shout "PRACTICE RESCUE". One of the things the guide had told us was that when it came to rescuing - only one person was to do it and the rest to listen to the guide. Upon realising that I was not the rescuer I followed my strict FORWARD instructions (paddle forward). Thinking that boat 2 was just having a practice rescuse I was slighlt confused to turn around, whilst paddling my arse off, to see 4 people from the other boat shaking in mine?! Why had they all done a pactise rescue? Turns out... it wasn't a practice rescue at all, it was a full on wipe out. Jesus. I had missed everything, from our epic rescuse mission to the wipe out itself, I was too concerned about going FORWARD! But everyone survived, although I am not sure that many of those that capsized were that enthusiastic about continuing, but there was no choice. So back into our respective boats, and on our way...

So I forgot to mention "INSIDE" which was def the word of the day. This meant "GET IN THE BOAT NOW!!!" And when you heard the word inside you just clung onto the outside rope and prayed you would make it out the wave alive. I can safely say that there were a few occasions we just did not wait to be told to get inside, we just did out of sheer fright, assuming the guide had forgotten to shout it, naturally. I'm not sure that Alice made it outside much, but enjoyed herself all the same.

After the first few rapids, things started to get easier and perhaps our team started to get a bit ahead of ourselves, I am not sure attacking rapids without our feet strapped in was the best idea, but you know being hardcore is unavoidable!  After many 3 and 4 rapids and the odd 5 dropped in, we had a break and were allowed to jump out of the boat and bobbed along with the current. It was an amazing feeling just being swept along whilst lying back, looking at the amazing scenery. It wasn't until Kristie, Bran and I (the other boat opted out of jumping in the second time) that I started to get nervous. Was that a rapid I could see in the near distance and FORWARD I could hear coming from boat 2? AAAAAHHHH rescue please.... hello... anyone? Our guide casually steers the boat towards me, notices how close I am to the rapid and shouts RESCUE... er what am I meant to do again...oh nothing, just get my ass in the boat asap, he had 2 other people to rescue. Luckily it was olnly a rapid 3, and by this time that was easy of course, but all the same I am glad my ass was in that boat and not still in the water. Anyway fast FORWARDing got us through the rapid pretty fast and we moored up to a tree for our final pep talk of the day. Apparently we were about to hit rapid "sorpresa" (suprise) and a surprise it was! Our guide went over all the capsising drills and made it pretty clear that this was no rapid to be bargaining with. All I can remember is seeing a wave that must have been the size of the niagra falls and hearing INSIDE, INSIDE, INSI... blub blub blub. There was so much water in the boat I had no idea if I was still in it, all I knew was that I was clinging onto a bit of rope for dear life. Turns out I was still in the boat... phew.

It's difficult to explain the adrenaline rush or the experience full stop. Imense, Scary,Thrilling to name a few, but I don't really want to try. All I can say is that if I could afford it I certainly would have done it again today.
One of the most amazing days of my life - one never to forget. Luckily we have a video of the last 5 rapid (which I really don't think captures the scariness of it) and photos for proof, which I hope to get onto facebook when I can. 

That night - still on a high, a few bottles of rum later and a silent disco in the hostel (created by myself and flo) off we all went to the land of nod and to relive the day. AMAZING!

San Gil

So after a VERY cold bus ride we made it to San Gil alive and relieved to find that the weather wasnt minus degrees.
The girls we met in Bogota reserved us a room in the same hostel which was a relief at 1am!

As this is the "Sporting Capital" of Colombia there are loads of activities to do so we have decided that when Al arrives (Flos sister) tomorrow we are going to go rafting and decided to take it easy today - or so we thought! The English Girls we met (Ro, Gemma and Chrissie), 2 Canadians, Flo and I made our way to a natural pool not far from the Hostel. It was amazing and everyone made their way into the pool whilst Ro and I watched the bags (cautious!). Then when the guys came out Ro and I decided we would jump in... after a while of travelling you become rather slow at things and before I knew it Ro (only been away 3 days and a lot more rapid) had her clothes off and had jumped into the pool - SHIT! We hadnt realised how shallow it was and she hit her knee REALLY badly on a rock. Blood spurting everywhere we made a hasty exit to the Hospital. Wow time for my Spanish to shine or what? Suddenly I was in the emergency room trying to explain what had happened whilst the doctor wiped clean this huge gash on Ros kneecap (AH MY GAWD, anyone who knows me well enough knows that me and kneecaps do not go together!). But I stayed strong holding her hand through the two injecions right in the middle of the gash (you could see bone!). Once the 5 stitches started happening I thought if ever I was going to faint (to date I never have) the time would be now, and had to get myself out into the fresh air. How pathetic am I? Embarrasing. Anyway I managed to learn "puntos" which means stitches and how to take care of a wound that has been stitched up! So as they say, you learn something new everyday!

Now back at the Hostel recovering from a rather hectic day in preparation for our 2.5hr rafting manana - aaaah! Lets hope there are no more hospital stories! xxx