Day 1
Today we started the trek to the Lost City. We were picked up by the tour group and heralded into the back of an old Land Rover. Our bags were strapped onto the top of the vehicle and we climbed in through the back and sat on opposite sides of the two benches lining the the car. We drove along the road for an hour and then turned off road and drove through the jungle for another hour. The views were gorgeous, just mountain after mountain of lush green forests. We stopped for lunch at the start of the tour, it was a build your own sandwich tray. By home standards, the meat was questionable and I've never before put tartar sauce on a sandwich, but I've learned not to question these things on the road.
We started the hike. I looked at my watch a half an hour into it and thought "I can do this." I was still one of the first in the group. An hour in, I felt the same way. By two hours in, I wanted to die.
There are times every single day that I think "I can do this forever. Maybe I' ll stay more than 5 months," but there are also times every single day when I think "what the the hell did I get myself into? I'm not cut out for this shit." It doesn't matter which comes first, it varies every day.
After our first uphill, I was thinking the latter. The climb seemed endless. Every turn ahead brought hope that we had reached the end, but with every new switchback as I turned the bend the road just continued up. Eventually, we hit the top. Our guides rewarded us with oranges, watermelon, or bananas at the top of the hills.
Today we hiked for a total of 5 hours, but there were plenty of stops in between for snacks and one swimming hole. We were told it would be wet here but we literally didn't make it 150 meters into the jungle before it started raining. We were soaking wet from head to toe. You could have rung out any article of clothing from my body - from the bandanna on my head to my socks. The terrain is incredibly slippery red clay, and our feet dig in inches as we take each step. People are falling all over the place.
We made it to camp and took freezing cold showers, not that I expected any different. showers alone are a luxury up here. Tonight we' re sleeping under a metal roof in hammocks with mosquito nets.
No matter how many times I feel like I got myself in over my head or even how many times I feel like I could do this forever, there's one more recurring feeling I have - the one where I realize that I'm living my dream. And as I lie in my hammock at the end of my first day on the Lost City trek with a mosquito net covering my body, a headlamp on my head, listening to the sounds of the jungle, I feel it. I'm only a few thousand miles from home, but I feel like I'm worlds away. And though I could never have imagined this very moment, it's what I have wanted for 4 years.
Day 2
I counted 40 bug bites this morning. When we woke, everything was just as wet as when we hung it last night. Nothing dries in the jungle. We all put our wet clothes back on, no reason to ruin the dry clothes we have, they'll just be wet in minutes. Within the first hour of the hike I wanted to die, it was pretty much straight uphill. At the top we were rewarded with oranges and the promise that the worst of the day was over. It was.
My muscles were tired today and I fell a bunch of times. Yesterday when I began to slip, my muscles would go into survival mode and catch me before I fell. Today, they were tired and when I slipped, they weren't as fast to catch me. I cut both my legs and my finger today. I lived up to Chris's nickname as the dirty kid, somehow managing to end every day dirtier (and more beat up) than everyone else.
Raphael is a saint. He spent the summer as a camp counselor with a group of 21 fifteen and sixteen year old boys. I think they may have prepared him to deal with me. Today he gave me his hiking stick and stuck with me when I had trouble with the harder parts.
During free time and meal times at the campsites, everyone trades stories of where they've been and horror stories of robbings and insects. Apparently there's a bug that plants maggots inside you when it bites you that requires minor surgery with local anesthesia to remove them. There's also a mosquito that plants bacteria inside of you that can cause sores that look like bullet holes to pop up anywhere on your body. The sores scar forever, but you can get rid of the bacteria with antibiotics. At the camp we stayed at last night, one of the boys from another group woke up with bed bug bites all over his back. If any of those things happen to me, I'm immediately hopping on a flight back to the US.
Day 3
Half way done! I counted 72 bug bites this morning. Again today the first hour was the worst. I completely forgot to bring my inhalers on this trip and I'm having a really tough time breathing on the uphills, and even on the downhills and flat parts it can be difficult to catch my breath. I'm thankful that I haven't smoked a cigarette in the past week, but cursing myself for every one I have ever smoked. I keep telling myself that any time in the future that I want one, I should think of this hike. I honestly don't want to smoke one ever again.
We finish hiking before one every day and have a lot of down time. We spend the entire afternoon reading, napping, playing card games and literally counting down the minutes until 8:30 when we allow ourselves to go to bed.
Day 4
102 bug bites today. We all chose to sleep in the hammocks at the campsite last night. Even though we knew we'd be cold and uncomfortable, we're all paranoid about bed bugs. Today we woke up even earlier, 5:30 and actually reached La Ciudad Perdida. The trek from the camp wasn't very far, but we had to ford a river with a rapid current and once we got there, there were 1200 VERY slippery steps to climb.
The city itself is huge - much bigger than I expected and much too big to explore in one day, let alone the few hours we had.
The ruins are impressive, but not really my thing. I couldn't fully understand what everything was because our guide explained everything in Spanish. The views of the mountains from the top of the city were amazing, though.
Military troops line the city and there's a base on top. In 2003, 8 hikers got kidnapped, so the Colombian government sent in troops to enforce the area. We asked to take pictures of some of the soldiers and they wanted to take ours in return- they don't see many people with blond hair or skin as white as mine.
The way back down the 1200 stairs was terrifying. I slipped a few times before the guide, Juan Carlos, decided he would hold my hand the whole way down. I cried the entire way. My fear of heights coupled with the fear of FALLING OFF the side of the mountain made me dizzy and made my legs shake. I couldn't even force myself to look past my next step the majority of the time.
I've faced a lot of my fears on this hike. We spent so much time walking on the cliffs of mountains with paths no more than two feet wide. If you trip, which I did many times, and fall the wrong way, you could fall right off the moutain - sometimes 30 ft, sometimes hundreds - most ending up in the rushing river.
The river is lined with massive boulders - some so big they wouldn't even fit in my apartment. The trees are so old - some as wide as cars - with roots that can come out of the ground and look like boulders. They remind me of the movie Jumanji when the roots grow so big they engulf the house.
I finally put on new clothes today, but it didn't matter. We crossed two rivers and went swimming in two more. My clothes smell terrible. Everything smells damp and gross. The only good thing is that everyone else smells just as bad.
Day 5
We're done! We started hiking at about 6:30 this morning and finished around 1. Last night I was so tired I couldn't even wait until 8:30 to go to sleep. I slept with scrunchies around my ankles tying the ends of my pants down so that the bugs couldn't bite me, but somehow those little fuckers managed to get me. This mornings bug bite tally, 174, every single one on my legs. I also have at least one cut or bruise from each day in the jungle, my battle wounds as I've been calling them.
Today was tough. By 9:30 we had hiked all of what we hiked on day 2. We had two serious uphills, both through muddy clay. One was an hour, the other 40 minutes. The only thing that kept me going was knowing I was getting out of the jungle today. At our last swimming hole, we put on our "clean" clothes. And by clean, I mean the clothes we've been wearing the past 4 nights. The clothes that are more clean and more dry than anything else.
Today is really sunny and as we were coming out of the jungle, shade was rare. We did a massive amount of downhills today which made me realize how hard the first day must have been. I remember it being hard, but I don't think that I would have the energy to climb that amount on day 5 - especially with the heat and the sun from today, we were lucky to do it in the rain.
Everything hurts. Every pain distracts from a different one. My shoulders are rubbed raw from my pack, but the infection on my finger helps me forget. The bruises on both knees help me forget about how much my bug bites itch, which I forget about when I think about how much my feet hurt, which seems insignificant when I concentrate on the blister on my foot that's about 7 layers deep.
But finally, we made it. Seven of us from the trek are all checking into Casa Benjamin in Taganga tonight, and all nine of us are going out to celebrate and meeting up with the four people from the other Lost City group. Time to party. We deserve it.
Photos:
#1 My nasty bug bitten legs
#2 My shoes after the first day of the trek
#3 Our camp the first night
#4 Group photo
#5 Me in front of a waterfall at campsite #3
#6 Raph and I looking down at La Ciudad Perdida
#7 The beginning of the 1200 steps to the Lost City
#8 Me posing at campsite #2
#9 Jungle scenery
amazing, Rach!
ReplyDeleteRachael, I am so proud of you! I don't know if I could do what you are doing!
ReplyDeleteLove, Cyndi