The Lost City, Columbia

Columbia: new country, new continent! As our boat approached Cartagena we were expecting to see a little old city or village. What we saw was a wall of highrises getting bigger and more ominous by the second. Cartagena is supposed to be a beautiful, old city with amazing food and a laid back Caribbean vibe.



This is exactly what it is in the small section in the centre for tourists, the ciudad Viejo. The rest is just like Panama city, cosmopolitan and modern. Luckily we stayed in the old city and for three days wandered past the old buildings, flower filled verandas and many artists. At night we partied with our boat crew, attempting to salsa dance with local guys or dancing on rooftops to homemade beat-boxing by Johno(an accountant of many talents). Columbia has this amazing, lively vibe that the laid back Caribbean culture cannot suppress. The people are beautiful and friendly and everything seems exciting and new.

Since I’d started this trip I’d wanted to do one thing, the ciudad perdida. This is a five day, hard trek through the jungle and mountains to the city that the legend of El Dorado comes from, the lost city. An ancient ruins now, it was once the power centre of the Columbian ancestors where trade of gold and other treasures happened every day. When it was discovered, a large gold figurine was found. This led to a search for more gold and the legend of the city grew. It is also the place of the fountain of youth and i wanted to bathe in that! It was a dangerous trek, 7 tourists being kidnapped in 2003 and held for 95 days but it was for political reasons and there is more security now.

We got to the start point and everything fell into place, a trek was leaving the next day and they would drop us at the Tayrona national park after. We stayed in a luxury hostel as a treat to ourselves the night before with air-con and a pool and the next day we were ready, physically and mentally for this insane endeavour.

The next 5 days were insane and stunningly beautiful. We trekked through jungles and up and down mountains in the suffocating humidity and tropical rain. We crossed rivers(one so strong our guide Pedro literally had to hold me and the rope to get us across), rickety bridges and climbed 1200 stairs. We slept in hammocks and bunk-beds infested with ants, mosquitoes and bed bugs and showered under waterfalls, in hose showers or just swam in the river. Once again our group was amazing fun, young and full of energy and interesting stories.

Our guide Pedro and cook, George were amazing. I thought I might get back in shape but all I did as eat enormous meals; amazing chicken and rice with salsa, omelettes on corn pancakes, vegetable soup or bean stew it was all incredible! Pedro provided a constant supply of Oreos and chocolate bars so we were never short of energy.

It was hard but amazing! Every so often I would look up from the hour long trek up a steep incline and see valley sprawled out in-front of me with little houses perched on the hills, ominous mountains shrouded in grey swirling clouds rising above me and so much green. They call this place the green heaven or hell because it is a tangle of vine and trees broken up by the occasional bright flower.

Finally, after 3 days of solid hiking, we made it. Climbing slippery green stairs (1200) we ascended into the lost city, the place of legends. It had been claimed by the jungle but it was amazing and beautiful without a fellow tourist in sight. Broken into 4 sections from where the rulers and priests lived to where the gold and ceramics were shaped it was now little more that the circular bases of buildings and the occasional kitchen appliance. It’s scary to see something that was once the central power of a country reduced to rubble, a tourist attraction for the new culture and people- I wonder if one day people will travel days to explore the ruins of Perth. After a morning of exploring we headed to the base of the city where a waterfall poured into a clear, icy pool which sunlight streamed through making it appear completely untouched. This was the ‘fountain of youth” It was freezing but we all got in. The waterfall seconded as a waterslide which was fast and awesome to slide down. Maybe the fountain of youth was just a mistranslation and this is where all the kids used to hang out.

After an epic 4 days we had the hardest part ahead of us. The last day we would hike the longest and hardest part, 7 hours up and down mountains. Of course 3 hours in I twisted my ankle(it sucks to be a Klutz) but thanks to Nurofen, a good bandage and my trusty stick, I made it. Walking into the village I was so happy to be the one wishing the next groups good luck as they walked by all clean clothed and fresh faced. It was fantastic but I was glad to sit down to our final meal together- a whole fish, salsa and fried plantains! Almost as amazing as the lost city!

Tayrona National Park

At the end of our trek Pedro dropped Jade and I off at the entrance to the stunning Tayrona National Park, a section of jungle overlooking beautiful beaches. After saying goodbye to our fun trekking crew we had another 1 hour trek ahead of us to get to our campsite. We stayed in the jungle, under a palmtree-leafed roof gazebo ‘dorm’ with about twenty hammocks. The place was full of mango, lime, avocado and palm trees and beautiful with a strange yellow glow to everything. After a dinner of crackers with sliced banana and mango we were done by 8 pm and had a great sleep. The next morning we headed out early.

The closes beach was Arreciferes, a stunning and misty beach with rock formations, white sand and a crazy swell. There is no swimming in this beach for us as it has claimed up to 200 hundred lives with the currents in the past.



 It is, however, the perfect setting for the most amazing bakery where we bumped into two friends from Cartagena. This place has amazing chocolate and dulce de leche breads and fantastic coffees and became our meeting place for the next two days of Megan and Florrence, two English students doing the opposite direction but same trip as us. Hours were spent on the beach eating bread, drinking coffee and discussing travel tips and life in general. It felt like a typical uni catch up in Australia but in a stunning setting.

We had one full day and we headed to Caban San Juan, the most amazing beach and a place of legends. Nestled between two rock formations it is a beautiful place with white sand, palm trees and calm blue water, the same as pretty much every beach in the Caribbean.



What makes this place amazing is the water is full of large, gold flecks of a shiny mineral that spurred on the legend of El Dorado. No, it isn’t gold but it is just as pretty and lying in the sand we all glistened gold. I’ve never seen anything like it, it was so spectacular!

Finally, after what felt like a fun uni beach holiday after the 5 days of trekking, we took the one hour trek back to Tagonga, collected our free T-shirt from Magic tours and headed on are now passing time on a 20 hour bus to Bogota.

Island Hopping the San Blas: Panama to Columbia

I’m stuck on a bus in Columbia for 20 hour and am very behind in my blogs; time for some catch-up. Due to our spontaneous 2 week stay in Puerto Viejo we were way behind schedule. In Panama we’d had plans to explore the mountainous coffee plantations and island hop through Bocas. Instead we took an epic night bus down the country and arrived in Panama City. This is a beautiful, rich and cosmopolitan city unlike any other in Central with a great night life, shopping and a picturesque old town. 

Cosmopolitan life

The big city

We had friends here so spent our time shopping in the malls(new cameras bought) and going to students apartments for rooftop parties and crazy techno concerts in warehouses. Lucky I hate techno and was completely sober when a woman tried to stick her hand in my bag and grab my wallet. I was glad for the distraction, stopped her and then stopped her a second time with another drunk girl. A close one.

Basil and ginger flavoured icecream

We were ready to leave and travelled out to our yacht the next day. Our original boat had engine troubles so eight of us crammed ourselves into a dinghy to be taken to a small 7 person yacht, the Corto, owned by the 26-year-old Argentinean, Sebastian, and his cockerspaniel Sheida. It was a beautiful boat with 3 bedrooms and a couch Jade and I shared. The next 5 days was a blur of Island hopping, sun and amazing food.

Sheida

The San Blas Islands are a collection of small islands owned by the Kunas people. They are usually deserted or with one family inhabiting them. The water is crystal clear, the palm trees plentiful and the sand pure white. This place is idyllic with a balmy Carribean breeze softly blowing and the sun warming our souls. It was straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean!

San Blas sunsets

 My crew mates were an English couple, Becky and Johno, an American Bliss, two German girls we’d been travelling on and off with since Flores in Guatemala(Irena and Julaa), an Australian Connie and the Captain and his dog. We were lucky with these guys as they were young, fun and interesting and provided hours of entertainment in the long nights.

Land Ahoy

A typical day was this:

Wake up around 7 and don bathers. Jump into Caribbean blue water and swim to nearest island with sheida in close pursuit. Do a lap of said island saying hello to the family living there then lie on the beach for a further 20 minutes having deep life discussions with Jade before swimming back for breakfast.

Morning swim

Breakfast: homemade muesli, fruit, eggs, toast, dulce de leche, Columbian or Panmanian coffee.

Morning: Set sail to the next island then jump into water for a day of snorkelling, sun baking, reading or lying on the giant floating crocodile. Included in this is some sort of delicious lunch and nibblies(olives, cheese, crackers, dip-the kind of stuff Jade and I can’t afford to buy!). Finally finish the day with sunset drinks.

Sailing

Sneaky afternoon rum 

Night: dinner ranges from freshly caught lobster to fish amazingly done by the ex-chef turned sailor Seb. 

Lobster

This is followed by music, watching the full moon rise and chatting or sleeping on the deck.

Everything about this trip was amazing and beautiful and fun. Five days at sea really is total isolation, no internet, no mobile nothing.

Hammock time

Showering was under a hose on deck with an audience

A few things I learnt about boats:

1.       All waste goes into the water so don’t go swimming 15-30 minutes after breakfast

2.       Don’t use the auto-pilot controls as something to hold onto when on deck. If you press standby the boat turns 180 degrees and is at risk of capsizing(I don’t know how they let me stay on the boat after that)

3.       I get sea sick...badly. Luckily Phenergan is amazing and strong enough to keep me asleep for the two day open sea bit to Columbia.

Before I almost capsized the boat

First mate taking a break

Jaguar Rescue center

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a beautiful, diverse country but oh so very expensive and not compatible with student prices. For this reason we’d originally planned to stay for 3 days and get to Panama and boat it to Columbia. Instead, we ended up delaying everything so we could stay for 2 weeks in a border town, sloth sitting.

Crossing the border to Costa Rica was one of the most stressful experiences, mostly because I was 25c short of the $2 fee resulting in a massive NO written on my passport. Luckily, a sympathetic traveller lent me a dollar and I got across- what a legend! The day culminated with us getting dropped off at a cross road to wait for a bus that may or may not come. One thing about CR, it rains! Turns out my backpack isn’t waterproof- all our stuff got wet. Eventually, after about 8 hours, we got to our destination- Monte Verde.

Monte Verde is pretty much an exact replica of Bridgetown in winter but without the chill. Beautiful rolling green hills, amazing rainforest, mist every morning and cute, boutique cafes and shops. We managed to stay in a crazy guy’s house for $5 including breakfast- not bad. Our one day here we spent in the cloud forest, trekking and animal spotting. This is a beautiful, lush stretch of rainforest in the hills where the clouds constantly roll in. We didn’t see anything! Of course it poured with rain but the birds, flowers and insects were all so exotic that it was worth it. We wanted to go for a nice meal out with our new English friends, Rob and Joany. Thinking sushi was a decent choice, we sat down at a huge table only to see the menu- $8 for 2 pieces! We ended up in Super Pollo, the local fast food joint, having the best quesadillas I’ve had here. The next morning we said our good buys to Nico and hopped onto the 6am bus to Puerta Viejo.

Puerta Viejo is a border town on the ocean with a big reggae /surfing scene. I tried to find accommodation and melted after 15minutes. I finally walked into the nearest place, the lazy loft, and got the last two beds in the dorm. I was not impressed with this town- it was a party/drug place with ok beaches but just not my scene. We were going to leave the next day but Bryant, one of the owners, suggested we check out the jaguar rescue centre. Jade still hadn’t seen a sloth so we agreed. The next day we hired bikes and went out. The ride out was absolutely idyllic, through thick jungle and winding road along the beach. The jaguar centre itself had no jaguars but a collection of toucans, sloths, monkeys and other big cats. The centre was desperate for volunteers so we decided on a whim to try animal caring for 2 weeks. After some persuasion, Bryant agreed to give us a job in reception for 2 hours each a night to help us pay for accommodation and we were sweet!

The next two weeks were an incredible blur of craziness. A typical day consisted of riding the beautiful ride to the centre for a 7:30 start of 1.5 hours of cleaning, raking, mucking out cages and feeding animals- just like on a farm but with toucans and sloths. The next 4 hours were spent either playing with the monkeys, sitting with tequila the toucan to try and get her used to humans, working in the kitchen or garden and my all tie favourite- sloth sitting. Many of the sloths had come in as babies, abandoned by their mothers. We were effectively their stand in mothers. A day in the sloth garden involved lying on a mat with baby sloths, giving them cuddles, getting them good at hanging in trees and showing them off the  tourists for information-very cute. In the arvo’s we would go get the monkeys from their jungle picnic in the forest(the center served basically like a dating agency where we took the monkeys out every day to meet other monkeys and hope they would find a mate and leave). Girls were banned from this after the crazy pepita bit two volunteer girls-one on the neck. She was bitter and twisted and angry because she still couldn’t find a mate and so took it out on the girls.

My favourite animals:

Boris the possum: Boris, unfortunately, had an accident with his tail and would never survive in the wild. He also had no control over his bladder and so would pee all over himself. needing to be dried every morning. He was absolutely gorgeous and loved to get dried, wriggling around and moving his leg like a dog getting a good scratch. Boris duty consisted of letting him crawl all over you all day or bundling him into a scalf to sleep. I really loved this animal.

Guaro the toucan: Guaro is the name of the cheapest, most nasty rum Costa rica has to offer. It gives a killer hang over and will make you drunk in 2-3 shots(well maybe just me). It was also the name of the most loving, amiable toucan you will ever meet. Guaro had a fractured wing and needed to be retrained to fly. This consisted of putting him in a tree and watching him for 2 hours until he tried to fly, crashed into the ground and then you’d pick him up and try all over again. He was an affectionate creature, constantly singing and nibbling on the hair of whoever happened to be cleaning the cage.

Surfer-the worst sloth ever

Surfer was a two toed sloth with a skin infection and therefore in isolation from the other sloths. Sloth sitting him involved putting him in a tree in the beautiful centre and watching jungle life go by as he slept. I would read hunger games, watch giant blue butterflies and monkeys go by and just relax after the morning workout of cleaning. He was possibly the worst adapted sloth in the world, preferring to lie on the ground spread eagle or with his claws crossed and a token toe in the tree rather than lie in the tree and protect himself from predators. He was a trickster, seeping until you fell asleep and then he was out of there- toward the fence and jungle. One thing about sloths, they’re slow but not as slow as you think, he would cover 10 metres pretty quickly for the slowest animal in the world. Luckily he never made it because he would get eaten up in about 5 minutes with his lack of sloth survival knowledge.

Mita

Mita was a three towed sloth, a more basic creature than the two-toed with no external ears, only able to eat leaves rather than vegetables and eggs and without a malicious bone in her body. A two-toed will bite you slowly but hang on hard and long. A three towed would just sit there smiling at you. Mita loved cuddles and would hang on to the front of your shirt for hours if you let her. She was the sweetest, most loving creature who just loved attention.

Maki

Maki was a baby howler monkey with a healing fractured femur. For this reason he needed to be on someone’s shoulder, neck or arm all day. He was partial to cat-empire and cloud control I found out when he hung on my neck during my day in the kitchen. He would rock out or fall asleep. Feeding him was always a trial- you can’t negotiate with animals and if they decide they don’t want fruit and goats milk then what are you supposed to do? It was worse than feeding a two year old, definitely an exercise in patience.

 

 This time was great for confronting my fears of horses and crickets. I would have to work in the stables some days, mucking them out and dealing with the beasts that actually weren’t as blood thirsty as I’d thought. My other fear, crickets, was soon sorted when we went into the jungle cricket-catching with tweezers for Boris. My love for Boris overrode my fear of crickets and I actually felt pretty bad, it was a blood bath of legs, black cricket blood and evil eyes popping. I’m sure they will get their revenge at some point.

 The animals and work at the place was amazing but the people were so much fun. We met two Canadian girls who became our partners in crime to go surfing and shopping and drinking together.  There are some absolutely incredible beaches in PV, Punta Uva being particularly spectacular with its jungle cliffs and caves overlooking the turquoise water. Unfortunately it was the place our cameras got stolen but we still went back. Our last night we all went to the animal centre for a party and it was insane being among the animals and jungle at night. The two toed(the nocturnal species) were up and about scaling trees(even surfer). The big cats were roaming and attempting to hunt our bosses dog.  

Our job at the lazy loft was the most chilled work ever. As there was no reception desk we were forced to lie around on couches on the veranda and watch the electrical storms roll in over the ocean as we are now well and truly in the wet season. The backpackers were cool and we were forced to talk to everyone which was actually really fun and led to many new friends and parties. A reggae bar was directly below with plenty of live music so we could go down or just hang out in our PJ’s on the veranda and still watch everything.

As my first time working with exotic animals I have to say it was probably the coolest thing I’ve done on this trip. They all had personalities and I grew to love so many of them. I also learnt so much about how to care for sick animals and now have so much respect for all animal rescue and refuge centers. I also loved working in the hostel, it felt like I had a home for a little while and the owners were very chilled and kind.

In summary this has been a spontaneous couple of weeks but definitely amazing.