In Search of the Lost City: Travels in Colombia

Copyright © Mark Moxon 2024

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This version was compiled on 30 March 2024

This work has been released under the Creative Commons licence Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). This means you are free to distribute this work to others as long as you retain this copyright notice, do not use the work for commercial purposes and do not alter, transform or build upon this work. For more details please read the full licence.

Front cover: The Lost City (Ciudad Perdida), northern Colombia

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Preface

This book is a collection of writing from the road, covering a one-month trip I made to Colombia in 2014. This was part of a larger, six-month journey that took me through Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia during 2013 and 2014.

The travelogue for all these countries and more can be found on my personal website at www.moxon.net, where you can also find travel tips, recommended journeys and further free books for you to download.

I’ve released this book and its companions via a Creative Commons Licence, which means you are free to distribute it to everyone and anyone, as long as you distribute it on a non-commercial basis and make no changes to it. If you know someone who might like this book, please pass it on; I make no money from it, but I do enjoy the thought of people reading it and recommending it to their friends.

Finally, please be aware that this book attempts to be humorous every now and then, so there’s a slight chance that it might cause offence to those who think my sense of humour is as amusing as a puddle of mud. On top of this, some parts will be out of date – which is why each article is dated – and others will betray the naivety of a traveller who discovered his way in the world by throwing himself into it headfirst. It is, however, an honest account of how I felt as I travelled through Central America for six months, and as such, I hope you enjoy it.

Mark Moxon

June 2014

The Caribbean Coast

Cartagena

Written: 31 March 2014

We were both utterly exhausted by the ocean crossing from Panama, and it rather took the wind out of our sails as we stumbled off the deck of The Black Dragonfly and into the hot colonial port of Cartagena. It didn’t help that the heat in Cartagena was utterly stifling, giving León a run for its money as the hottest place we’ve been on this trip, and it really didn’t help that both of us were struck by land-sickness, with the solid ground swelling and swaying around us like the ocean.

I was also emotionally drained, as all the tension I’d built up in the run-up to the voyage spilled over into a bout of lethargy and listlessness that I simply couldn’t do anything about. I found myself in a new part of the world – South America! – and I just couldn’t get motivated at all. So we knuckled down to do pretty much nothing until the fog cleared, the rooms stopped spinning, and we could come up with a decent plan for exploring Colombia. It would take about a week in all, but luckily Cartagena turned out to be a perfect place for procrastination.

Arguably the most beautiful colonial town in the Americas, Cartagena de Indias (to give the city its full name) is a tale of two halves. The Old Town, which covers the districts of El Centro and San Diego, is surrounded by a huge fortified wall that the Spanish built to keep out invaders, and inside the wall is a maze of narrow streets and atmospheric plazas that are crammed with restaurants, boutique hotels, shops and churches. Coming from Central America, the first thing that strikes you is how clean it all is, but that’s because the Old Town has been restored and gentrified into one of the most popular tourist attractions in Colombia.

It’s a place for aimless wandering, but there is one problem: the gentrified streets now tread a fine line between characterful and clinical, and for me, it just manages to overstep the line. Yes, the architecture is wonderful, but the shops are all about ultra-modern designer clothes, the restaurants are all about ultra-smart modern cuisine, the bars are all about ultra-cool cosmopolitanism, the hotels are all about ultra-chic boutiques and spas, and the atmosphere is one of a European city with the Colombian influence swept away in a tide of Benetton and Prada. Scratch the surface of the Old Town and you will find gorgeous buildings and a palpable history, but you’ll also find that in terms of character and soul, its beauty is only skin deep, having been exfoliated and pampered just a little too much.

But head east, passing beneath the picture-postcard clock tower of Puerta del Reloj and across to the other side of the Parque del Centenario, and there you’ll find the Outer City, where things get a lot more earthy. The suburb of Getsemaní still teems with real Colombian life, and its squares fill with local life in the evenings while the walls crumble and the streets bubble with characters. Not that long ago Getsemaní was a no-go area for tourists, as it was home to the red light district and lots of casual criminals, but it’s now pretty safe for visitors, and indeed, most of the city’s budget accommodation can be found there. We explored the Old Town, but we settled into the Outer City, and that’s where we finally shook off our nautical exhaustion and started to take stock of where we’d landed.

With our energy levels on the rise, we even managed to visit one bona fide tourist attraction: the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas. This immense fort is just outside the wall around the Outer City, to the east of Getsemaní, and it’s one of the most formidable colonial fortresses that the Spanish ever built. The views over Cartagena are stunning and worth the entrance fee alone, but the fort is also home to a labyrinth of underground tunnels, some of which are open to the public, and which provide you with an eerie and claustrophobic way to escape from the baking sun outside.

But even this short foray into the outside world nearly proved too much; it’s hard to overstate just how fierce the equatorial sun is at this time of year, and it’s no surprise that the locals simply hide from the midday skies, choosing to cram their day into the early morning and late evening, when they come out into the streets in their hundreds, promenading around the bars of the Old Town or eating street food in the plazas of the Outer City. So our stay in Colombia’s premier colonial city degenerated into daytimes spent relaxing and hiding from the outside world, and evenings spent in restaurants and bars, including a very enjoyable evening with Jan and Holly from The Black Dragonfly at a rather special Argentinian restaurant in the Old Town.

It might not have been terribly good for our waistlines, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut instincts, so we simply waited until we felt we were ready to step into the rest of Colombia. It took a good week for the land to stop swaying and for a plan to start forming in our heads, but eventually we recovered enough to hop on a bus heading east along the Caribbean coast to Santa Marta, South America’s oldest surviving city.

The Song Remains the Same

Written: 1 April 2014

It’s a curse sometimes, being into music. I envy people who can walk into a pub and not notice what’s playing, because for me there is no such thing as background music. Even if it’s so quiet that I have to strain to catch the melody, my brain actively seeks out the day’s soundtrack, analyses it, files it away and, worst of all, judges it.

The problem is that most people don’t seem to understand just how important music can be in setting the tone of an environment. If the proprietor picks the wrong soundtrack for a venue, it can seriously affect the mood of the place; it’s most obvious in nightclubs, of course, when putting on the wrong track can clear the dance floor, but in restaurants and pubs the effect is the same, it’s just more subtle. People won’t even know why they don’t fancy returning to a restaurant, and what they don’t realise is that it’s down to the owner’s casual misuse of, say, James Blunt or Justin Bieber. There should be warning stickers; in my head, there are.

But this is South America, where surely this kind of musical naivety could never happen. Music flows in the blood of these people, whether it’s Argentinian tango, Brazilian samba, Colombian salsa or Andean folk music, and there’s a booming music scene in the southern half of the American continent that we tend not to notice in the UK, mainly because of the language barrier, but also because so many of us still think that music began with The Beatles. And as you travel around, you do come across lots of different musical varieties, from the squeezebox-influenced folk here in Colombia to the bizarre marimba music of Guatemala, and although not all of it is good, it’s always interesting to hear new types of local music.

All of which makes it even more unfathomable that most of the time, there appear to be just two songs in this part of the world. Every bar you go into, every radio station you tune into, every chicken bus you get onto and every Android phone that gets played in public, seems hardwired to play Marc Anthony’s ‘Vivir Mi Vida’ or Romeo Santos’s ‘Propuesta Indecente’, and nothing else. Some bars will play these two songs four or five times in one evening, and their infectious melodies get burnt in your subconscious and force you into submission. ‘Ah well,’ I thought, ‘at least they’re local to this part of the world,’ but no! It turns out that both Marc Anthony and Romeo Santos hail from New York... so the biggest songs in Central and South America aren’t even from this part of the continent.

Never mind, you think, because surely if you check into a nice five-star hotel or head out to a gourmet restaurant, then they won’t be playing the same old hits... and you’d be right. But incredibly, all the classy joints that we’ve visited – and I genuinely mean all of them – have their own two artists that they can’t help plugging remorselessly. From the beachside paradises of Monterrico and Little Corn Island all the way to the nice Italian restaurant we found in Cartagena, they all play either Jack Johnson – the surfing acoustic troubadour from Hawaii – or a collection of sultry cover songs sung by silk-voiced women over gentle lift music. It’s always the same collection of covers, and I’ve finally worked out what it is; it’s a whole series of albums called Relaxing Bossa Lounge and it contains coffee-table versions of songs like ‘You’re Beautiful’, ‘Fields of Gold’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’, as well as late-night-lounge versions of rockers like ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Beat It’. Most incredibly of all, though, are the bossa nova covers of ‘Creep’, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Paradise City’, which manage to suck so much life out the originals that they sound positively huggable. It is mind-boggling in its banality, and it crops up with such monotonous regularity that I can even predict which song is coming next. The album’s tagline is ‘Unforgettable famous songs in bossa nova’, and they’re right; I can’t seem to forget it, no matter how hard I try.

At least the repetitive nature of public music in this part of the world has had a positive effect on my opinion of the local folk music. It might be pretty formulaic and so accordion-heavy that it sounds like something from pre-war France, but at least it isn’t Marc Anthony, Romeo Santos, Jack Johnson or Relaxing Bossa Lounge, and for that alone it gets a big thumbs up from me.

Santa Marta

Written: 2 April 2014

Santa Marta is a four-hour bus ride along the coast from Cartagena, and like its colonial neighbour to the west, it’s a city of two halves. This time, though, the earthy part is a lot more visible, and it makes for an interesting mix.

Most travellers shoot straight through Santa Marta and head on to the backpacker Mecca of Taganga, just 7km to the north, so Santa Marta is more of a playground for Colombian holidaymakers. The southern half of town is cosmopolitan and has some pleasant shaded plazas with expensive restaurants and bars, and there’s a marina full of gleaming yachts, a small crescent-shaped beach, and a pedestrian-friendly waterfront from which you can enjoy the sun setting into the Caribbean Sea. On paper, it’s great.

It’s still great in practice, but perhaps not for the reasons you’ll see in the brochure, because while the southern half of town is a great spot, the northern half is a great eyesore, and simply turning your head in that direction is a lesson in why estate agents are always banging on about location, location, location. For while there’s a sandy beach along the southern end of the waterfront, there’s a massive sea port along the northern end, where monstrous container ships drop anchor and load up their cargo under the mechanical gaze of huge cranes and towering storage silos.

Even if you try to ignore the industrial side of town and keep your eyes dead ahead on the gentle surf of the holiday beach, the side effects of the port are hard to miss. On the surface, the beach appears to be a pleasant crescent where local holidaymakers happily swim, but if you look more carefully, there’s a strange stain along the high-tide mark that looks suspiciously like an industrial by-product, and the seaweed that clogs the first couple of metres of sea is dark, red and almost algae-like in its sludgy character. The water is murky and has a slightly green tinge to it, and there’s a distinctive and familiar smell of rotting organic matter that wafts along the breeze from cracks in the promenade.

But despite this slightly unfortunate clash of beauty and beast, Santa Marta is still a great place to visit. The restaurants are slightly overpriced and, as with so many places in this part of the world, you shouldn’t choose to arrive on a Monday, as everything seems to close, but the people-watching is unsurpassed and there are plenty of bars and restaurants where you can simply sink into a beer and watch the world amble by. It’s as hot as hell here, just as it is in Cartagena, but that’s all part of the experience; this is Colombia and Santa Marta is a Colombian city, and for that alone it’s an easy place to like.

Taganga

Written: 2 April 2014

Within five minutes of stepping foot in Taganga, I’d been offered something to smoke, not once, not twice, but three times. Of course, having long hair and a beard means I’m an immediate target for the local drug dealers wherever I roam, but still, I think this is a record for this particular trip. And it sums up Taganga pretty well, for this is a massively popular stop on the Gringo Trail for backpackers who come to relax in the sun and party at night, all, of course, fuelled by plenty of t’ganja.

But it’s really, really hot at the moment, and I’m not sure we picked the best time to visit, because it’s not only hot, but it’s incredibly dry. Colombia is about to see the weather break into the second rainy season, and you can feel the build-up as you swelter your way from shelter to shade to shelter again. The wind picks up in the afternoon and it blows hard and dry, and while Cartagena and Santa Marta manage to channel this desiccating tornado down pleasant streets and into the trees that line the plazas, Taganga chooses to funnel the wind down the mountains and straight into town, where it blows up clouds of hot, dry dust that choke the seafront and line everything in a fine, sticky powder.

This wouldn’t be a problem if Taganga was a pretty fishing village, but it’s more than a pretty fishing village; it’s a pretty ruined fishing village. Set on a pleasantly curving bay that looks west into the Caribbean Sea with some wonderfully pretty hills on either side, Taganga has a nice little beach at the southern end of the bay, and an unremitting homage to concrete in the middle and northern parts. Someone obviously thought that it would be attractive to build a concrete waterfront dotted with concrete kiosks and concrete steps down to the beach, but when the sun can melt plastic and the wind blows in clouds of dust, concrete is not your friend, and the result is that Taganga is hot, dry and as colourless as a sepia photograph of a brown paper bag.

The northern end of the bay is peppered with lots of atmospherically rotting fishing boats, but the concrete kiosks in this part of town are untouched by commercial aspirations and seem to do nothing other than provide shelter to a motley crew of beggars and dogs. Things do improve nearer the centre of the waterfront where some of the kiosks sell food and beer, and by the time you reach the beach the party scene is set, with a string of monster nightclubs overlooking the sea and setting the tone for the wee hours. But the food prices on the waterfront are the same as the prices in the plazas in Santa Marta, and at this time of year it’s an unrelenting place to watch the sun go down; our beer bottles blew over, the wind was so strong, and if I hadn’t remembered to bring my biker’s head scarf, I’d have been in all sorts of trouble.

So in the end we took shelter in a taxi back to Santa Marta, and figured we’d leave Taganga to the dealers and backpackers. The beach is pleasant and the sea is much cleaner than it is in industrial Santa Marta, but that concrete waterfront is a bit too much like a pizza stone for my taste. No wonder everyone here sleeps all day and only comes out at night...

Ciudad Perdida

Written: 8 April 2014

The trek to Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City of the Tayronas, has reached a fairly legendary status on the travelling circuit, and for good reason. It’s a difficult multiple-day trek through tough terrain in northern Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, and after days of slogging through the jungle, you end up at the stunning medieval ruins of the Lost City, where the lush tropical rainforest reveals one of the most beautiful and atmospheric archaeological sites that I’ve ever seen. This trek is being called the new Inca Trail and the Lost City the new Machu Picchu, and for once this isn’t overblown marketing.

On top of the physical challenge of getting there, the Lost City has a bit of a dubious history. Founded around 800 AD, some 650 years before Machu Picchu, the bulk of the city was built between the 11th and 14th centuries and was home to at least 2000 people; however, it was abandoned soon after the Spanish arrived, and the site remained hidden by the jungle until it was rediscovered in 1972, when a group of local treasure hunters – or guaqueros (grave robbers) as they were known – happened upon a set of stone steps leading up from the banks of the Río Buritaca. Word of the discovery spread among other groups of guaqueros, and soon enough fighting broke out between rival gangs, all of them trying to get hold of the gold and stone artefacts that were buried inside the site’s circular structures. In 1976 the government sent in troops to stop the fighting and the Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia sent in an archaeological expedition, and they spent the next six years clearing the rainforest from the site and reconstructing the ancient city, while continuing to dodge bullets from guaqueros who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

But the story doesn’t end there. This part of Colombia used to be a hotbed of guerrilla activity, not least because it was a major producer of coca, the raw ingredient that’s used to produce cocaine, and back in 2003 a group of eight foreign walkers was kidnapped by the left-wing National Liberation Army while walking to Ciudad Perdida, and they were held captive in the jungle for three months before finally being released. I remember this happening because we knew one of the kidnapped tourists – he’d been the boyfriend of a co-worker during our dot-com days – and this made it all seem rather real. The area is now supposed to be safe, as the government removed all the paramilitaries from the area in 2008, though the UK government’s travel advice says to make sure that your tour company knows what it’s doing, because although there is a strong military presence in the area and nobody has been kidnapped since, it still pays to be careful.

So you have the perfect storm: a difficult slog through tropical rainforest to the ancient ruins of a lost civilisation, through an area with a tinge of modern-day intrigue and danger. It’s no wonder that this trek is so attractive to travellers, and for once you should believe the hype: it’s an amazing walk... but only if you do it right. This is the Gringo Trail, after all, and there are plenty of people who don’t listen to advice, so while we enjoyed our walk, there were plenty of casualties along the way among those who’d bitten off more than they could chew. You can choose how fast to do the walk, from four, five or six days, and we chose five days; this turned out to be a good choice, as the four-day option is only for masochists or the super-fit. And Peta, for whom this was her first ever multiple-day hike, did a better job of tackling the jungle than people half her age; you don’t only need to be physically fit, you need to be mentally strong, because this is no walk in the park.

Five Go Walking

The only way you can do the walk to Ciudad Perdida is as part of a guided group – independent walking is not allowed for security reasons – and we lucked out with our walking companions. As with all group tours, there’s an element of risk that you’ll end up in a group of idiots, but we were not only lucky with the people in our group, but with the size. Some of the groups we encountered on the trek had 14 people in them, but we were just four: the two of us plus a Canadian couple. Oliver and Emily were both 23, both from Montreal, and being Canadians they were both genuinely good people (or, as you might say if you’re from round those parts, they were super-nice). They wanted to take their time on the walk, as we did, and they wanted to enjoy the walking experience rather than treat it as a backpacker party; as we did the walk, the four of us would look on in horror as some of the other groups noisily high-fived each other while necking beer and comparing tattoos. We were lucky, no doubt about it.

We were also lucky in our guide, Antonio. When we turned up at the Expotur office, we were initially introduced to a guide called Wilson, who spoke English and who seemed pretty good, but as we sat in the back of the van taking us from Santa Marta to the trailhead at the village of Machete, Wilson announced that he had to go to hospital, so instead Antonio would be taking us. We were initially a bit annoyed to discover that Antonio couldn’t speak English, but he would turn out to be a real find, not least because he’s a stunningly good cook; he told us he spends nine months of each year guiding groups in Ciudad Perdida, but during the three quietest months, when the rain lashes down, he works as the cook in a ranch. Eating well is such an important part of walking, and Antonio’s food was head and shoulders above that of the other groups, who looked on in envy. And even more amazingly, both Peta and I, with our limited Spanish, understood almost every word that Antonio said; he obviously spoke slowly and clearly for our benefit, and the language barrier simply evaporated.

Day 1: Machete to Alojamiento de Alfredo (8.4km)

It’s about an hour and a half by van from Santa Marta to the trailhead in the small village of Machete, so our trek started off with lunch in Machete at the end of a bumpy and grinding drive south from the coast at Tayrona. Although we were keen to get walking, it made sense to hide from the midday sun and to set off later in the afternoon, though as we tucked into piles of ham, cheese and salad sandwiches, the clouds rolled in and hid most of the sunlight anyway. A larger group turned up as we munched away, though as they were doing the faster four-day option we wouldn’t see them again until they passed us on their way back; still, we could see straight away that having a small group was a big advantage, as everything in the larger group seemed to take ages, from serving lunch to getting ready to walk.

After lunch we set off on the trail, passing a happy group who were just completing their walk. ‘It’s amazing,’ they said, ‘you’re in for a real treat,’ and with that we stomped off down the dusty road out of Machete and north towards the hills.

It was incredibly dry and dusty from the very first step. When researching this walk, I’d read all about terribly muddy conditions and difficult river crossings, but every step we took kicked up fine, light dust, and when we reached our first river, it was terribly sedate and easy to cross on the smooth, round stepping stones that someone had kindly laid out for us. This theme of dry conditions and gentle rivers would stick with us to the end; completely by chance, it turns out that this is one of the best times to do the trek to Ciudad Perdida, as the rain hasn’t started yet (it generally arrives in April, but we haven’t seen any yet). In the rainy season the fine dust turns into epic amounts of mud and the rivers run dangerously high, but in April, the balance is just right for easy walking and good swimming, even if it is a little dusty.

We confirmed this after half an hour, when we arrived at our first swimming hole, threw off our packs and jumped into the crystal-clear waters. Small fish came and nibbled at our extremities and we washed the dust out of our hair, glad of the break from the humidity that had already soaked my T-shirt from back to front. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the calm before the storm, because that first half hour’s walking was completely trivial compared to what came next: our first ascent. At the end of the walk, on day five, we would take a dip in the very same swimming hole after a long and brutal seven-hour slog in astonishing 45° heat, and I remember looking at the groups just starting out, being lulled into a false sense of security by the sedate wander along the riverbank to this first refreshing swimming break. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ I remember thinking, ‘because this is where it starts to hurt.’

I digress, though, because back at the swimming hole, we still had absolutely no idea what was coming next. The swim was refreshing, but all that went out of the window as we headed upstream, crossed to the opposite bank and started the first major climb of the trek. At this point in the walk the path disappears into a series of steep switchbacks that are carved deep into the chalky rock, and at each turn the path is coated in a thick layer of fine dust that settles on your pack, sticks to your sweaty T-shirt and turns your boots whiter than a pair of miller’s wellies. Luckily as we tackled the ascent the sun was still hiding behind a thick layer of clouds, so it wasn’t as hot as it could have been, but we still had to stop at almost every corner to catch our breath. Luckily the views were getting better and better as we climbed, which was an incentive to keep on plodding.

This was where we set the walking pattern for our entire trek. Peta and I would set off at a regular and comfortable pace, while Oliver and Emily would either fall back after finding something particularly interesting to explore, or head out in front with the enviable energy of 23-year-olds; meanwhile Antonio would disappear to do his own thing and would pop up at just the right moment later on the path, complete with a stack of watermelon slices or a chocolate fix or a slice of cheese. It suited us perfectly, as it meant we effectively did the entire walk on our own, with the two of us plodding along at our own pace while our guide did just the right amount of guiding. We had two friendly group members to bump into every now and then, to swap war stories and talk about the trek, and then we had the trail to ourselves until the next pit-stop. We loved it; we felt like we were exploring, rather than tagging along in a large tourist group.

This approach also made the difficult parts slightly more bearable. The first steep slope seemed to go on forever – it actually went from 200m above sea level to 600m above sea level – but there wasn’t any pressure to go too fast, which we would have had in a bigger group or with a more insistent guide. We hit the slope just before 3pm and reached the end of the steepest section an hour and a half later; this included a very welcome watermelon break after 45 minutes, but apart from that it was a proper workout, which we tackled at our own speed. It was to be the first of many.

The reward for such a steep climb was a wonderful view over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada; at this point in the walk there isn’t a lot of tree cover, and you can see for miles. The whole area is farmed by the local campesinos, and it wasn’t long ago that this part of the world was used for growing coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine; these days you can see the remains of the coca fields that were destroyed by the government as part of the recent effort to stamp out Colombia’s cocaine trade, and these days the farmers are turning to cocoa and coffee as more acceptable cash crops (although coca is still legally grown in smaller quantities, as it remains an important part of the indigenous people’s culture).

It was at this point that we saw our first casualties of the walk. Two mules passed us in the opposite direction, led by a couple of locals, and what they carried spoke volumes. The first mule was weighed down by a burly young man whose face was covered in what looked like the bubonic plague, but which were presumably infected insect bites; he looked completely shattered and hid behind a pair of shades as he refused to meet our eyes or respond to our hellos. I couldn’t work out whether he was mortified to be doing the walk of shame or was just shattered by his experience in the jungle, but clearly he’d suffered some terrible fate up there in the Lost City, because he looked completely broken. And then, a couple of minutes behind him, the other mule carried an equally burly young man, this time sporting a thousand-yard stare so intense that he looked like he’d just come back from a tour of duty in ‘Nam. He also totally failed to acknowledge us and looked like he just wanted to get down off this damn mountain; we couldn’t help wondering what was out there that could make two young men look so totally frazzled.

Undeterred, we wandered along the top of a thin ridge that led from the 600m-high summit, passing a small camp called Alojamiento de Adán where a whole row of hammocks sat overlooking the hills. There are various camps along the route – alojamientos means ‘lodge’ in Spanish – and different groups are allocated to different ones depending on their itineraries and group sizes. They are all of a surprisingly high standard, with running water and cold showers, as well as electricity in some of the earlier camps; sleeping is either in hammocks, beds or tents, depending on which camp you stay in, and you sleep under a roof but with open sides, so you really know you’re sleeping in the great outdoors.

We still had a little way to go to our camp for the night, Alojamiento de Alfredo. That ‘little way’ was down yet another really steep slope, this time dropping down to 450m through yet more deep gashes in the chalky soil. The striking part about this section is the way the bedrock changes colour, from a chalky white at the top, through a deep outback red halfway down, and all the way to a light brown at the bottom. After the big climb it was a relief to be walking downhill and we made light work of the descent, even though it was fairly steep; on the final day, this section would prove to be one of the hardest parts of the entire walk, but the path seemed fairly innocuous as we dropped down into a small collection of hammock-toting camps at the bottom of the valley, crossed a pleasant stream on another set of stepping stones, and climbed a short distance to our stop for the night.

That night we slept in hammocks, with just four of us in a hammock camp designed to house about 50 people. I’d never actually slept in a hammock before, and I’m still not sure that I have, but it was interesting to try; it feels a bit like trying to sleep in an aeroplane, as you can’t turn over onto your front and no matter how hard you shuffle about, there are always some parts of you where the blood supply gets cut off. An added bonus was that the mosquitoes, which hadn’t been at all bad on the walk in, realised that while they couldn’t get through the mosquito nets draped over each hammock, they could get at me through the hammock itself, which was fairly thin and stretched tight by my body weight. So throughout the night I was kept alert by little pinches of mosquito all along my back, and come the wee hours the temperature dropped and my nether regions froze until I realised that wrapping a blanket around my entire body solved both problems, at the risk of causing mild claustrophobia. To be honest, I was glad when dawn broke and we could get on with the walking.

Day 2: Alojamiento de Alfredo to Alojamiento Tezhúmake (7.3km)

The second day started with a huge breakfast, during which we were visited by a friendly parrot who clearly knew that tourists are a soft touch when it comes to handing out food. It was a leisurely start as we only had about four hours of walking to do and the whole day to do it in, but we were still on the trail by 9.30am, as the sun gets you up early when you’re sleeping in a shelter that’s little more than a roof over a hammock. This time the ascent started straight away, with a climb through more farmland from the camp at 450m, and as yesterday’s clouds had disappeared overnight, the walk was noticeably hotter than the day before. Soon we could see a line of deep green up ahead which promised shelter from the unforgiving sunshine, and sure enough it turned out to be the beginning of the rainforest, taking over from the farms we’d been passing through until this point. From this point until the Lost City we would be surrounded by trees, and we were glad to switch the beating sun for shelter, albeit with higher humidity.

The trail didn’t stop climbing, though, and at 10.30am we reached the top at about 730m above sea level. By this stage we were both starting to feel the effects in our legs, and as if reading our minds, Antonio pointed to a pile of sticks on the summit that looked like they might be a suitable solution; a couple of minutes later Peta and I had a stick each, and the next day we’d both pick up a second stick, which saved a lot of stress on our knees, though it did make us look like a couple of lost skiers. The sartorial trade-off was worth it, though; using walking poles reduces stress on the knees by about 40 per cent, which is worth looking a bit stupid for.

One of the things you learn early on about the trek to Ciuded Perdida is that what goes up must come down, so as soon as we crested the forested hill, we started a very long trek down again, right back down to 400m, where we joined the Río Buritaca, the river that flows past the Lost City. The views on the descent were spectacular, and peering through the canopy we could see huge distant mountain tops, deep valleys and the odd farm perched on the steep hillsides. It was a long hike, but the reward at the bottom was the best so far; a short side-trail from Alojamiento de Wiwa took us to an utterly luxurious swimming hole that we had completely to ourselves for an hour and a half. Oliver and Emily entertained themselves by jumping from a high ledge into the clear green water, while Antonio back-flipped from even higher up and we settled on a sun-drenched rock and lazily watched them boil off their excess energy.

It was when we started reassembling for the next bit of the journey that we realised we weren’t quite alone, for this part of the world is home to a large number of ravenous ticks. I felt a couple of nips around my knee supports and spotted what looked like tiny spiders trying to burrow into my skin, and Oliver and Antonio soon found their own collection of bloodsuckers trying to bite their legs. The girls, meanwhile, didn’t seem to have any problems at all; presumably ticks like the smell of man more than the scent of woman, but as soon as we set off they disappeared. Indeed, this was as bad as the insects got on our trip; we’d read stories of terrible clouds of ravenous mosquitoes along the trail, but it seems that these only appear after the rains hit, so once again it turned out we’d chosen a good time to go.

It took us about an hour to walk along the riverbank from the swimming hole to our stop for the night at Alojamiento Tezhúmake. On the way we passed our first indigenous village, Mutanzhi, where the Kogi tribe still live in round mud huts with thatched roofs. The most striking thing about the Kogi are their clothes; because they cultivate cotton, they all wear white garments that stand out really clearly amongst the many greens of the rainforest. The children wear knee-length smocks, the men wear long shirts and long trousers, and the women wear short sarong-like skirts, while the footwear of choice seems to be the good old wellington boot, which is both waterproof for river crossings and sturdy for rocky paths. As we walked further into the jungle we would see a lot more Kogi; they look like indigenous Indians rather than the more common mestizos that you see in South America – a mestizo being a person of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage – and they wear their black hair long, for both women and men. They tend to be fairly immune to greetings and stare at you as you walk past, but that’s hardly surprising, as we must appear pretty strange to them with our backpacks and sunglasses and walking boots, while they still live in huts and travel by mule.

Then again, some of them are very friendly, such as six-year-old Ari who lives with his parents at Alojamiento Tezhúmake, our camp for the night. He joined us in our stretching exercises that afternoon and we taught him to play pat-a-cake, and although he didn’t like talking much, we communicated on a different level, using the power of facial expressions, silly noises and broad smiles. He was a charmer, no doubt about it.

And Ari’s dad had an ice box full of ice-cold beer, which went down very well after we’d had a quick dip in the river. It also went down very well with the large group who arrived later in the day from the opposite direction; they’d just visited the Lost City, and their loud drinking went on until 10pm, by which time we’d collapsed into bed, this time on bunk beds with mosquito nets overlooking the river, whose white noise gently lulled us to sleep after another long day of fresh air and excellent hiking.

Day 3: Alojamiento Tezhúmake to Alojamiento El Paraíso (6.6km)

Why on earth the proprietor of Alojamiento Tezhúmake decided to start cleaning the camp at 3am is beyond me, but he did and it woke me up along with half the camp, who then decided to visit the ablutions in a long parade of bright head torches that seemed to go on forever. There’s no electricity this far into the forest, so everyone comes equipped with head torches, but the problem with head torches is that you naturally look around you while wearing them, so when people decide to visit the ablutions in the middle of the night, it’s as if the world is suddenly full of mobile lighthouses. That’s fine at 10pm when people are going to sleep, but at 3am it lights up the quiet forest like a nightclub, and it took me quite a while to go back to sleep.

So it was fairly annoying to be woken at 5am by the other group’s guide, wanting to know whether or not I was on the four-day trek, who were making an early start; I wasn’t and stuck in my earplugs while the other group noisily got themselves up and shouted to each other over their breakfast, and suddenly it was 6am and Antonio got us up for our own breakfast. We’d all suffered a bit from the insanely active wee hours in the camp, and it didn’t help that yet again the day started with an immense climb.

We set off at 8am and followed the river along a thin path that hugged the steep sides of the river canyon – and which tested Peta’s vertigo to breaking point – and at 8.30am we crossed the Buritaca on a small suspension bridge and started to climb. It was a long way up from 450m to 820m above sea level, and we passed an indigenous hut that contained a press for crushing sugar cane and extracting the sugar solution, before eventually reaching a small shop at Koskunguena an hour and a quarter later, where Antonio plied us with wonderfully fresh pineapple and bananas. The views on the way were spectacular, when the canopy cleared to let us peek through, but even when we were enclosed by the jungle, there was so much to see, from monstrous bamboo clusters to huge banana plants hanging over the path.

The most spectacular view of all, though, was just down the hill from the shop, where the forest suddenly disappeared and the entire valley opened up in front of us. Over there to the right was a perfectly poised thatched Kogi hut with a stunning vista behind it, while ahead lay the rolling hills of the Sierra Nevada, smothered in forest. It was a bit of a shock to break out into the harsh sunlight after so long hidden away in the depths of the forest, but we needn’t have worried, because soon enough we were heading back down the valley for another 100m descent, where the path started following the Buritaca valley once again.

All the while the jungle grew wilder and more picturesque with every turn. We passed gentle streams with beautiful little pools that we wished we could whisk away into our bathrooms at home; we wandered under the blackened and burned-out skeletal remains of a huge tree that an indigenous child had accidentally set alight the year before; we walked through forests of yet more immense banana plants, which seemed to get more and more surreal as we got deeper into the forest; and all the while the views up through the canopy revealed steep-sided valleys crowded with trees, and a lovely blue sky somewhere up there in the distance. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly gorgeous.

After an hour or so of following the river valley, going up and down along the rainforest route high above the river, we eventually descended and had to cross the river. This time we had to ford it without the benefit of stepping stones, which I’d been looking forward to, as the walk to the Lost City has a reputation for difficult river crossings. Disappointingly the first crossing was only shin-deep, and the second crossing about five minutes later didn’t quite reach our knees, so in the end it was a bit of a let-down. I’d bought a cheap pair of plastic sandals in Santa Marta for this very part of the trek, and although it made it easier to stomp across the river without worrying about stepping on anything dodgy, I could have done it barefoot; presumably the legends about difficult river crossings are confined to the rainy season.

Half an hour later we reached our stop for the day. Alojamiento El Paraíso is the final camp before the Lost City, and is perched on a pretty bend in the Buritaca River that makes for yet another pleasant spot to cool off after the day’s exertions. It was wonderfully peaceful when we arrived, just in time for lunch, and the small group who were resting in the main shelter soon pulled on their packs and left, as they’d just spent the morning at the Lost City, just 1km from the camp, and were now heading back. We lazed around in hammocks and even had time to wash our T-shirts, which were starting to smell pretty badly after being soaking wet for three days straight, but just as we were slipping into a peaceful afternoon snooze, the big group arrived.

It was carnage. There were about 24 of them, made up of two groups who were sharing the same four-day schedule, and they arrived with stories of women dissolving into tears on the trail, and grown men having their own breakdowns en route. Those who had made it to the camp in good time were fine – one American dude was so convinced that he was Rambo that he walked around bare-chested for the whole evening, so he was clearly lapping up the jungle life – but soon enough the rest of the group started arriving in dribs and drabs, and while the first arrivals had been tired but fired up, the stragglers were in all sorts of trouble. The four-day option for this trek combines into one day what we’d split up into days two and three, and this marathon 14km slog had completely destroyed those who had thought they were coming along for a pleasant jaunt, but instead had actually signed up for the hardcore option.

‘I cannot understand how anyone would ever enjoy this,’ moaned one slightly overweight American girl as she collapsed on the lodge’s steps, a stunned look on her face. ‘I am completely mentally distressed by this. I just don’t know how to cope. I absolutely hate it.’

So it would have been particularly galling for these exhausted walkers to see what Antonio’s kitchen magic served up to our small group that night. While the other group tucked into huge plates of rice and chicken – no bad meal when you’re on the trail, it has to be said – we waited while Antonio beavered away in the kitchen. The others looked over as we sat there, with us getting hungrier and hungrier as they ploughed through their plates, and when Antonio eventually served up, everyone was wondering what was coming. It was spectacular: a huge, freshly cooked, savoury pancake stuffed with chicken, beef and vegetables, all smothered in a delicious white sauce, and arguably one of the best meals we’ve had on our entire trip through Central America. Here we were, 1km from the Lost City and eating like gourmands while the exhausted remnants of the four-day group looked on and salivated. Antonio truly was a genius in the kitchen, and that night we slept like pampered royalty, surrounded by the exhausted snoring of those on the quick trip.

Day 4: Alojamiento El Paraíso to Ciudad Perdida (1km), Ciudad Perdida to Alojamiento Tezhúmake (7.6km)

This was the big day, the day of our visit to the Lost City, so we were up at 6am and out on the trail by 7am. It’s a rocky half-hour walk from the camp to the entrance to the Lost City, along an even more precarious riverside path than the day before; at times we had to rock-climb our way along the ledge, trying not to look down at the river some 100m below.

Soon enough we reached the bottom of the stone staircase to the Lost City, which starts on the banks of the Buritaca and takes you from about 950m above sea level up to the city at an altitude of 1160m. This steep climb is up an ancient staircase of 1200 stone steps, some of them large and some of them tiny, though because it was so dry, at least they weren’t too slippery (it would be a pretty different story in the wet season). The secret is to take it slow and steady, and half an hour later we reached the entrance to the city itself, and the first of the hundreds of round stone structures that make up Ciudad Perdida.

Thankfully, after all this effort, the Lost City turned out to be absolutely stunning. The city itself consists of some 169 terraces spread over about two square kilometres, built along the top of a north-south ridge, with the terraces getting higher and higher as you head south from the city entrance. These terraces are covered in low circular stone platforms, where wooden huts once stood. The site is split up into four different areas that are criss-crossed by a network of stone paths, and as you walk through the site from La Gallera through to Eje Central, and then down into Piedras and back through El Canal, the whole city slowly unfolds in front of you, with glimpses of higher terraces teasing you through the trees ahead.

The money shot is when you reach the big grassy platform in Eje Central and the forest canopy suddenly disappears, leaving you with an utterly breathtaking view over heavily forested valleys on both sides of the ridge where the city sits; to the south of you the sequence of stepped terraces continues along the ridge and up the hill ahead of you, each of them home to more circular platforms. It’s hard not to feel giddy as you stand there, with the hot breeze in your face and the whole world beneath your feet, as for the first time you get to see exactly how the city is laid out along the spine of the Sierra Nevada. I know it’s a cliché, but photographs don’t really do it justice; you really do have to be there to feel the power of the city as it stretches along the ridge like the proverbial stairway to heaven.

Of course, the view from the top of the hill is the most impressive, as you look back at the string of circular platforms. They appear to be suspended in the sky, like huge lily pads floating above the surrounding forest, and even with the ludicrous screeches of the large group of Americans who’d arrived there ahead of us, it wasn’t hard to lose ourselves in the view. Sure, I had to wait while Rambo stopped posing on the summit so I could take some pictures without having to Photoshop him out later, and yes, there was a particularly annoying Chilean couple who spent ages taking photos of each other in stupid yoga poses, studiously ignoring the rest of us asking them if they would mind hiding for a moment so we could get at least one shot of the terraces without them in it. But after we popped into the ranger’s hut for a cold beer while the American contingent ran riot outside, they eventually packed up and headed off, and the site quietened right down, leaving just the four of us to enjoy the serenity of the site for a few minutes of complete peace.

It was wonderful. With nothing breaking the silence except the distant cries of howler monkeys and musical bird song, we sat and lapped up the atmosphere. When we finally moved on from the main part of the city, I was the last to leave, but before I followed the others back into the jungle, I stopped and took a few seconds to take in my surroundings. For a short moment I had an entire Lost City all to myself – if you ignore the soldiers at the top of the hill – and I took a deep breath, looked up to the skies, stuck my arms out and did a little spin, just like Julie Andrews in the opening credits of The Sound of Music.

But it wasn’t over, for Antonio then led us through the more overgrown districts of Piedras and El Canal, where he gave us a couple of coca leaves to suck on as we wandered through vine-strewn ruins that reminded me of the wonderful jungle ruins in Caracol in Belize. The coca leaves were all part of the experience, because the Kogi tribe still take coca as part of their traditional way of life, and they are still allowed to grow the plant, for personal use. They heat up the leaves with hot rocks to dry them out, and they then chew them with a powder made from ground-up seashells, as the alkali in the seashells reacts with the coca to produce the alkaloid that makes cocaine such a big seller. We stuck to plain old raw leaves, which are about as strong as coffee (and, to be honest, fairly imperceptible when you’ve just drunk an ice-cold beer on an empty stomach after hiking up 1200 stone steps in the tropical heat). Still, it was nice to be chewing the leaf as we explored the rest of the city, if only because it felt ever so slightly dangerous and exotic.

All things must pass, though, and after four hours of exploring the site, we started back down the steps to the river, and retraced the path back to the camp. It was at this point, with impeccable timing, that the battery on my camera, which I’d been carefully conserving, finally ran out, leaving me free to do the rest of the walk without worrying about taking pictures. As the return journey to Machete is along the same path and you end up staying in the same camps, this was no hardship; in fact, I loved the freedom of not being able to take photos, as sometimes having a camera can feel a bit like an obligation. I had my pictures of the walk already, and it felt good to have it in the bag.

After a quick swim at Alojamiento El Paraíso, we had another excellent lunch, consisting of a huge mound of sausages, eggs, rice and lentils. This time it proved too much for one of the Americans, who asked Antonio, ‘That looks good, how do I get one of those?’

‘You don’t,’ said Antonio. ‘These are for my group only.’

‘Oh man,’ said the American, and sat down to the meal of comparatively uninspiring spaghetti that his group were having.

And with that we hit the trail, slowly retracing our steps back to Alojamiento Tezhúmake, some three hours away. We found it an enjoyable walk, despite being tired from our early start and the long exploration of the city, but not everyone we met was so happy. At one point we came across a young Australian man who was hobbling his way down to the crossing of the Buritaca, and it turned out he’d twisted his ankle on the way back from the Lost City. But instead of sticking it in the cold waters of the river, he kept on walking, grimacing in pain, and we bumped into him again five minutes down the trail, where he was literally screaming whenever he put his weight on it.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked as we walked past him.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, despite clear evidence to the contrary; his ankle was hugely swollen and he looked like he was in all sorts of trouble.

‘Would you like some painkillers?’ I asked.

‘No thanks, I’m not taking anything,’ he replied. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Well, you’re clearly not OK,’ I thought, but he obviously wasn’t into taking advice from a couple of old people, so we left him to it. Later in the day, he was led past on a mule by a Kogi man and a couple of Kogi kids; he was far too big for the poor animal, but if you injure yourself out here, that’s the only way out, as there are no roads, just the Kogi and their mules. We would meet him a few more times on the way out; I’m sure he was thrilled by the prospect.

We also passed the stragglers from the American group, who’d left the last camp half an hour before us. They looked pretty beaten; the girl who’d been having the breakdown the night before was sobbing quietly as she slowly shuffled one foot in front of the other. In contrast, her boyfriend overcompensated with a very cheery response to our smiling hellos, and who can blame him? We were surely witnessing either the end of that relationship, or a redefinition of it; that’s how bad things can get when you bite off more than you can chew.

Meanwhile another American, this time a middle-aged guy with a paunch and a very red face, sat down heavily at the shop on the top of the hill and loudly sighed, ‘I ache everywhere: my feet, my legs, my back, absolutely everywhere. This is hell.’ Even our group wasn’t immune; as we downed a bottle of Coke at the shop and caught our breath, Oliver revealed that he’d tripped over near the start of the walk and landed awkwardly on his knee, so Emily was having to carry their shared backpack and progress was painfully slower than normal. She was also suffering, as she’d had a nasty headache that morning at the Lost City, probably from dehydration, and she still wasn’t feeling that good.

It seemed that people were dropping like flies around us as we took our time on the long descent back to Alojamiento Tezhúmake. I idly wondered when it would be our turn, with just one more day to go.

Day 5: Alojamiento Tezhúmake to Machete (15.7km)

The hardest part of the entire trek turned out to be the final day, which combined the first two days of the walk into one long day, but walked in the opposite direction. On paper this didn’t sound too bad, as overall the walk would be downhill, but every hill you climb on the way in becomes a descent on the way out, and every descent becomes a climb, so our final day had two huge climbs and two long descents. This would have been a difficult walk on its own – even though, by this point, we were much fitter than when we’d started and had the added advantage of knowing what to expect – but just to make it a real challenge, the sun came out and started baking us as soon as we emerged from the forest, even though we’d set off before 7am and it was still early, so it was clearly going to be a hot day.

It was particularly bad on the second half of the walk, when we did day one in reverse. The multicoloured chalk gashes that we’d rolled down at the end of the first day turned into a superheated slog up 150m of oven-hot ascent. It was absolutely brutal – that was the one word that everyone we spoke to used, even the hardcore walkers we met – with temperatures in the shade of 45°C and baking hot sun reflecting off the chalk walls. Even Antonio thought it was too hot; he had a thermometer in his pack, and when he fished it out and saw the temperature, he whistled and said, ‘Mucho calor,’ which was putting it mildly. We staggered on, stopping in every shady patch, and eventually we reached the top of the final descent that would take us back down to the river and to Machete.

That descent felt endless. The fine dust that had coated us on the way up made for treacherous conditions underfoot, and even with our sticks, something was bound to happen, and it did. Halfway down the steep hillside, Peta stumbled on a rock and fell heavily onto her knees and wrists, twisting her ankle under herself as she fell.

As the dust settled, we did a sanity check. Did anything hurt? How was her ankle? What about her wrists? Slowly she stood up, gently testing the ankle, and thankfully it wasn’t badly sprained. She had a small cut on one knee and a graze on the other, so I washed them off with the remains of our water while she checked herself for serious injuries. Amazingly, there were none; her ankle was a little sore but basically all right, her cuts weren’t deep, and her wrists were fine apart from some bruising on the left one where she’d taken the weight of her body. It was a very lucky escape.

So we took it even more slowly than before on the way down, and when we finally reached the swimming hole where we’d stopped on day one, we threw off our stinking T-shirts and jumped in, safe in the knowledge that the trailhead was only 20 minutes away along a gentle river valley. And we looked at the group who were packing up after their first swim in the waterhole, getting ready to tackle the trail, and remembered how we’d felt on that first day, totally unaware of what was in store. This group had big backpacks and huge camera bags... and they were about to head out into the full sun, which we’d managed to miss on our first day.

‘Good luck,’ I thought. ‘You’ll need it.’ And with that we finished off the last part of the walk, downed a celebratory cold beer in Machete over lunch, thanked Antonio with a well-deserved tip, and headed back to Santa Marta to stick everything we’d carried into the wash, including ourselves.

If you’re thinking of doing the trek to the Lost City yourself, then I’ve put together some walking tips that you might find useful.

Walking Tips for Ciudad Perdida

Written: 8 April 2014

If you’re thinking of doing the trek to Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, there are lots of things you can do to make it an enjoyable experience, rather than a nightmare. We saw people break down in tears because they’d underestimated the challenge, and we saw three injured people being carried out of the jungle on mules. You can avoid this happening to you by doing some research, and by being realistic; if you bite off more than you can chew, the jungle will break you, but if you pitch it right, you’ll love it.

Choose the Right Number of Days

Not everyone understands how challenging it is to walk through the searing humidity of the tropical rainforest, so the trek to Ciudad Perdida has gained a fearsome reputation among travellers. You have to book the walk through one of five companies in the area – we went through Expotur – and when you book, they offer you three options: a four-day hike, a five-day hike, or a six-day hike.

Most people go for four days, but most people shouldn’t, because the four-day option involves some very long hiking days indeed. We saw people on the four-day walk crying from exhaustion, and stories flew down the trail of grown men breaking down after hours on the trail, the tropical heat and difficult terrain breaking down even the hardiest of egos. Yes, some people have the mental and physical strength to enjoy four days of trekking – if you’re an experienced trekker, you’ll know your limits – but we saw people on the four-day option for whom this was their first multiple-day trek, and their eyes said it all.

We chose the five-day option, and it was just right for us, though the last day was possibly a bit too long, so I’d definitely consider the six-day option. Given that all the options are the same price – indeed, the longer options are effectively cheaper, as you get more meals and more nights in the jungle for the same money – it’s easy to recommend the longer treks over the four-day dash. The walk is exactly the same for everyone, but if you take longer, you give yourself time to enjoy yourself more.

Choose the Right Time of Year

We’d heard stories of ravenous mosquitoes, endless mud and dangerous river crossings, but none of these turned out to be true for our walk. This is because it was dry when we did the walk, and had been for some time, so it’s important to pick the right time of year for your walk.

If you want an insanely difficult walk with rough river crossings, muddy paths and clouds of mosquitoes, then go in the rainy season, which starts around April/May and goes through to November, with the heaviest rains in October. If you want to enjoy yourself, then the driest time is from mid-December to early April.

Take As Little As Possible

You have to carry everything yourself, and you really don’t want to make the mistake of taking too much. This is what I took, and it felt it was about right, even though I didn’t use a lot of it (you only need muscle sprain cream if you sprain a muscle, for example, but if you do it’s a life saver).

- Hiking clothes (long swimming shorts, T-shirt, knee supports, hiking socks, walking boots, sandals): Because it was so dry, I only needed one pair of hiking socks in the end, though I did take spares; in the wet season, you’ll really appreciate a dry pair of socks every day. The sandals are for river crossings and for wearing in camp.

- Camp clothes (long trousers, long-sleeved top, dry socks, underwear): I also slept in these in the hammock on day one, as it got surprisingly cold in the wee hours, though I didn’t need to do this in the beds.

- Silk sleeping bag liner: The beds and blankets are reasonably clean, but they are a bit musty, so a sleeping bag liner is a good option.

- Buff head scarf: This was lighter than a hat, but a hat would do; you don’t need it in the rainforest, but you’ll need head cover for the first day and a half, as the sun is brutal.

- Handkerchief: I sweated like a trooper, and having a handkerchief on hand to wipe my face was a real lifesaver. I highly recommend it.

- Insect repellent: You want to pack at least one bottle; you might not get clouds of insects (we were lucky and hardly saw any), but you might, and a decent repellent will keep you sane.

- Bite cream, antihistamine tablets: Even without clouds of mosquitoes, there are still some kicking around, and there are also plenty of ticks, so bite cream or antihistamine tablets are a good idea.

- Antiseptic cream, plasters (Band Aids): In case you get blisters or cut yourself.

- Antifungal cream: It’s hot and humid out there and you’re sharing showers, so Athlete’s Foot is a real threat. You can buy a combined antiseptic and antifungal cream in Colombia – indeed, it’s hard to buy them separately – so this might be the way to go.

- Painkillers, ibuprofen gel: I have a dodgy back, so ibuprofen gel is useful, though even for fit walkers, having some anti-inflammatories is a good idea in case you injure yourself.

- Toilet paper: Some camps have toilet paper but some don’t, and although your guide will probably be able to fish some out, it’s a good idea to pack your own.

- Diarrhoea drugs: If you have to walk but you’ve got the runs, then you’ll be damn glad you packed these.

- Sunscreen: The first day and a half can be brutally sunny, so you’ll want sunscreen, but don’t take too much as you don’t need it in the rainforest.

- Toothbrush, toothpaste: Assuming you have standards, that is.

- Soap: For showering. You don’t need to bother with shampoo, unless you’re really vain; trust me, everyone is going to look pretty dodgy after days on the trail, and soap works on hair too.

- Tweezers: Handy if you get a splinter, sit on a thorn bush or need to pull out ticks.

- Ear plugs: Essential for blocking out the noise of snorers and other groups getting up at the crack of dawn when you don’t have to.

- Eye shades: You’re sleeping outside, so if you want a lie-in, eye shades are useful. Also good for blocking out the glare of other people’s head torches in the middle of the night.

- Inflatable pillow: You will need a pillow of some kind, even if it’s a bundle of clothes; the final camp had no pillows at all, and a pillow makes a big difference when sleeping in a hammock.

- Comb: Because you’re worth it.

- Small towel: This will never dry properly, so make sure it’s small, but it’s useful for towelling off after swimming, and in particular for drying your feet; damp feet blister more easily. Travel towels are an option here.

- Penknife: I didn’t need this, but I can never seem to go trekking without one.

- Sewing kit: Just in case anything rips.

- Head torch: There’s no electricity after the first camp, so a torch of some kind is essential. Don’t forget to check that the batteries are strong.

- Camera: Make sure it’s fully charged and has lots of space for pictures; you won’t be able to charge it on the walk, though you may get lucky on the first night, as our camp did have electricity. Best not to rely on it, though.

- Money: Beer and soft drinks are available at all the evening stops and sometimes during the day; drinks were COP4000 at the first camp and COP5000 after that, and they were pure luxury. You won’t need money for anything else.

- 1.5-litre water bottle: You might be able to get away with a one-litre bottle per person, but I always like to walk with plenty of water; our walking companions ran out of water a couple of times, and that’s not a good idea in this heat.

- A couple of plastic bags: I kept my dry clothes in one bag and my toiletries in the other, and just shoved any wet things straight into the pack, so they would have a better chance of drying off.

- Walking poles: If you have walking poles, definitely bring them, otherwise you can pick up sticks as you walk. They grow on trees, after all.

Drink Lots of Water

Seriously, drink as much as you can. I poured water down my throat and it simply flowed straight out me. You know when Jerry slams Tom in the iron maiden, and he gets out, drinks and leaks like a sieve? That was me. If you get dehydrated, you will suffer, and there is so much free drinking water available along the trek that you don’t need to worry, you just need a good-sized water bottle. Look for the blue barrels with agua potable on them and get stuck in; this is boiled and cooled water, so it’s perfectly safe to drink and tastes good.

It’s also a good idea to go swimming whenever there is an opportunity. The swimming holes are delightful all the way along the route, and cooling off in the river will fire you up for the next bout of walking, while reducing the smell. You’ll see what I mean when you do the walk; this is not a trek for the hygienically fussy.

Walk Slowly

Some people like to walk fast – I do, sometimes – but there is so much to see on this walk that rushing is not only going to tire you out, it’s practically a crime. Most people seem to agree that while the Lost City is interesting, it’s actually the trek that they enjoy the most, so you should take the time to look around you when you’re walking. It’s not a race.

Personally, I fell head-over-heels for the Lost City and I loved the trek just as much, so it was a win-win situation, but we took our time while walking, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the whole thing was enjoyable. Whichever part you end up liking the most, I can’t recommend it enough.

Flying Through Colombia

Written: 15 April 2014

Once we got back from our five-day trek to the Lost City, we collapsed into our boutique hotel in downtown Santa Marta, and never really got up again. The weather was incredibly oppressive and the humidity finally gave way to rain – excellent timing given that we’d only just left the rainforest – but when I sat down to plan our next move away from the mind-bending Caribbean climate, I just couldn’t decide what to do.

The challenge is that Colombia is a very large country with a lot of places that sound worth visiting, but connecting them up in a sensible manner is difficult, especially if you have a finite amount of time and don’t get along too well with really long bus journeys. From the Caribbean coast, there are two main routes you can take: you can either head down the eastern side of the country towards Bogotá, or you can go down the centre towards Medellín, but in both cases the distances are huge. The problem is that the bus journey from Santa Marta to Medellín takes a whopping 15 hours, and it’s an even more mind-boggling 18 hours to Bogotá, though at least with the latter there are some places of interest on the way (though the first one is still a good nine hours from Santa Marta). Whichever way you look at it, that’s a lot of bus time.

Luckily, it turns out that internal flights in Colombia can be incredibly cheap, especially if you hunt through the Avianca website for last-minute deals (Avianca being the national carrier of Colombia). All you need to do is feel a little exhausted from exploring the rainforest, and have your credit card and an internet connection to hand, and all of a sudden you can find yourself holidaying rather than travelling. It turns out that it’s a mere 70-minute flight from the Caribbean coast to Medellín, and when I looked at the dates that we thought we might want to travel, I found that we could fly from Cartagena for just £18 each. Sure, that would mean taking a four-hour shuttle from Santa Marta to Cartagena before hopping on the plane, but that’s still a lot better than 15 hours on the bus. Even better, I found that if we then wanted to fly from Medellín to Bogotá, that would take us just 45 minutes instead of nine hours on the bus, and we could do that for just £28 each.

So we’ve ditched all those long bus journeys for flights, and our transport is now completely booked up to the end of our six-month trip, which ends in Bogotá in a couple of weeks. Yes, I know it’s a bit slack and it does mean we’re going to miss all the places in between, but after fighting our way through Central America, sailing across the Caribbean and rediscovering the Lost City, I think we’ve earned the right to take it easy in Colombia. And I’ll have a gin and tonic with my in-flight peanuts, thank you very much.

Central Colombia

Medellín

Written: 17 April 2014

Just in case you were wondering, I can vouch that Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, is a great place in which to feel absolutely terrible. If your insides have turned to jelly and you’ve got an itchy rash that you can’t quite explain, then Medellín is a nice, comfortable place in which to get better.

For one thing, it has a pleasant climate; after the oven-like temperatures of Santa Marta and Cartagena, the perpetual spring climate of mountainous Medellín comes as a huge relief. It also has lots of restaurants covering all sorts of international cuisine, from Japanese to Peruvian to Thai to Argentinian to... well, possibly even Colombian, though with so many tempting options in the posh area of El Poblado, where we holed up, we didn’t exactly go hunting for local cuisine. Oh, and Medellín has plenty of comfortable yet affordable hotels, particularly in the business district to the south of the centre, where there are even plenty of vacancies in Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is an extremely busy holiday in Catholic South America.

So if you wake up one morning, glance at each other and realise that you’ve both been struck down by something nasty, then Medellín is a good place to be. Just tuck yourselves up in bed, stick on the cable TV and give us a shout when you’re better, because if there’s one thing you can’t do when you’re travelling and you get ill, it’s travelling.

Exploring Medellín

It was a shame that we got hit by the lurgy in Medellín, but you can’t choose when you get ill, so we simply extended our stay and took our time while I drew a thick black line through all the things I’d pencilled in for the area. Bang went the Pablo Escobar tour, which was a shame as it’s supposed to be a fascinating insight into the bad old days when, under Escobar’s underground rule, Medellín was the cocaine and murder capital of the world; out went our planned day trip to the huge granite monolith at El Piedra del Peñol, which you can climb for amazing views of the surrounding countryside; and we waved goodbye to the long walks that I’d hoped we’d enjoy in the pleasant forests of Parque Arví, just out of town. Most annoying of all, we’d met a really friendly Englishman in Santa Marta called Patrick, who’s lived in Colombia for a decade and has a pad in the countryside near Medellín, and he’d invited us to Sunday lunch at his house; but there was no way we were going to make it, and given that he has a nine-month-old baby who could probably live without being infected with a mystery illness, we sent in our apologies and hunkered down with the cold sweats instead.

But eventually we got well enough to get out of the hotel zone and see some of the city, mainly thanks to the city’s excellent Metro. Our first tentative excursion was to the Jardín Botánico (botanical gardens) in northern Medellín, where the sun obligingly shone for us as we slowly wandered through the grounds of this pretty landscaped park. Given that it’s surrounded by the city and is free to all visitors, it’s a surprisingly rural experience, with huge iguanas climbing the trees and some intriguing buildings, including a butterfly house and an orchid garden that’s tucked away under a huge wooden structure made up of towering hexagons. We had to keep stopping to catch our breath and hide from the hot sun, but there was plenty of shade and lots of people-watching on offer, so it was a good start.

Later on in our recuperative week, we visited the Plazoleta de las Esculturas and the adjoining Museo de Antioquia. Also known as Plaza Botero, this square contains 23 bronze sculptures by Fernando Botero, who is arguably South America’s most famous contemporary artist; hailing from Medellín, Botero’s style of sculpture and painting depicts people with exaggerated proportions, so his women are astonishingly voluptuous and his men are rounded and stocky. If you imagine taking a character from a Beryl Cook painting and inflating it with a bicycle pump, then you’re not far off the look of a Botero, and they have the same playful but satirical air of Beryl Cook’s work. Not surprisingly, they make excellent public sculptures, and the Plazoleta de las Esculturas is a great place to wander round.

It’s also a great place for people-watching, not least because Colombia is the spiritual home of plastic surgery, and in particular the butt implant (or, to give the procedure its correct title, buttock augmentation). The proliferation of the butt-job in Medellín turns the Plazoleta de las Esculturas into a classic example of life imitating art, because while Botero’s sculptured women have huge, voluptuous buttocks that defy gravity, so do an awful lot of the people in the plaza. Playing ‘real or fake’ is one of life’s pleasures in this part of the world, and Plaza Botero is easily one of the best places to play it.

At the western edge of the plaza is the oldest museum in Medellín, the Museo de Antioquia; while it might not sound like it to English-speaking ears, this is a museum of modern art (Antioquia is the name of the Colombian department, of which Medellín is the capital). Modern art museums are always fascinating, not just because some of the art can be good, but because even when it appears to be rubbish, there’s always fun to be had reading the explanatory notes that the museums provide. We’ve had endless fun traipsing round London’s Tate Modern, trying to understand what on earth some of the descriptions are talking about, but in the Museo de Antioquia it’s even more challenging, because the notes are in Spanish. One artist was so tortured that he came across as a real-life version of Brian from Spaced, with his three-screen full-room video installation showing him first writhing around half-naked and tied to a goat, then hand-wrestling a crab, and finally lying in a canoe with a large fish flopping on his crotch. The Spanish explanation of what this all meant didn’t really help unravel the mystery of the installation, though I’m not sure our Español is quite up to explaining self-flagellatory hipster art.

Our final expedition in town was to Parque Arví, which you can reach via the Metro’s cable car L. We chose a rather busy day to go exploring, and while queueing for the cable car, we discovered that the Colombians perhaps don’t have the same attitude to personal space as we English do. If you have a backpack on, then the person behind you will keep on bumping into that pack, so much so that you start to get paranoid that they’re rifling through it; so you switch the pack to your front, only to discover that the next stage is for the person behind to spoon you, right there in the queue. It’s as if the entire city is up for a kind of super-intimate conga-line approach to queueing, and it came as a bit of a surprise as we waited for our turn in the cable car, sandwiched between the friendly locals.

In the end, Parque Arví wasn’t really right for us, as it’s full of activities that aren’t suitable for those recuperating from illness; there are lots of walking trails on offer, but the nearest one to the cable car starts a steep 1km walk from the terminal, so it’s not a good option for those looking for a gentle stroll. We thought we’d enjoy a picnic at the top, but there’s precious little at the cable car terminus except lots of other people looking a bit lost and wondering where they can eat their sandwiches; there is a small lawn, but it’s right by the vents to the composting toilet, so it’s hardly prime real estate for potential picnickers. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, to be honest, but luckily the cable car journey itself is worth the effort, especially when it goes over the outer suburbs of the city, and you can peer down on the grittier parts of town from the safety of your little plastic bubble.

Oh, and if you’re lucky, you too can get stuck in a cabin for the 15-minute return journey, with a man and his girlfriend and his phone playing super-irritating Spanish-language R&B. It’s one of life’s great pleasures, being unable to get away from someone else’s awful music, and the Metro’s cable car L is a great place to do it. I was tempted to grab his phone and perform a buttock augmentation right there and then, but to be honest, this is not the country – or the city – to try that sort of thing, so we left him to it and instead enjoyed our last night in Medellín with some Japanese cuisine and an early night, ready for our flight to Bogotá in the morning.

The Medellín Metro

Written: 17 April 2014

We weren’t terribly well in Medellín, but we still managed to see a fair amount of the city, albeit gently and without a great deal of energy. This was mainly down to the fact that Medellín has a wonderful metro that makes getting around a doddle, so even those recuperating from a mystery illness can hobble round the main sights without having to cram into a public bus or spend a fortune on taxis.

First opened in 1995, the Medellín Metro is small, with only two lines (A and B) and three cable cars (J, K and L), but because Medellín is stretched out along a north-south valley, this manages to cover all the main tourist attractions without the complexity of most city metros. Line A follows the course of the Medellín River along the valley, and as the railway is carried through the city centre on viaducts that pass well above the heads of the crowds below, it’s a brilliant way to see the city from above, passing churches at roof height and letting you peer into office buildings and down into the plazas as you safely slip through the centre.

The trade-off for this convenience is that the city is carved up by the huge elevated tracks and monstrous concrete columns that lift the Metro above the streets, and some of the city’s plazas have been completely redefined by the development; for example, the eastern end of Plazoleta de las Esculturas, probably Medellín’s most famous square, is now chopped off by the curved Metro line that brushes right past the chequerboard frontage of the Palacio de la Cultura Rafael Uribe Uribe. As a result you can hardly see that side of the palace at all and have to duck under the Metro to see it in all its glory, though I have to say I quite like the way the Metro merges with the city; I’ve always enjoyed seeing the new and the old mixed up like this, and although the Metro is a fairly blunt example, it does give Medellín a slightly futuristic feel, even if it’s a future that feels ever-so-slightly like it was designed back in the concrete heyday of the 1960s.

This clash of old and new extends to the ticketing system, which seems a little unsure whether it’s retro or modern; when buying two single tickets, we either got given two paper tickets, two credit-card-sized smart cards, or a single smart card between us, depending on where we bought them. Getting two tickets was fine, but the single smart card, which comes loaded up with two tickets on one card, is a deeply confusing beast; it seems that if there is more than one credit on your card, then you have to wave it at the ticket barrier to get through, but if there is just one credit, then you have to stick it in a slot so the barrier can retain it. This is all well and good, but there’s no way of telling how many credits you have on the card just by looking at it, so you end up with people waving their cards and being refused entry, even though they do indeed have a valid ticket, and then panicking and wondering what to do next. Presumably that’s why there are so many staff by the ticket barriers, helping out all the bemused travellers.

Oh, and once you’re on the move, you’ll find that the Metro map is only posted in the most inaccessible part of the car and the text on the map is tiny, so if you get on the train and aren’t sure where you should be getting off, you have to squish your way through the carriage and squint at the map. But these criticisms are splitting hairs, because the Metro is a brilliant idea that is well executed, and it makes exploring Medellín a pleasure rather than a chore.

Bogotá

Written: 27 April 2014

On paper, Bogotá doesn’t sound terribly appealing. For a start, the sprawling capital of Colombia sits at a heady 2600m above sea level, which means the weather is surprisingly cold and wet, despite being less than five degrees from the Equator. Then there’s the graffiti that’s scrawled pretty much everywhere in the centre of town, which is a subtle hint that there are areas of town that you should absolutely avoid, some of them quite central. Then the locals warn you never to flag down taxis in the street but to pre-book them instead, as there are fake taxi drivers out there who will pick you up, lock the doors, pull out a knife and take you and your credit card on an expensive tour of the local cash machines. And the Transmilenio public transport system groans under the weight of the morning and evening rush hours, with queues winding their way out of the stations while commuters press their noses up against the bus windows. On the surface, it doesn’t sound like it’s much fun.

But it is. A lot of this is down to the Colombians, who are such good-natured and stylish people that everyday urban challenges just don’t turn out to be a big deal. Even on the one day that we accidentally ended up crushed into a Transmilenio bus at the beginning of the evening rush hour, the locals kept their cool and simply got on with the business of getting home; compare this to the insanity of rush hour in somewhere like India, and it’s another world. And yes, at this time of year it is cold and rains almost every day, but there are plenty of museums and restaurants where you can hide from the weather. They’re also making big strides in making the city safer, with a noticeable army and police presence in the centre of town and a smartphone app that lets you book taxis safely with the click of a button. And even the graffiti isn’t that bad, if you look closely, as there are some genuine works of art out there (though there’s still a lot of messy tagging around, which is much harder to appreciate).

It also helps if you stay in the north of the city, because the further north you go from the centre, the more pleasant the city becomes. We lucked out with our choice of lodgings; the India Chez Moi Hotel is a great place in a pleasant part of town, where it’s all wide pavements, grassy spaces, middle-class locals, fancy skyscrapers and decent supermarkets. The wonderful Indian family that runs the hotel made us authentic home-cooked Indian meals during our stay, which, after six months of Central American food, was utter bliss. We settled into suburban life and took in the sights of the city at a sedate pace; Bogatá was the last destination on our six-month trip and when we arrived in town we were still recovering from being ill in Medellín, so we decided to take things slowly.

Exploring Bogotá

Luckily the India Chez Moi Hotel was just a short walk from the Transmilenio, which made it really easy for us to get into central Bogotá. As you would expect from the capital city of such a vibrant country, there’s plenty to see in town, although we did keep getting caught in rain showers when we ventured into the city streets, some of them amazingly heavy (this part of the world has a second rainy season in April and May to complement the more usual October-November rainy season, and we’re bang in the middle of it). As a result we didn’t manage to explore as much of the city centre as we otherwise would have, but what we saw was enjoyable.

As far as tourism goes, the heart of the city is the large Plaza de Bolívar, which is surrounded by a mix of different building styles, from the neo-classical Catedral Primada and the colonial Sagrario Chapel, to the classical Greek style of the Capitolio Nacional and the French-influenced mayor’s office. When we visited the square for the second time the cathedral was holding a memorial service for the famous Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, who died on 17 April. The square was full of big screens showing the service, and as we stood there watching the service, not one but two people tried to interview us about Márquez and what we thought about him. To be honest, I’ve not yet read any of his books, which is a minor crime for a traveller visiting Colombia, but we smiled and said nice things about him, because he’s an absolute hero in his native Colombia.

From the square we wandered through the government buildings to the south of the plaza, smiling at the soldiers who checked our bags at the various checkpoints, because that’s what you do when someone younger than your children points to your bag while carrying a massive gun; happily they smiled back. We then wheeled round to the east to explore La Candelaria, the old colonial quarter with its steep cobbled streets and clusters of museums, churches and theatres. Unfortunately this is when the rain hit, turning the street into a river, so we ducked into a restaurant and enjoyed a typical Colombian meal of soup, fish and plantain, while the heavens washed away the people and left us blinking in the post-deluge brightness.

Luckily this area is home to plenty of museums, so we managed to avoid the daily rains by spending hours shuffling round the Museo del Oro (the gold museum) and the Museo Botero (a museum devoted to the artist Botero, whose sculptures we’d admired in Medellín). Unfortunately, both museums suffer from the same problem: they’re too much of a good thing. The Museo del Oro’s collection contains more than 34,000 gold pieces and 20,000 other objects from 13 pre-Hispanic societies, and although not all of these are on display at the same time, it sometimes feels as if they are; as you go from room to room, all of them stuffed with so many gold objects, it does start to feel a bit repetitive after a while. Perhaps it was because we visited the museum of gold in San José not that long ago, but by the time we reached the end of the exhibition – in which a huge glut of gold artefacts are displayed in a round room to the sound of tribal chanting and a flickering light show that makes toddlers cry – we were a bit tired of gold. Indeed, from early on, Peta was more interested in the ceramic pots on display and I was more interested in watching the locals, who seem to be more obsessed with taking phone pictures of the displays than actually looking at them.

Meanwhile, the Museo de Botero contains a number of rooms dedicated to works of art by Fernando Botero, the artist whose sculptures of buxom women and animals fill the Plazoleta de las Esculturas in Medellín. We liked those sculptures, but a whole museum packed full of his paintings proved too much; Botero appears to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and his paintings of inflated people and endless still-lifes of fruit and food became deeply repetitive after a couple of rooms. Luckily the collection was peppered with rooms dedicated to non-Botero works of art, and they were worth the effort, but we left the Botero museum with the same fatigue as we’d left the gold museum. It was a bit of a shame really, though the balance was redressed on the way to the Transmilenio, when we witnessed the filming of a Colombian hidden camera show in which a man dressed up like a piece of broccoli crept up to a man eating a burger and stole it off him, offering him a piece of broccoli in return. Cue hilarious irritation on the part of the burger-eating man, followed by a chase scene and eventually the big hidden-camera reveal. It wasn’t art, but it was more entertaining than a lot of the works we’d seen that afternoon.

You couldn’t say the view from the 3152m-high peak of Cerro de Monserrate was boring, either. Bogotá is built on a wide plain, the Sabana de Bogotá, which is surrounded by mountains, and the peak of Monserrate, which dominates the eastern edge of downtown, is home to a church that you can see from pretty much everywhere in the city centre. The hardcore can walk up the 1500 steps to the peak, some 600m above the city, but we opted for the cable car instead. The views from the top over the 1700 square kilometre sprawl of the city are absolutely stunning; with a population of nearly 8 million, Bogotá is a massive place, but you have to see it from above to understand just how big it is. The summit is so high that you can watch the rain showers swooping into the city across the plains, and it’s even high enough for people to suffer from altitude sickness when they visit.

The view from Monserrate is deeply impressive, but it was trumped by our last excursion of our visit to Colombia. The family at the India Chez Moi Hotel were wonderful throughout our stay, and for our last Saturday night in the country, Akbar – the son of the hotel’s wonderful matriarch Sundara, and the brother of the charming Ila, who manages the hotel with her friendly French husband Olivier – invited us out for a trip up towards La Calera with his friend Katherine. The road that winds up the mountains towards this small village boasts a small parking spot where couples and young people come for a hot cup of canelazo, a sugar cane drink that’s flavoured with cinnamon and optionally a spirit. But it isn’t the drink that attracts the locals, it’s the stunning night view over Bogotá.

As we sat there sipping our drinks – canelazo with spirits, naturally, as it was cold up there – huge fireworks flashed in the distance (‘It’s Children’s Day,’ explained Akhbar), huge flashes of lightning lit up the clouds to the north, a stack of jet planes slowly glided their way into El Dorado Airport, and all around the blazing cityscape disappeared off into the distance. It’s no wonder that this is a popular spot in Bogotá’s weekend calendar, and as the last major excursion in our visit to Colombia, it felt particularly appropriate, as we looked down on everywhere we’d visited in the previous week and marvelled at the endless suburbs of this, the beating heart of this vibrant country.

The Bogotá Transmilenio

Written: 27 April 2014

The Transmilenio is Bogotá’s answer to the Medellín Metro, and while it isn’t as elegant and efficient as a proper metropolitan railway, it does a pretty good job of shifting people round the capital. Instead of using trains, the Transmilenio runs on buses that have dedicated lanes down the centre of Bogotá’s main roads, and most of the time this means that the buses run smoothly (though they still have to stop at traffic lights and can get a bit stuck in particularly heavy traffic, so it isn’t perfect).

Unfortunately, the Transmilenio is an almost unfathomable system for newcomers. There are 12 lines and 150 stations served by up to 1400 buses, and most buses don’t stop at all the stations on each line. There are maps in the stations that show which stations each bus stops at, but there’s a real knack to working out which buses go where. One clue is in the bus number; bus B174, for example, will terminate at a stop on line B, but you’ll have to look at the map to find out where it actually goes. The buses have little displays inside them that show the names of the next two stations, but there are no maps inside the buses, so once you’re on board, it all starts to feel like a bit of a gamble. Luckily the Bogotans are lovely and will point you in the right direction, but when the digital display isn’t working (which was the case for at least two of our journeys), it’s all a bit random. The secret is to use the online planner in advance to work out exactly which buses you need; winging it is not for the faint-hearted.

Random is a good word for the stations, too. They’re like long, thin bus stops with glass walls on either side that separate you from the buses that whizz past, and you simply look for your bus number above one of the glass doors and wait there for the bus to arrive. In theory the doors slide open when the bus pulls up, but sometimes the doors fail to open (so locals have become adept at wrenching them open themselves), and sometimes the doors open to reveal nothing but an empty and treacherous highway. There are digital displays in the stations that show which buses are arriving and when, and more than once the doors slid open at the allotted time, even though there was no bus there, and the displays updated as if the bus had been and gone. There are clearly ghosts in the Transmilenio machine.

But despite the slightly overcomplicated feeling of the Transmilenio, there’s no doubt that when it works, it works really well. And as an added bonus, you get to see the Bogotans up close, from businessmen and students all the way to in-bus buskers and people coming on board to sell you incense sticks. It’s a real cultural melting pot, and because it’s above ground, you get to look at the streets of Bogotá from the comfort of your bus seat (or, more often than not, from your standing-room-only spot in the aisle). We certainly wouldn’t have been able to explore Bogotá so easily without it.

Zipaquirá

Written: 23 April 2014

Seeing as our Bogotá hotel was just down the Transmilenio from the Portal del Norte terminus, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit the attractive historic town of Zipaquirá, and in particular its amazing salt cathedral. A 40-minute bus ride from the terminus, Zipaquirá is the most popular day trip from the capital, and it’s absolutely worth the effort.

For starters, Zipaquirá town has a lovely historic centre with cathedrals, squares and shopping streets. The bus from Bogotá drops you off on the other side of town to the salt cathedral, but it’s an enjoyable 15-minute walk through town to the entrance to the cathedral complex. The only problem is that because this is a pilgrimage site, there’s also a long walk uphill to the cathedral, following a white line painted on the steps. I suppose you could take a taxi, but that would be cheating.

There are only three salt cathedrals in the world – the other two are in Poland – so a trip to Zipaquirá is a pretty unique experience, even for seasoned travellers. The first salt cathedral here, which was opened to the public in 1954, had its origins in a sanctuary that the salt miners built for their own use back in the 1930s, but the cathedral was on a much grander scale, with a central nave that was 120m long and 20m high. Unfortunately, as it was carved out of an existing mine, it became unsafe and was closed to the public in 1990. In 1991, the government paid for a new cathedral to be built, 200ft beneath the first cathedral, and it opened in 1995 after some 250,000 tons of salt had been removed from the mine shafts that already existed there.

When I first read about the salt cathedral at Zipaquirá, I naively imagined cavernous white rooms full of carvings in pure white salt, but salt cathedrals aren’t like that at all. Salt is locked away in halite rocks that are incredibly hard, and the miners have to blast them away with dynamite and drill them out with huge machines; indeed, the rock is so hard that the tunnels they dig don’t need beams to support them – they just need monitoring in case chunks of the roof flake off – so what you get in the salt cathedral is bare rock all around you. The rock is actually dark grey, so your average salt cathedral feels more like a stone cathedral, and the salt part is almost incidental (though you do see salt stalactites hanging from the roof in places, and if you lick the walls, they taste salty). I was faintly disappointed when we entered the mine and discovered that it wasn’t a dazzling white, but my disappointment didn’t last.

Because even though it wasn’t what I was expecting, it was incredible. It starts with a walkway down into the cathedral that is lined with sculptures representing the 14 Stations of the Cross, which tell the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. These sculptures are modern and symbolic – Jesus is represented by a cross and kneeling stones represent other people – and while some are small and intimate, some of them open onto massive chambers left from the mining operations, all of them lit in an eerie manner that sent shivers down my spine (I don’t like large, dark, enclosed spaces, so they triggered my phobia perfectly).

Luckily we’d joined an English-language tour of the cathedral, and although the tour guide sounded like a cheesy American salesman channelled through a home computer voice synthesizer from the early 1980s, he did explain what the sculptures meant. It also meant we were in a large group of American tourists and, strangely, a group of French speakers who insisted on talking non-stop amongst themselves throughout the entire tour, so any shudders I felt at being underground and near such huge chambers were tempered by the irritating nature of the tour group. If I were a Christian and not surrounded by gibbering foreigners, I would find this part of the cathedral pretty powerful.

But the Stations of the Cross are nothing compared to the cathedral itself, which you reach by passing under a huge lit dome and down a short corridor. Suddenly a balcony opens up and there, in front of you, is a monstrous chamber, 75m long and 18m high; this is the central nave of the cathedral, which has three naves in total. At the far end is a huge illuminated cross, and overlooking the pews of the cathedral below is a carving of an angel blowing a trumpet. It’s like being inside a cathedral, but instead of being a building, the chamber is deep underground and is carved out of solid rock.

You access the cathedral by taking one of three staircases and walking beneath the gaze of a statue of St Michael the Archangel, which is lit from below and manages to look worryingly like a weeping angel from Doctor Who. And then you enter the cathedral proper, and the immensity of the three naves hits you. The first nave contains a nativity scene set into a recess in the side wall, and it’s made up of stone sculptures by the same Italian sculptor as St Michael and the other angels in the cathedral. At the far end of the nave there’s a font and a salt waterfall spilling from the top of the end wall; the flowing white of the waterfall is made from salt crystals that flow down the wall over time, as there is a very small dribble of water through the rock here that crystallises the salt from the rock.

The middle nave is the one you see from the balcony, and it turns out that the huge cross at the far end is in fact hollowed out of the rock and is illuminated from inside; from the balcony the cross looks solid, but it’s a clever optical illusion. There’s a sculpture of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in which the sculptors have inexplicably made Adam and God touch, and there are four immense columns of stone carved from the walls that represent the writers of the four gospels. Finally, the third nave is reasonably empty and our guide skipped it entirely, presumably because next on the list was the commercial centre.

It’s odd, the commercial centre. Here you are in a cathedral – a real one, where they do weddings and baptisms – and just off the main drag is a large and tacky row of shops selling salt-stone crosses, models of pre-Columbian statues, jewellery, popcorn, coffee and tourist trinkets, and although there’s an interesting little man-made pool whose waters are so still that they act like a mirror, the rest of the commercial centre is so overtly commercial that it feels a bit weird after the Stations of the Cross and the powerful architecture of the cathedral. But I guess this is one of Colombia’s top tourist attractions, and you might as well reap what you sow.

Luckily the tackiness of the commercial centre is easy to avoid, and as the way out of the complex is back the way you came, you get a chance to enjoy the sights and sounds without the distractions of a noisy tour group and an overenthusiastic guide. Even second time round, it’s an amazing place, and is well worth a visit.

Thoughts on Leaving

Written: 28 April 2014

Colombia is an easy country to like. Not only does it have a large variety of great attractions, but the people are genuinely friendly; other passengers strike up conversations with you on the Transmilenio, and if you ask strangers for directions or help, they’re really happy to help. Even with the language barrier, the Colombians are a delight, and that on its own would be enough to make this country worth visiting. Add in the Caribbean beaches, the colonial towns, the cosmopolitan cities and the sights you won’t see anywhere else in the continent, and you’re onto a winner.

In fact, the only bad thing about travelling in Colombia is that it’s a pretty big country and it can take hours to get from one place to another; that said, there’s a good transport network and flights are cheap, so it’s not as bad as it could be, but it does mean you have to be picky about what you can cram into your visit. We bottled it in the end and flew everywhere, and after we got ill in Medellín we ground to a halt and stopped even contemplating places that were off the beaten track, but even with the relatively limited itinerary that we ended up with, there was plenty to see.

So for us, Colombia represented not only the end of our six-month trip through Central America, but also a tantalising glimpse of what travelling through South America could be like. In particular, the five-day trek to the Lost City was absolutely wonderful, and surely we now have to put the Inca Trail on our to-do list; indeed, with so many sights missed on this visit to Colombia, there’s a strong argument for coming back for a second helping, and that’s not something I’ve said a lot – if at all – on this trip. That, alone, speaks volumes; Colombia is a great country, and it’s been a very positive way to end this long journey from Mexico to South America.

Further Reading

If you enjoyed this book, you might like to know that there’s a whole series of free books like this available from the same source, covering 25 countries and six continents:

- The Back of Beyond: Travels in Australia

- Into the Deep Blue Sea: Travels in Belize

- A Town Full of Nothing to Do: Travels in Burkina Faso

- In Search of the Lost City: Travels in Colombia

- Tainted by Tourism: Travels in Costa Rica

- A Funny Sort of Socialism: Travels in Cuba

- Snow on the Sun Loungers: Travels in Cyprus

- Love at First Sight: Travels in El Salvador

- Paradise Has Teeth: Travels in French Polynesia

- A Million Mosquitoes Can’t Be Wrong: Travels in the Gambia

- The Road to Jesus: Travels in Ghana

- Stuck on the Gringo Trail: Travels in Guatemala

- Many Ways to Change Your Mind: Travels in India

- Hello Paul, What’s Your Name? Travels in Indonesia

- The Muddy Confluence: Travels in Malaysia

- The Lapping of the Dunes: Travels in Mali

- A World-Class Dive: Travels in Mexico

- Snaking Patterns of Sand: Travels in Morocco

- Roof of the World: Travels in Nepal

- God’s Own Country: Travels in New Zealand

- Poverty and Paradise: Travels in Nicaragua

- Alone on Two-Palm Island: Travels in Panama

- The Head and the Heart: Travels in Senegal

- Serious Fun: Travels in Singapore

- Melted Meccano: Travels in Thailand

If you know someone who might like any of my books, please pass them on; I make no money from this, but I do enjoy the thought of people reading my books and recommending them to their friends. If you’ve enjoyed reading my writing (or even if you haven’t) I’d be delighted if you could sign my Guestbook at www.moxon.net/guestbook – after all, it’s the feedback that makes it all worthwhile. Happy travels!

THE END

Table of Contents

Preface

Cartagena

The Song Remains the Same

Santa Marta

Taganga

Ciudad Perdida

Walking Tips for Ciudad Perdida

Flying Through Colombia

Medellín

The Medellín Metro

Bogotá

The Bogotá Transmilenio

Zipaquirá

Thoughts on Leaving

Further Reading

Table of Contents

Preface

Cartagena

The Song Remains the Same

Santa Marta

Taganga

Ciudad Perdida

Walking Tips for Ciudad Perdida

Flying Through Colombia

Medellín

The Medellín Metro

Bogotá

The Bogotá Transmilenio

Zipaquirá

Thoughts on Leaving

Further Reading