Adventures with a Belly

So... we're back. School began on August 1st (for teachers) and classes were already in full swing again as of this past week. It was a short summer break by the usual educational standards, but we definitely made the most of it. There are more blog entries on individual places to come, but for now, I thought you'd enjoy a peek at some of the highlights.

Every adventure has it's own flavour, and this time around it was traveling the country while being five to six months pregnant. Our little Colombian/Canadian will be born here in Armenia, Quindio sometime in the last week of October. Everything looks good so far, and our doctor here assures us that he/she is healthy and growing fast! So far, it has been a pretty easy pregnancy, and I certainly didn't lie around with my feet up during our vacation. It was also a unique experience staying in backpacker hostels as a pregnant lady. Those young, fresh-faced 20 year olds don't really know what to make of someone who takes in adventure tours with a side of gestation instead of a six-pack of the local brew.

It has been a treat meeting Colombians while pregnant. Everyone is enthralled with the idea that a foregin couple have come to live in Colombia and like it enough to stay and have a kid here. The Colombian staff at school are delighted with my growing belly. Most conversations take place while they are rubbing my belly, or even giving it the occasional kiss hello. (So far, the kissing of the belly has been restricted to matronly members of the cleaning staff. While my sense of personal space has deminished to almost zero, I will draw the line if the soccer coach tries that one.)

During July our travels took us to Bucaramanga, Chicamocha park, San Gil (the adventure capital of Colombia), Villa de Leyva, the Amazon, Bogota, the Tatacoa desert near Neiva, San Agustin and Popayan. It was essentially a loop of the Eastern part of the country with some long bus trips (we flew to the Amazon) and spectacular scenery. Colombia continues to astound me with how beautiful it is. Before I discovered I was pregnant, our original plan had been to head south to Peru and Ecuador. Now, I'm glad that we took the time to see more of Colombia because everywhere we went was completely different from our travels in December.

Enjoy the slideshow. If you click on "Show Info" in the top right bar, you'll see some descriptions of where we are.

A photo tour of our walk home...

Yes, it's true that until recently we hadn't updated the blog in ages. My apologies on that one. A considerable part of the delay has been getting the photos organized, which was my job. We've been posting some stories from six months ago and we're currently out traveling again for the month of July so there will be more stories from around Colombia soon. But for now, I thought it would be fun to show you a "photo journal" taken during a walk home from school. It's an hour or so to walk home (depending on how long you delay with the camera) and since the weather is exactly the same now as it has been all year, these photos could have been taken virtually at any time. Here we go...

View outside my classroom door

 I'm starting at the beginning. Let's assume that you've donned your good walking shoes along with me and we're just about to leave my classroom. Our first move is to head out into the corridor that connects the high school classrooms. Our school has many different sections, but Dan and I are both in "C block", which is near the main entrance. Some classrooms have their own little building, whereas others are a part of a section of classrooms attached to one another. None of the corridors are indoors, although there are a few covered walkways.

Wave... we're passing the school futbol field. It looks like there is a game on, but that's not unusual. I think this is the senior boys playing an intramural game. "Extrasports" take place twice a week after school, but the field is used almost all times during lunch and recess too. Just up from the field is the school "tienda" and "kiosk", which is the school snackbar and the nearby shelter. Once a week I need to be the policewoman in charge of keeping kids in line at the tienda during lunch hour. Once a semester I'm on tienda duty at recess for a week. It's a particularly loathed job. Perhaps if I charged a tithe for letting the kids join the line....

Pretty nice view for a futbol field

The Kiosk and Tienda (Primary school in the background)

Dan and Monica

Here we are at Dan's classroom. Our classrooms are fairly simplistic. At least Dan has a space for hanging student work at the back of his room to make it a little prettier. There isn't much else in them besides a whiteboard and desks.

Monica has arrived to clean the classroom for him. She and a team of capable ladies come in each day to sweep the floor, wash the desks and take out the garbage. Monica also makes the staff coffee in the morning and is unbelievably nice. She gave us both big hugs on our way out the door. The height difference between Dan and Monica is cause for great amusement among our coworkers.

Almost away... we're just reaching the school parking lot and out the front entrance. As we leave the school grounds you can see the bus coming to pick up the teachers after school. We ride this bus to school each morning (pick up is at 6:35am at our door) and take it home again in the evenings (drop off is along the main street in our neighbourhood).

Although schedules are fairly flexible in all things Colombian, the bus is pretty good at leaving with 10 minutes of when it is meant to. It makes things very convenient.

Here comes the bus to pick up the teachers after school

Just down the road from our school is a dairy farm. We see these cows every day. The calving season was last fall and depending on which side of the bus you were sitting you might actually get to see a birth. I missed it several times, but we did gawk at the baby calves once they were roaming around. It's hard to describe just how close this is to our school. The field of cows borders one side of the school property and is close enough that in the middle-school classrooms cows occasionally come right up to the window. One of our fellow English teachers was reading a story to her grade 7 class when a cow stuck it's head right next to the window to "listen". Madness ensued and the story had to be abandoned because the students were so distracted. Earlier this year, a cow was mooing all day and students tried to use the cow as a thin excuse to disrupt my class. One burst in and shouted that it was stuck upside down in the river and that I should hop the fence and "help it". When I asked them just how I was going to be able to assist a full-grown cow to its feet, they responded by saying "but you're a Biology teacher, so you must know how to help it." Occasionally, the cows block the road and the bus must crawl along at the cow's pace. The picture of the blocked bus is from a different day, but you get the idea.

Next to the cows is a farm called "Irlandia". All of the farms, or fincas, have names, often country names or women's names. We've seen a finca called "Canada" and another called "China" in our area, but many are "Eden" or '"Paradiso". This particular finca has three large protective german shepards. When you start past the farm them bound over silently like a pack of wolves, then begin to viciously bark their heads off. One of them is very taken with the baby cows next door. We see him from the bus sometimes sitting with his head through the fence just watching the calves in the pasture protectively.

Finally, we've reached the highway. The view of the mountains is especially nice when the weather is clear. There are occasionally views of the snowy peaks near Manizales in the distance. Our school is notable enough (or perhaps it's just that the region is small enough) to have it's own sign directing traffic off the highway. "Gim. ingles" refers to Gimnasio Ingles, the "English Gym/School" as it would be translated.

Along this stretch of highway is the club district. There are a string of bars and concert halls here, most notably "Mariajuana", which is next door to the "House of Pleasure". While I haven't been to either, maybe it's about time I went. They are tremendously popular among the aguardiente-swilling reggaeton-loving crowd, which is to say, nearly everyone.

Continue down the highway and there are a few rural sights to take in. As you can see in the photo, the cows here are very talented. This one is showing off his dextrous tongue. Many of the roadside shops also feature lovely wickerware. You can get an entire living room set, a cradle, a variety of vases and wicker decorations to put in them... If there's anything you ever considered making out of plant fibre, these are the countryfolk for the job.

Thou shalt buy gasoline!

The gas stations around here are particularly blessed.

Just a little further along and we reach Dan's favourite mural. It's next to a mountaintop beach volleyball court, filled with sand and surrounded by a net so that your ball doesn't plummet into the valley during the game.

It's also possible at this point to take a little rest along the local art if you like. It's carved into the side of the road but don't be fooled into thinking that it's ancient. The local water company sponsored it as an advertisement and I just cut the logo out of the frame.

We've been walking for about 30 minutes now and we're reaching the edge of Armenia proper. You can tell because the housing developments have started to crop up. There's also a miltary base here, guarded by 19 year olds with machine guns doing their mandatory two year stint.

Our first real sign of civilization is the Juan Valdez Cafe. More than just an ad campaign from the 80s, Juan Valdez is a national icon symbolizing the local coffee growers. It's not that different from a Starbucks in feel... expensive coffee, over-priced coffee accoutrement, apparel featuring Juan Valdez and his donkey in various stylish colours. It was a particularly funny moment when we first learned of the Juan Valdez Cafe at the beginning of the school year.  During our first staff meeting, our principal was stressing the importance of being strict with the school uniform. "The students must always be wearing the school sweater, no Juan Valdez sweaters allowed..." Dan and I had looked at one another with a puzzled look-- just how hillybilly were these kids? "Really?" Dan asked, "they will wear a Juan Valdez sweater, like a wool poncho, to school?" Our principal was confused, then burst out laughing, shortly joined by the Colombian staff when he translated what he'd asked. We passed it off as an intentional joke as smoothly as we could.

 Our neighbourhood is the nicest one in the city. It's a good thing it isn't hard to navigate because the street signs leave something to be desired. The government erected them a few years ago, but no one has gotten around to putting names on them yet. They blankly inform you that you're at the corner of green and green.

The Mall (including Super Almacen Olympica - similar to a Superstore)

 Once you are on the main street, you'll find the mall, many little restaurants, a few drinking establishments and a smattering of trendy clothing shops. One of the local restaurants, Hamburgeusa La Abuela (Grandma's Burgers), reflects our changing opinions of the local fast food. When we first arrived, I remember being interested in checking out the local Hamburguesas. It's vastly popular, with plastic chairs and tables spilling out on to the street during the evening and a constant rotation of rowdy hamburger-loving Colombians. I've yet to see it empty during business hours. There's a peculiar smell that comes from the burgers, which I initially thought might be a good one. Some of the other teachers and I decided to check it out in our first couple of weeks in Armenia. When my burger actually arrived it was buried beneath a mountain of sauces. Ketchup, rosada (which is just mayo and ketchup already mixed), a mayo-based herb sauce and pinapple sauce obscured the patty alongside a dusting of potato chip bits. The hamburger itself was a bizarre blend of meats. Is it beef and saugage mixed? There's a sweet, offalish flavour to the burger. These days, I sometimes cross the street now to escape the smell of the cooking "hamburgers".


Fortunately, there are other, much tastier, options in our neighbourhood. One of my favourites is the mini-empanada man. Just outside the hospital gates, this elderly gentleman carts over an entire oven and sets up shop for the day. I assume there is an extension cord somewhere in the bushes behind the hospital fence that he uses to plug it in, perhaps in exchange for an empanada bribe. There he sits, beneath a large umbrella, as he makes dozens of tiny bite-sized empanadas filled with sweet guava jam. They're only 200 pesos each (10 cents) and he always throws in an extra one for free. Even if you're not buying a snack, he's a great character to say hello to because you'll always get back a stream of pleasantries: "Buenos dias! Como estan? Bien? Me alegro!"

Further along the street is the stuffed arepa lady. Although certainly more camera shy that the empanada-man, her arepas are delicious. What a boon when we discovered these! Heading home with no real prospects for dinner? Some of these arepas are dense enough to be a meal in themselves. An arepa is Colombia's answer to the tortilla, although it is much thicker and more crumbly than a Mexican tortilla. The stuffed arepas have a variety of options inside them... all meat centric, as you would expect. One of the best is the mixed arepa with beef, chicken, cheese and chicharron (fried pig fat). Health conscious, no? Delicious, yes!







At last, we are on our street. On the way, you absolutely have to stop and smell the frangipani. It has a sweet fragrance that reminds me of the South Pacific islands. Most days, Dan holds down a branch so I can take in its perfume on the walk. Leonel, our doorman, is on the step when we arrive. We're home!

Our Street

Leo hanging out on the doorstep

Back in Paisa Country – The Manizales Feria

Our last stop on our vacation was in Manizales for their annual feria, where we lucky enough to housesit for our friends Brett and Heather while they were out of town. Manizales is only a couple of hours from Armenia and it has much the same culture. After trekking through the jungle, sunning on the Caribbean coast, and hanging out in the big cities like Medellin, it was time to come back to the countryside.

The evening we got in, we parked ourselves on our hosts’ couch and watched some TV, which, on a Thursday night in Manizales, was a little thin. There were some B-list Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish we gave a miss. Then we tried to watch some Colombian Telenovelas (soap operas) with men with gargantuous mullets and women with gravity-defying buttocks, but our Spanish still wasn’t good enough to really understand what was going on beyond the “you slept with my sister, you bastard” by-line. Finally we settled on a local channel which was a sort of a dog show for cattle farmers. It was simply endless footage of men parading bulls and cows across a field. Each cow and it’s owner were filmed from three successive angles, so that you could appreciate the fullness of the cow’s haunch, and info on the age, breed, and weight of each cow was displayed at the bottom of the screen. The best part was the techno dance soundtrack that was overlaid on top with a tempo that matched the cows’ brisk pace. We were clearly close to home.

The next day, we went and saw a bull fight, which is the central attraction of the feria in Manizales. The ring filled up fast, everyone had a hat on and was drinking rum out of leather wine-skins. It was just like Hemingway. We saw three fighters, Juan Mora, Luis Bolivar, and the undisputed favourite, Manuel Jesus “El Cid”. They fought two bulls each, but it was more fancy execution performance art than fighting. You had to feel sorry for the bull, running around and getting aggravated and stabbed by various people in sparkly costumes. Every once in a while, the bull would get the upper hand and bonk someone over, but the Spaniards always managed to get up again.

There was a whole team of men for each bull, some with capes to exasperate and tire him out, some with little frilly harpoons to stick in his back, some on armoured horses with pikes. Once the bull was bleeding thoroughly and getting tired, the Torero would come out and play with the bull with his sword and red cape. In between making the bull run circles around him, he would dance, mince little steps, waggle his finger at the bull, lean back and present his great pants bulge, etc. The crowd was really into it and shouted “Olé” compulsively. Eventually, once the bull was looking really the worse for wear, the Torero would pull out his sword and bury it in the bull’s back. If his aim was really good, it would hit the bull’s heart and the bull would stand there for a second while the Torero stroked its head and then made it fall down with his intense stare. If he missed, then they had to bleed it a bit more before he killed it with another sword in its brain stem. It didn’t seem as brutal after the first one died, and besides, most of the people in the crowd looked like they slaughtered bulls all the time anyway. 

One of the bulls got to live. The last bull had this habit of sitting down, which was a sign of defeat I suppose. After the Torero had made the bull dance and dance for ages, the bull started running away from him. Finally, he chased the bull out of the ring to great roars of approval from the crowd. I don’t think the testicles of those bulls are as prized as the others.

Medellin (A flashback to our Christmas Vacation)

     Medellin is a gigantic valley surrounded by mountains. The city centre is where all the nice neighbourhoods and malls are (like the fancy one our hostel was in), and up the slopes of the mountains with the incredible views is where all the poor people live. It’s sort of the opposite of how North American cities are laid out, but the roads and the slopes make everything really inaccessible, so no one ever really wanted to live up there, I suppose.

     Medellin is one of those cities in Colombia that has had a really amazing turn around in the last 20 years. I just read a book about the violence through the 80`s and 90`s and how Medellin was at the centre of so much drug terror. The violence was not quite the street gang petty drug trade that it is in North America, it was more about the army working with large producers of cocaine to assassinate whole political parties who wanted to legislate tougher laws against them. They also planted bombs in public places just to remind everyone who was in charge. Now, Medellin is all cleaned up, crime is a tiny fraction of what it was before, and they even have a fancy subway and a huge mall with an ice-skating rink, the true sign that a city has made it on the international stage.

     

     There is a brand new cable car commuter line that goes up the mountain slopes to the poor neighbourhoods. It`s strange because the people on it are either rich tourists who are going to see the view and come right down again, or very poor people who have to get to work. The sights are incredible and justify all the ear-popping. Medellin is almost entirely constructed out of reddish brown brick, so the valley looks like a big earthenware bowl.

    We went to an art museum that heavily featured Fernando Botero, who was born in Medellin. He insists that the people, horses, cats, buildings, cakes, and fruit in his paintings and sculptures are not “fat,” but instead “voluminous,” and “sensuous.” One of his most famous ones is a painting of Pablo Escobar getting machine-gunned to death on a Medellin rooftop. Pablo Escobar was actually fat in real life, so I don’t see too much artistic licence here.

     From mid-December to mid-January, along the canal through the center of town, there is a massive display of Christmas lights. They build enormous dioramas that are big enough to walk through out of cellophane and wire frames and string them with millions of lights. They tell various Christmas stories and legends. On top of a hill in the middle of town, they constructed a 40 foot high nativity scene, complete with an elephant-sized baby Jesus that is visible all over the city. Along the canal was a solid kilometre and a half of stands selling toys and souvenirs, barbequed corn, grilled meat, hot dogs (perros calientes), arepas, sweets, ice-cream, and gallons and gallons of cheap liquor and beer. At the end there was a fountain light show.

     One night, we went to a salsa club. We were invited by a guy from Ottawa we met at the hostel who had been invited himself by a Colombian girl. They had a live band and we were crammed into a tiny space with a crowd that must have doubled the fire code (if they have that here). Actually, it was a bit contentious to call it a salsa club, as most of the dancing consisted of hugging and squeezing to the left and right a few inches. The band was fantastic. They even had a local Medellin micro-brew beer for sale with hops in it that tasted like something I would pay money for in Vancouver. Ahhhhh!

I LOVE mud

Surrounded. Supported. Utterly relaxed. If I ever have to take a long uncomfortable space voyage in hibernation, I want to be packed in mud.

Fifty kilometres outside of Cartagena is El Totumo, a 15 metre high volcano filled with mud. You can book a day trip to visit the volcano from most of the hostels in town, though it is listed as “Mad Volcano Tour” (which is true in the slang sense of the word, but more likely is a misspelling of the word “mud”). Legend has it that the volcano used to spew lava and ash like a proper little volcano, until a priest exorcised it’s demons through the liberal use of holy water, turning its insides to mud.

At first glance, the volcano is a disappointment. Rising straight out of the parking lot is a large mud cone with a set of wooden steps up the side. Around it is nothing but cars, busses and ramshackle snack shops. Clad only in our bathing suits, we joined the long line of tourists on the steps waiting for their dip in the mud.

Once we reached the top we were presented with a different view entirely. The centre of the volcano is about the size of a large hot tub, reinforced with wooden planks at the edges and with a small wooden ladder to enter or exit the mud. Inside was a seething mass of humanity, all transformed into horrible slate-grey monsters from the slick coating of mud. I was entranced. Once covered in the mud, people ceased to be recognizable from one another. Their bathing suits, now the same colour as everything else and plastered to their bodies, made them appear naked. It didn’t help that some people had taken globs of thicker mud from the edge of the volcano and given themselves false noses or horns. Dan said to me “this looks like a vision of hell.” But unlike an imagined hell, everyone was hooting with delight, slapping the surface of the mud and squirming around one another gleefully.

As I descended the steps into the mud, I was shocked as how perfectly smooth and creamy the body-temperature mud was. I laid down on the surface, my head cradled in the softest pillow imaginable. Every spot on my body was completely supported with the same even pressure on all sides. Because the mud is so dense, it is impossible to sink in it. While lying on the surface of the mud, you were exactly half in and half out of the mud. If you were hovering vertically, the mud supported you at exactly chest level. Suspended, I reached down with my toes as far as I could. Yup, this was a bottomless mud pit, or at least, a mud pit that extended down to the ground and beneath.

It’s rare to encounter a physical sensation that is so wholly unique. I tried placing my limbs in a variety of different positions, and no matter what position they were in I was completely and utterly relaxed. The mud did all the work to keep you in place. Maybe it’s meant to have therapeutic minerals, but I think the real “healing power” of the mud is the delight you feel while being embraced by it.

A dip in the nearby lake afterwards transformed us back into regular flesh-and-blood humans, but even suspended in water, there’s a sense of gravity that can’t compare to the weightlessness of mud.   

History lessons in Cartagena

Cartagena's Old city - a typical street corner

At 500 years, Cartagena is as old as it gets in this Hemisphere. We were very impressed, despite the scoffing of our Belgian friend, Glen, who kept reminding us that the church in his hometown had been around for two centuries before the city was even founded. There is an old city right on the water that is surrounded by a big wall you can walk along, and sprawling out from it are various barrios, one of which, Bocagrande, is basically a bunch of nice hotels and sky scrapers sitting on a jut of beach. 

The old city is where all the fun is, crammed with very old cathedrals, cobblestone squares, and neat colonial buildings with balconies hanging over the street. It’s like the big city in a pirate movie. Actually, more than a few pirates had their way with the place because of all the gold and slaves that came through here in the 16^th , 17^th, and 18^th, centuries; hence the walls. In its heyday, it was an extremely rich place, as you can see from the grandiose structures and the huge noble houses with big, cool door knockers. You can see it all quickly and conveniently by hiring a horse and buggy to take you around for $20, which we did.

$15... and worth every penny

Cartagena is also one of the most expensive towns in South America. We were feeling a bit tight, so we went to the neighbourhood where all the workmen and freed slaves used to live (where all the cheap backpacker hostels are now) and found the cheapest hotel in all of Cartagena. It was only about 15 bucks for the room, and it was the dankest and dingiest habitation I’ve ever seen. The bathroom was a thin sliding door leading to a toilet with no seat and a spigot in the wall for a shower. The towel rack was a rusty nail in the wall. The walls were green, but the paint had darkened with moisture and it rubbed off on anything that touched it. It was completely dark save a crack in one of the walls that got some light from the kitchen and a single naked light bulb. The smell of mold pervaded everything. Personally I thought it was fine, especially when we woke up the first morning without a single bedbug bite. Score!

Outside of the walls is an enormous fort called San Felipe de Barajas where we spent a few hours in the middle of the day under the blistering sun (yes Mom, I remembered my hat and sunscreen). It is extremely imposing looking, and the idea of it was to scare the hell out all the bloodthirsty pirates that at the time were regularly waltzing into Cartagena, shovelling the gold into big wheelbarrows and sailing off into the sunset. We took an English audio tour, which was really fun, because it had a man with a cheesy public television voice and the sound effects of trumpets, cannon fire and men dying slowly of yellow fever. In addition to long lectures about escarpments, bastions, turrets, and the physics of 18^th century cannoneering worthy of Tristram Shandy, the tour also had creepy parts where you walked through some underground tunnels and heard the sounds of desperate garrison men leaping out from the shadows to bayonet you. 

 We went around and saw a few museums of note. The palace of the Inquisition had lots of real torture instruments and displays with men in black hoods and axes. They also had a questionnaire to determine if you were a witch hanging next to the rack. The first question, “How long have you been a witch?” really made it clear how things were going to end.

We also visited a church / museum dedicated to San Pedro Claver, who came up with the revolutionary idea that black people had souls. Now he is the patron saint of Colombia, and also the patron saint of African Americans, though you would think they could have found an African American to fill the job. They have his bones in a glass case under the altar in the church. The highlight though, was really our guide, William. He was 82, spoke English very well, and had been conducting tours at the church and museum for 60 years. He showed us the chair especially built for the pope to sit on when he visited, and various school rooms and legends about the saint. He finished every statement by loudly saying “Do you understand that!?” in what sounded like a New York Jew accent. Of course, the few times we answered in the negative, he sort of ignored us and continued the tour. I don’t think his hearing was the best. Also, he had the hugest schnozz I’ve ever laid eyes on. It stuck way out and then drooped down like it was melting in the heat. Maybe he was a New York Jew after all. 

Dan and William - a shared love of history and fashion

If you would like to see more pictures... Lisa made a little slideshow on Flickr that you can click on below. After you have clicked to start the slideshow, you can click the button with the arrows pointing outwards from the centre to make it full screen. Once in full screen mode, click on the "show info" button to see titles and descriptions for the photos.

Finding the lost city – Our trek to La Ciudad Perdida

Our ride up to the start of the hike

Finding the lost city isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes three days trekking up and over mountains, crossing waist-deep rivers and clambering over slippery rocks to reach it. Then, when your blisters have burst and the infections have really started to set in, it takes another three days to get back.

This was how we spent the first six days of our winter vacation—not including the 30 hours it took to get to the north coast of Colombia on a bus with its air conditioner set at “Arctic”. For this blog entry I’ve included excerpts from my journal, which I wrote in each night of the trek by flashlight. Be warned... it’s a long tale, but the journey just got better as we went along.

Day 1 – First night in a hammock

Our beds

I’ve never slept all night in a hammock before. With the white mosquito net reflecting back my headlamp it’s a little claustrophobic, like being stuffed into a mesh bag, but it is more comfortable than I thought it would be. My blanket is made of pink fleece with a cartoon character decorating the front. Dan is sleeping in the hammock next to me, as are the rest of the 20 people on our trek. We’re all strung up in our cocoons beneath a corrugated tin roof on the edge of a lovely mountain view. There is running water from the river nearby –I can hear it rushing faintly in the distance—with pipes for showering, flush toilets and a great big dinner prepared by our guide on the wood burning stoves at this camp. Such luxuries!

Today’s hike was tough but good. Yes, we only hiked for about five hours total, but I sweated like a pig going up and down the first of the mountains we’re crossing over the next five days. I yelled to Dan on one of the downhill sections, “Remind me to go back in time and getting in shape for this hike, will you?” If only it were that simple. I took precautions against eventual blisters but to no avail. I haven’t worn these boots in almost a year and when I took them off to cross the first river, it was already too late. I’ve got big red loonie-sized blisters on each heel, but they aren’t too painful so far. It’ll have to be duct tape tomorrow. 

A refreshing treat... thanks burro!

The trail is wider than I thought it would be and we’ve had several days without rain so the mud is mostly dry. The ground is made of clay in many places and one of the downhill stretches had us hiking in a crevice of red, orange, pink and white. There are so many colours, all churned into crests and valleys by the last rainfall and all the trekkers. In some places the clay was so deeply coloured that it appeared purple. It’s firm enough to stand on, but still smooth enough on the surface to slide along it. At one point it felt like we were walking over the tips of waves in a sea of ground meat. Dan said it was more like we were giants and jumping over the tops of the mesas in New Mexico. I like his image better.

The heat today was intense and felt I was being beaten to a pulp by the sun and the trail. At the top of the biggest uphill, one of our guides cracked out a fresh watermelon and a pineapple, which he deftly carved up for the group with his machete. So that’s what was in the sack perched atop the foremost donkey...   

Our group, while a mixed bag of nationalities and ages, seems nice for the most part. Tomorrow we continue onwards and cross a few deeper rivers. Hopefully I will be able to keep up a bit better as the hike continues.

View from our first big climb

Day 2 – How cocaine is made and a glimpse of blue

What trip to Colombia is complete without the requisite lesson in cocaine production? When we woke this morning, one of the locals had hiked to the camp and asked if any of us would like to see a “cocaine factory” for an extra fee. While we paid clearly paid too much as our fee, most of the group was too curious to pass it up.

Our cocaine producer guide led us off the trail for about ten minutes to a small shack by the river with a roof was made of black plastic. Beneath it was several bags of white powder, a pile of leaves and many plastic bottles with liquids of various colours and consistencies.

“This demonstration is in the name of education”, the guide explained in slow, clear Spanish. “This is so that everyone knows what terrible things go into cocaine so that they won’t take it.” Right.

There were quite a few steps, but our demonstrator had laid it out like a cooking show, with the product of the first step standing by in a dirty plastic bottle ready for the next part of the demo. As we hunched under the tarp, he explained how the leaves are crushed into a paste, a strong base is added (lye perhaps?), they are crushed further, a small amount of sulphuric acid is added to the paste, then the product is distilled in gasoline. My scientific background came in useful with some of the terms, but others were a little more confusing. I have no doubt that he was using the real thing, based on the smells emanating from the product and the reactions that took place.

After the distillation in gasoline, he added caustic soda to neutralize the solution and what I think was potassium permanganate. This left a dark brown precipitate in the bottom of the plastic cup. The professor on Gillian’s Island had nothing on this guy. Who needs a filter, funnel or flask when you have a cloth strung between a wooden frame of sticks? Once the brown solids were trapped in the filter, this left a clear yellowish liquid, to which he added more caustic soda, turning it white and opaque, like milk. The white powder suspended in it, once the liquid was filtered away, was crude cocaine. From this point, he explained, it is taken to a “kitchen” and goes through another eight steps to become the final product. He scooped it up in a spoon and offered it to the group to rum on their gums. Although I declined, it apparently tasted of gasoline and turned your mouth numb for half an hour.

Our demonstrator allowed us to take pictures of the process, but not of his face. I did ask to take a picture of his baseball cap, a huge American eagle head atop a US flag. The irony of this image countered with thoughts of Plan Colombia was too perfect. Sadly, he refused.

How it's made...

 

A shallow river crossing

After our educational experience, the trek went progressively deeper and deeper into the jungle. While we had clear sights of the mountain vistas around us yesterday, today we began to feel more closed in by the dense vegetation around us. We crossed a set of rapids that was waist-deep at one point. The guides refused to let us carry our own bags across and set up a rope to hold on to during the crossing. The water is quite cold but a nice change from the sweltering heat. We were already soaked with sweat before the crossing, so it simply washed away the sweat and replaced it with river water until you could saturate it with your bodily fluids again.

There are now huge vines hanging down around us and the mosquitoes and small flies have become more numerous. I don’t really feel them, but I’m sure I’ve been bitten hundreds of times already. I’m beginning to understand what my students must have felt like on the hike to Garibaldi Park last year because I’m at the edge of my comfort zone. The hike itself isn’t so hard, but I’m finding it tough to keep up with the rest of the group. My blisters are ripping open more with each step and one started to ooze a thick yellow liquid when I took off my boots this evening. More little blisters have popped up around the first two. Tonight we are in bunk beds with mosquito nets and I’m getting to bed early.

I may be the slowest hiker in this group, but I’ve taken it as an opportunity to really look at what we’re hiking through. Before coming to Colombia, one of my goals was to see a Blue Morpho butterfly in the wild. They are huge (picture a small bird, not a butterfly) with enormous iridescent blue wings. Just when the hike was getting me down this afternoon, one flitted out of jungle, circled me once on the path and disappeared into the wilds on the other side. Incredible. Would I have seen it if I’d been with the 20 year olds charging down the path at the front? Probably not.

Day 3 – Real Indiana Jones stuff

We were up early this morning to make our third camp before the rains came. While the group tends to hike quickly on the trail, we’re really only hiking for the first half of the day and we spend the rest of the time hanging out at the camp, playing cards and eating magnificent suppers. The donkeys couldn’t follow us over today’s rough trail, so the guides and porters must have carried it. My respect for these men is immense.  Their ability to hike is unparalleled and they have helped us each step of the way. During the tough parts, our guide, Ali, runs ahead, then lends a hand until each person is across before running ahead to the next difficult section. He’s got a good sense of humour too. Each day he begins with “Vamos a la playa!” (Let’s go to the beach!) to get us moving, but he clearly knows what he’s doing and has our safety in mind.

The trail was incredible. We scrambled along the edge of the rapids and up and over slippery rocks. We clumsily manoeuvred fallen trees and inched along in places where the trail was less than a foot wide with a drop to the river stretching below us. One of our fellow hikers, an older gentleman from Ireland, found me a walking stick, and it saved me from a tumble frequently. Everywhere is dense, dank jungle. The wide trail from the first day is gone. Now it’s a hint of a path that could have you squeezing through a rock crevice as well as dodging banana trees.

We’ve encountered a number of Kogi people on the trail and passed a small village used for ceremonies yesterday. They live in the mountains exclusively and maintain their traditions despite the nearness of a village of Colombians with electricity and stereos pumping Reggaeton music. I don’t imagine we foreigners make a very impressive picture. On the trail my face is beet red, I’m sweating profusely, covered in flecks of mud and swatting at mosquitoes as I thump along. The Kogi women and girls who pass me in their bright white wraps move silently and efficiently on bare feet with cool, impassive faces. Many are either carrying babies, leading pigs or burdened with heavy sacks without a bead of sweat dampening their brows or sticking their straight black hair to their foreheads. Who belongs here, really?

A Kogi woman and her child

A Kogi girl who watched us at our second camp

At one point in the hike we stopped and took a swim in one of the rivers. While we were swimming, one of the guides emptied his pack containing three two-litre bottles of Coca-cola and individually wrapped chocolate sponge cakes for each of us. It felt so strange and wrong to be consuming such commercial products this far into the jungle. Yes, I accepted the sugar rush as readily as everyone else, but wouldn’t it have made more sense for us to have eaten the bananas around us? Is it worth the effort of carrying all that weight so far into the jungle? I haven’t taken many pictures of the Kogi people we’ve encountered. I feel like a too-privileged trespasser in my sturdy boots and with my backpack of clothes, but drinking Coke in the jungle just made me feel stupid.

Tonight it’s very cool and I’m wearing all the dry clothes that I have. Our beds are tents set up in a wooden shelter instead of mosquito nets. Our camp is near a gorgeous waterfall. Tomorrow, we get up early to make the final climb.

Relaxing at our third campsite

One of our excellent suppers - All this carried in and cooked on the fire

Dan climbs some of the 1200 steps

Day 4 – Highs and Lows

We reached the lost city this morning. The view was stunning. Huge green mountain peaks extended all around us. I tried to breathe it all in and hold it inside me so that I wouldn’t forget it. The city is a series of round platforms that once held a sacred Tairona village.

After we had looked around, Ali explained it very slowly and I was surprised at how much Spanish I could understand when there were sufficient pauses. Around 1200 people lived there from around 700 to 1600 A.D. The houses and platforms were all round to show a connection with sun and with the earth, and the dwellings were made in the similar fashion to the Kogi people homes still present with clay rock walls and palm thatch roofs. Apparently the city site was sacred because of the incredible fertility of the ground. The men and women lived in separate dwellings and men chewed a mixture made in a Poporo, a gourd in which coca leaves are mashed along with crushed shells. (The Kogi men still do this. We saw two using poporos on the trail and a larger man in a cap with a tall point in the centre arguing with them. He turned out to be the chief’s brother who was warning them against allowing the tourists to see their traditions. Ali explained the encounter to us once we were back at the camp.)

What followed after the Tairona’s 900 years of prosperity in their sacred ciudad is a familiar tale. The Spanish arrived in 1501 and discovered how plentiful gold was in Tairona artefacts. They came back in 1502 to take what they could and were violently repelled by the Tairona and their poison dart arrows. After limping home with a fraction of their numbers, they returned twelve years later to set up trade. Trade was going well, apparently, until there were some shady deals and Spanish tried to take more than promised. War broke out again, but ended when the Tairona were weakened by the diseases the Spanish had brought along with them. Some of the Tairona’s direct descendants still live in the most remote areas of the Sierra Nevada and have no contact with outsiders. Guides will take serious climbers trekking there with the understanding that the Tairona will deny them entrance and they will have one day to leave the vicinity if they are caught. 

The city remained “lost” until the 70s when locals discovered it and began to dig for the relics buried with the dead. After a few grisly murders, anthropologists took over and the site is now protected by the Colombian military. We know. We met them. As we ascended to the final platform, we were greeted with a group of young soldiers in army fatigues who were doing their six month guard-the-lost-city stint. They kindly posed for pictures with us and sent us on our way. While the area may have been a spot for dangerous encounters with the FARC or tomb raiders in the past, tourism has clearly made it a well guarded area.

Looking down on the Lost City platforms

Dan on the Tairona chief's throne

Last few steps to the top of the Lost City

The steps leading up to the city made of slick stones cut into appropriate square shapes with an acid the Tairona distilled from a local plant. Coming down those steps was much more difficult than climbing up them. From here, we came back to the camp, picked up our bags and began the difficult trail back to the same camp where we’d slept the second night. 

My knees are now swollen and painful, my whole body is stiff and I was using my walking stick as more of a crutch than an occasional aid for the last few hours. Dan’s insect bites have become so numerous that people in the group are starting to exclaim in surprise when they see his legs. Some of the flies we’ve encountered over the past two days took small chunks of flesh with them when they buzzed away, leaving bright beads of blood in their wake. We were on the last stretch of our duct tape yesterday, so I decided to leave the duct tape I’d applied over the band-aids and gauze pads on my many blisters on overnight and for the whole of today. I really regret that decision. I now have a series of blisters and small sores all along the edges of where the duct tape was along the edges of my ankles and backs of my ltower calves. They are more painful than the blisters.

We had originally said we’d like to take the hike in five days instead of six since most of the group is finishing in five, but I don’t think I can manage the eight or nine hour hike on the last day. We have made friends with another couple, Glen (from Belgium) and Elena (a Colombian now living in Belgium) who are taking the trek in six days. Ali thinks we might be able to squeeze stay behind with them and with their guide, John Jairo.

One of our fellow trekkers takes in the view

Day 5 – Super-Spectacular

And to think we might have missed this. I’m going to forget the state that I’m in as I write this so that I can relate the first part of the day without dampening what was one of the best travel experiences I’ve had.

This morning, while the rest of the group clamoured ahead down the trail, we stayed behind with Glen and Elena and took a side route to a gorgeous swimming spot. The water was cool, as always, but the sun fell on huge rocks at the side of the river perfect for basking. Glen and John Jairo jumped from rocks into the deeper parts of the lake while I held my breath and thought about how tough evacuation would be from here, particularly when John Jairo checked the depth of the water by leaping headfirst off the cliff.

Once we reached the camp (with the hammocks), John Jairo asked if we wanted to see the waterfall nearby. I was tired and hot, but reluctant to miss out.

    “Are you going?” I asked Elena.

    “No. John Jairo said it would be too tough for me. There’s a rope to get down,” she answered. “But I was talking to the man who lives in the house next to the camp and he said it was...” she paused... “how to translate... super-spectacular?”

No translation necessary there. If there’s something super-spectacular in the offing, you don’t wimp out. Dan and I laced up our boots.

John Jairo led us down a mild slope, then a steep slope, then down a very steep slope (we did have to use a rope and climb down facing the muddy incline after all), and over some rocks to the top of a gorgeous waterfall. It was thrilling. There was so much water rushing right past us to crash all the way down to the pool below.

As I walked up to the edge of the water, Glen was looking pensively at the falls.

    “John Jairo says there is a good place for swimming, but we have to climb down the falls,” he said.

    “Ha!  Yeah right. Nice one,” I smiled back. We’d been hanging out with Glen and Elena long enough to know they liked to joke around.

    “No, really,” Glen replied. “We are climbing down the waterfall.”    

    “Dan! Glen says we’re climbing DOWN the waterfall,” I called back to Dan.

    “Ha, right,” he answered.

    “No, seriously,” I replied, eyeing the water nervously. It just didn’t look possible.

That’s when John Jairo reappeared and told us we had to take off our shoes because they’d be too slippery. Barefoot, he showed us how to step at the edges of the rushing water and grasp onto the plants growing at the side of the falls.

    “Hold on to more than one in case one of them gives,” Dan shouted to me over the roar of the water.

I don’t know what kind of water plants these were, but they had a strong thick stem and I ended up trusting them with my life. From there, we shimmied along the rock slope and around a fallen tree before climbing backwards to the next section of the falls.

    “Watch out, this is very slippery,” John Jairo warned Glen, Glen warned Dan, and Dan warned me. Bit by bit we climbed down through the water, testing our footing with each step, avoiding thoughts of the sheer drop below us.

When we reached the bottom, our euphoria was intense. John led us nearly under the falls themselves and took photos for us with Dan’s waterproof camera. The noise was so loud we could barely hear one another as we struggled to keep our footing in the rushing water.

Part way down the falls

View of the falls from halfway down

We made it!

 The climb back up the falls was much easier without the view to distract you and with footholds easier to scope ahead of time. Back at the peak we looked back over the falls and saw another incredible sight. A hummingbird darted over the falls with a seed in its beak. As if showing off its dexterity, it would spit out the seed in an arc, then race forward to catch it before it fell into the churning water. I don’t know why I never thought of birds playing before. It was truly amazing.

Once we were back at the camp, we were in for another treat. A group of trekkers going in the other direction arrived, noisily, on mules. They were a group of young Israeli men, fresh from their three-year stint in the armed forces at home and not interested in sharing the camp. The elderly man who had been talking to Elena earlier invited us to share dinner with him and his family in his home rather than stay at the camp tables.

The elderly gentleman, as it turns out, was Ali’s uncle. We had a chance to see family photos of Ali reaching the lost city for the first time at 8 years old, along with his high school graduation photo and one of his wife and sons. With Elena as our translator, it was a brilliant opportunity to talk to a man who had lived in that house for the past 28 years. He talked about how the tourism industry had grown, the groups of tourists he used to host in his home and his experiences living among the Kogi people.

    “They call me a word that means something like ‘uncle’ or ‘brother-in-law’” he explained. “I’ve made friends with many of the young ones and they tell me about their culture... although they are usually very reserved.”

It was fascinating to hear him explain their marriage rites. A Kogi man reaches maturity at age 17, he told us. When this happens, he is sequestered in a hut with a “veteran woman” for a month to learn about sex and prove himself to the tribe.

    “That’s excellent,” Glen and Dan commented. “He learns what to do from someone with experience!”

But other parts of the ritual didn’t sound so appealing. If the man is unable to perform whenever the woman asks, or doesn’t have sex with her frequently enough, he is punished for months with hard labour and little food or water. Not the most effective cure for impotency, I’d wager.

Women, on the other hand, are deemed marriageable at age 13, whether they have gone through puberty yet or not. Fertility is extremely important to their culture and the goal is for each woman to have at least ten children. It is an extremely patriarchal society, with men making the decisions and women unable to speak if there is a man present. Women are not allowed to wear shoes and, like the Tairona, sleep separately from the men.

As we talked about the culture of the Kogi, the rain came and went, the camp grew quiet and my feet began to ache. I tried to stretch and flex them as much as I could, but the ache grew more and more intense until I ventured a peek with my flashlight beneath the table. I had lost my ankles completely. Both feet were incredibly swollen. My right foot seemed to be bursting at the seams and a lurid purple at the bottom.

As it turns out, I couldn’t even put pressure on my right foot and getting into the hammock was tough. Now I am lying with my feet up and desperately waiting for the Advil to kick in. Dan’s feet are swollen too, but my right one hurts intensely and I can’t even walk on it. Was it all the insect bites? The shoes? I only hope I can make it back down the trail tomorrow.

Ali's family home on bright red clay

Day 6 – A swollen end to the journey and our recovery

After a hike like this, every beer is a very good beer

I am writing this from a hammock in Taganga on Christmas Day. I plan to stay here at least until I can fit my feet in my shoes again. Our last hike consisted of a lot of hobbling (thank you walking stick), a tough climb back up the clay path (now softened by the recent rainfall), and a long wait. We had a great lunch when we finally arrived at the start of the trail, but had to wait at least three hours for a jeep to be fixed before we could venture back down to the proper road.

How many people can you fit in one jeep? Interesting question. Is it loaded down with bags on the roof? Is it rolling through deep grooves in the mud “road” adjacent to a cliff face? Do you have to stop and cool off the engine at least once in order to keep going? Yes? Ok... then sixteen. Three in the front. Four  large North American or European men in the back seat. Three guides riding on the roof. Two tourist women, a mom, a dad and two boys in the benches in the back. Wait... what’s that in the plastic bag the dad is carrying? Oh. It’s a parrot. Make that sixteen and a half.

Dan's R-shaped mosquito bite branding

I’d have had a better trip down if they hadn’t told us that a similarly-loaded jeep had flipped and rolled down the mountain just two weeks before. With my boots laced as tight as a could to keep the swelling at bay and a nightmare of logistics getting us and our bags to the hostel, we ended our journey a good eight hours after we actually finished the trek. My feet are back to being incapacitated and Dan’s legs are so covered in bright red bites that people actually stop and stare. The mosquitoes managed to line up their bites in an “R” shape on one of his shins. “It stands for ‘Rico’,” he joked, “because I’m so tasty.”

We’re a sorry pair, lying in our hammocks here in this touristy beach town. But hell, we’re lying in hammocks in a touristy beach town and there’s shockingly good food at this hostel. Was the trek worth it? Definitely. And this is not a bad way to spend Christmas after all.

Our fellow jeep passengers