The City that Didn't Stay Lost (Colombia - Part 1)
Just like there's two kinds of girls on Halloween, in girl world, there's two kinds on a South American trail - the Machu Picchu and the Amazon.
Machu Picchu girl is ready for a new profile picture. Bright crop top, black spandex shorts, and fashionably neon colored running shoes.
Nevermind that yellow fever is endemic, the ants are the size of your thumb and there's a clear warning to not veer off the path because snakes are attracted to body heat.
Amazon girl will be ducking out of the camera line of sight for the next 4 days. She realizes most things in the jungle think humans are tasty. Amazon girl dresses in nude tans and grays, covered head to toe in unsightly "mosquito-repelling" loose long sleeves, and smells like 98% deet.
Yet walking next to Machu Picchu girl, Amazon girl still feels a sting and then an itch under her arm. Mosquitoes take no prisoners.
Day 1: A trek to the Lost City (La Ciudad Perdida)
When I met up with the group I'll be with for the next 4 days, I had to double check I came to the right place. A lot of Machu Picchu gals (and gents) and not very many Amazon ones. Oh to be 23 again.
The trail started out as a road, a term used very loosely in these parts. Once upon a time the government allocatted money to pave the road, but then they forgot that it won't maintain itself.
I felt rather dumb, being the only one of a dozen who brought hiking sticks and didn't opt in for a porter. Everyone else just walking along, ready for a photo op, and here I am, as unglamorous as can be, click clacking with my sticks up the steep hill and lugging a full size pack.
Perhaps an hour in, the suffocating 97% humidity turns into a steady rain.
This is actually not entirely bad news. The temperature cools off. Mosquitoes are like cats, they hide when there's even a drop. Wet from rain or wet from sweat, rain is actually more pleasant.
But that unmaintained road? It turns into a mud pit.
And now I'm not feeling so dumb anymore. Everyone is slipping and sliding, but I have two extra limbs to keep me upright. By the end of the day, my shoes gained an extra 2 pounds from mud alone.
Camp is actually quite pleasant. Bunks with netting, creating a pleasant cocoon to keep yellow fever away.
Except it's all under one giant roof. And by day 2 some fellow hikers were on the permanent shit list from their snoring escapades during the night.
Other views from day 1:
Day 2: Between the Mud Pits and Poo
Benefits of a trail that starts out in indigenous farmlands? There's beer for sale at every stop.
The cost? Sharing the trail with mules - and navigating over their poo.
Places like this could actually use a faster horse.
Rainy season having just ended, some parts of the trail were just plain pits of mud.
It turns out there are major benefits to being in the same group as the Machu Pichhu girls.
I hike like a mule - I'll carry my load and I'll get there, but I will do it in gear T. T is for turtle.
The Machu Picchus are a bit more like gazelles - so by the time I passed by, the mosquitoes were well fed.
Somewhere 10 miles in - passing through creeks, villages, waterfalls, jungle, and lots and lots of mud, I started thinking that maybe the city actually didn't want to be found, since it was not at all making it easy to get there.
Tonight's accommodations are prison bunks by the river. After a dinner of spaghetti and ketchup (sorry, "tomato sauce"), it's lights out by 8pm for the big day.
I was again reminded of the old jungle anthem I coined a few years back during my camping stint in the Amazon.
"Everything is wet. Nothing will dry."
Day 3: The City that Didn't Stay Lost
There is perhaps no worse feeling than having to put on wet pants - except perhaps when its coupled with a chilly morning at 5am.
Today is mostly vertical and 1200 stairs later, we reach the lost city.
However, as the site is important to the local trives, we have to do a ritual before we are released to explore.
We stand around in a circle, each person to a rock.
The guide gives us some coca leaf in our left hand.
Instead of the typical "make a wish", rather than asking for what you want, he asks us what you want to leave behind.
It's funny how the entire range of answers to this question are entirely different from the former. What would you do if you weren't afraid?
On the way back down, it was my knees that let it be known they should have been left behind.
The weather held out past the treacherous rocks, and then came the downpour.
Very quickly the already rough road turned into an inclined mud pit.
I always skip the mud pits in an obstacle run - I'd hate to lose a shoe and there's no functional reason to ever wade through a mud pit. Turns out I was wrong, and there was a reason to get the extra practice.
I call these the Colombian mud slopes.
Day 4: Back to the beginning
A few noteworthy shots.
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