The Trek to Ciudad Perdida

Ok this is going to be long. I don´t know if Ihave the time and patience to write the whole thing out tonight or not. However for those of you who have received the findmespots and have written Charlie where are you? Here is your answer.

It is Sunday september 14 and today is the first day of our trek to Ciudad Perdida. We all met at the office at 9 am. We are a group of 5 but rather diverse. Simone is 25 and from Switzerland and a real cutie. Paddy is 25 and from Cork Ireland, Francisco is 33 and from valencia Spain, and Russ is a scotsman who has never lived in Scotland but has grown up in the french part of Switzerland. And of course yours truly. From the office we were transported by converted Toyota Landcruiser toward our destination. The road was paved all the way to the turn off. Let me say that this is not something you could do on your own. First of all there is no marked turn off from the highway and as i will describe the road got more and more interesting as we went. As we continued the road became more and more narrow. The more narrow the road became the further it deteriorated. There were places where there was barely enough room for the landcruiser to get through. Of course this is where the road was severely rutted and tipped toward a several hundred foot drop. After about 45 minutes we arrived at a town. No I don´t know the name of it. It did require going through 2 or 3 rivers to get there though. I guess the most noteworthy thing about the town itself is that after all that time on that horrendous road, the town itself was paved. At any rate we had lunch there which consisted of make your own bologna sandwiches with all the fixins´ After lunch we headed out. It turned out that we have mules to carry all our stuff. THANK YOU gOD! As we started out it was up and down a little. Then the nightmare of every fat out of shape out old man occurred. It went up and up and up and up....well you get the idea. Every time I saw a turn up ahead I would think "This has to get to the top sometime" But no it just kept on going up. At one point the guide came up behind me with a couple of guys who are leading our mules and sitting on a couple of mules themselves. One asks me if I want to ride the mule to the top. I said SI! And thank god because it was another 20 minutes to the top on mule. It would have taken me forever to walk it. There ws some thunder and lightning during the afternoon but not much rain accompanied it. Just enough to make the trail which is all clay into slippery as hell mud. Twice goiing downhill I slid on my ass for about 10 feet. One time when I slid I only stopped when my left foot hit a root. I felt and heard something snap. As of right now it feels fine, we´ll see. We finally got to our first destination at about 4:30 today. Basically it is a house, across from it is a covered platform that has a pool table and a tv. Beleive it or not they sell cold beer here too. It costs 3000 pesos, about $1.80 that is about twice what it does in town. The buildings are next to a river. Across the river is another outbuilding which is essentially a roof with tables and benches underneath a cook area and a place for hammocks which is we will sleep tonight. The owner(s) of the place are an older man, I´m guessing mid 60s and a woman maybe in her 30s. Just guessing. I hope for sake that is her father or father in law and not her husband. When we got there he was really drunk. When I went to buy a beer instead of getting it himself a trip of about 10 ft., he clapped his hands until the woman came running to see what he wanted. All in all the countryside we saw coming in was beautiful and the place we are staying at is beautiful and idyllic.

September 15, Monday

I didn´t sleep worth shit last night. I couldn´t find my first aid kit which has all my pain stuff in it. First I couldn´t get my foot, the one I heard crack, in a comfortable position. Next my right shoulder was spasming all night. It seemed like every few minutes I would feel a sharp stabbing pain go through my shoulder.
Today started at about 6:30 am. We got up. Had some coffee and then one of the local guys took us to show us his cocaine factory. Seriously, no shit. It was about a 10 minute walk from where we stayed.Boy was it off the trail. Kinda necessary I guess. Now you may be thinking the same thing we were. There are going to be guards with submachine guns, people wearing masks and gloves packaging it, you know just like in the movies. Well maybe there are places and situations like that in Colombia but this isn´t one of them. This place was a cleared flat spot close to the river. It was covered by a 20x20 plastic tarp. So get the idea of a huge operation out of your head and think moonshiner. The whole operation looked rather crude. He said it was necessary so that if he saw the military coming he could set fire to the place and run. I never what a process it was to make and some of the nasty shit involved to process it. He explained the entire process to us and demonstrated each step. Some of the chemicals used are gasoline and sulfuric acid. And he even demonstrated the final stepthe making of cocaine paste. The paste is pure unadulterated cocaine. Yes we were allowed to sample it. Yes some of us bought some of the product. So with all of that we were back at the camp at 7:30. We left about 9 am to begin day 2 of the trek to Ciudad Perdida. Today is much the same as yesterday except there was less climbing. We reached our camping spot at about 1:30. Turns out there is another group there that is just returning from Ciudad Perdida. They were all very enthusiastic about it. This gives us all hope for tomorrow.

September 16 2008 tuesday.

Today started MUCH too early. They have people working at the camping area. They were up and about at 5:30 am. As I said much too early. I ignored them as long as I could but around 6:15 our guide woke me up. At least last night i got to sleep on a mattress instead of a hammock so that helped. Also I had my pain stuff so that helped even more. Russ who is our official roller didn´t have time to roll a spliff this morning so we had to go without. Bummer. People had told us that today was going to be easy but in the beginning it sure seemed like we did a lot of climbing. At one point when our whole group took a break I took some coke and put it on my tongue. This isn´t coke as you may know it it is rather a dried paste, it can´t be snorted. I told everyone "Hey the old man needs an energy boost." They all understood. This country is incredibly beautiful. It seems like almost every time you go around a turn in the forest there is another beautiful waterfall of a fabulous valley view or an awesome view of the river. It is truly a pity that access is limited by the presence of cocaine labs and narcotraficantes. While on the trail our guide pointed out a poisonous snake. He called it the serpiente de San Pedro or a yellow tail. It was small, maybe a foot long. After he pointed it out to us he killed it. Later on we also saw something rather unusual, crabs along the trail. Yeah real crabs they looked sort of like sand crabs. We were nowhere near the beach. This is the first time in my life I have seen crabs in a forest.
Today we became amphibious. We had to cross the same river 8 times. The name of the river is the Buritaca. The 8th crossing takes you to the steps that lead to ciudad Perdida. There are 1800 of them. The builders had an interesting sense of humor. You climb and climb and nobody counts. Then you finally see something that is obviously man made and you think "Yes I´ve made it!"You continue walking and then you see it about 200 more steps. and you´re thinking "Damn I thought I´d made it." These are broad wide steps where as the others were small and narrow. These obviously lead someplace important. So you climb those steps and see some more man made structures, you walk across those and see another man made structure with about 30 more steps, this happens about twice more and THEN YOU ARE AT THE TOP. For all the fucking work it was worth it. The view from the top is absolutely incredible. It started to rain as soon as I got here. I proudly brought up the rear. It was just a little at first but now it´s coming down hard enough to discourage exploration around the area. So the rain is not making me feel much like Gene Kelly, I sure as fuck don´t feel like singing in it. This place is 1200 meters above sea level, so all the rain is doing is to make things chilly. It is now about 3 o´clock and we have been here about 3 hours, we´ll see what later brings. It finally stopped raining about 4:30 and I got some walking around and exploring time. This place is fascinating. It is a terraced city. None of the houses survived because they were all made of bamboo and palm leaves. However the foundations were circular and had a stone foundation. They buried their dead beneath the house. That is they dug a whole in the floor and buried them with all their worldly possessions. The higher your social standing the higher up the hill you lived the more possessions you were buried with.
The city was discovered in 1973 by some guy out in the area looking for marijuana. He found Ciudad Perdida instead. Now let me review what it takes to get to this place. You travel 3 days 4-5 hours a day. After the second day the trail deteriorates to the point where mules can´t make it. You cross 3 sheer rock faces with barely sufficient footholds. I already mentioned the 9 river crossings, each crossing is to another part of the trail. How the fuck did this guy even think to look in this area? How the fuck did he decide to walk across three rock faces, how the hell did he know where to dig? etc. etc. That this place wasn´t discovered until 1973 is no surprise to me. Im amazed it was discovered at all. This place is also referred to as the green hell because when Frankie Ray discovered all the gold artifacts he started selling them in Santa Marta. Word got out and people started following him to the site and killing each other for the gold. The gov´t took it over in 1976.

Okay that is it for part 1. I have already been typing for 2 hours and that is enough for today. Look for part 2 the trek to Ciudad Perdida in the next few days.
hasta la vista baby
Charlie
The road goes on forever and the party never ends.