Our Great Adventure: Ciudad Perdida Trek / Santa Marta to Camp de Alfredo Day 321 05/08/2015

Luckily the music stopped fairly early and we both had a good night's sleep. We were up early to pack our bags and rucksacks and get ready for our four day trek to Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City. After a nice breakfast at Casa Amani we left our bags there and headed to Expoturs office, who we had booked to do the trek with. There we met our 8 fellow trekkers and our guide, Gabriel. Ciudad Perdida was 'lost' for around 400 years. It was built by the Tairona people around AD 700 to 800 (6 centuries before Machu Picchu) and was once a 2000 strong township of potters and farmers. They remained here until the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the late 16th century bringing with them Catholicism, syphilis and smallpox. The city is high on the hillside in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range. The site was abandoned and all but forgotten until the mid 1970's when looters discovered the city complete with burial plots filled with treasures. It's a 2.5 day walk to get there from the nearest road. Cleared of narco traffickers and rebel armies since 2005 it's now a popular trek. We all packed into the tour companies jeep and headed off just after 1000 to the start of the trail in El Mamey, initially on a paved road before heading up into the jungle on a dirt track. Along the way we picked up our cook for the trek and stopped for lunch just before turning off the main road. In El Mamey, a small hamlet with a number of restaurants and not a lot else, we met Sergio, our translator. By now the temperature had increased as had the humidity and we were starting to wonder what we had signed up for! After a short wait whilst Gabriel and the cook sorted out our provisions we set off through the hamlet, stopping by a park sign for Gabriel to explain the route to us before continuing on a sandy path. We walked alongside a river and soon stopped at our first swimming pool. Although we'd not been going for long we were glad of the rest and both took advantage of a dip in the cold waters. From here it was uphill, steep and in the full heat of the day. We were all soaked with the humidity, dripping and puce in colour when we reached the first top and took advantage of the little shack that sold Gatorade. After a short break we continued on with more uphill until we finally reached the summit, drained and exhausted. Gabriel produced a huge watermelon from his bag and we were all delighted by it's juiciness, not concentrating too much on what happened to the seeds. Luckily from here it was mainly down hill to our first camp, a collection of tin-roofed huts on the edge of a steep valley, where we arrived just after 1700. A lot of the dense jungle had been previously cultivated to grow cocaine and was now used by the local indigenous tribes to grow crops or for cattle. The camp had showers and we all took advantage of the opportunity to wash off some of the day's sweat and dirt and change into dryer clothes. We selected our hammocks for the night and wondered how much sleep we would actually get. Not long after 1800 it went black, pitch black with the only light pollution coming from a few bulbs in our camp. Just after 1930 we had dinner and were in our hammocks by 2030, exhausted.