from Dublin to........Mirissa, Sri Lanka: Trekking with a Wildling, Ciudad Perdida, Colombia

In Palomino I met a couple English girls who were due to start their hike with the same company (Magic Tours) on the same day as me. They were however booked on the 5-day tour and I had opted for the 4-day after hearing that the trail conditions were quite good and the extra day was just spent at a waterfall. I later found out that there were only two others on the 4-day trek so I changed it to the 5-dayer.

Good thing I did as you had much more time to stop at the swimming holes along the way and wash all the sweat off of you and cool your body temperature down. The trek is 46km return but this is as the crow flies so god knows how many kilometres it actually is. The structure of the trek is indeterminant….it all depends on what the group wants to do, what the guide wants to do, the weather conditions, how busy the camp sites are….so the tour experience I had was completely different to that of other people I know whom went on the same tour.

It was an enjoyable five days. Tough at times (the hills are seriously steep) but you are often rewarded with an unexpected stop half way up at a little shack offering watermelon or some other fruit. No frozen papaya stand though. The only really technical or dangerous part was the penultimate climb up the 1,200 small, steep stairs to the actual Lost City.

Our guide Miguel (actually both guides were called Miguel) who was from ExpoTur (we had a combined group, it happens often for unknown reasons) grew up along the trail and had been doing tours for 8 years. He was the Mogli of the Sierra Nevada…. climbing up trees hanging 15 metres above the river and climbing down a vine to create a tarzan swing for us, cliff diving into relatively shallow pools in the river, doing head stands on the rocks in the afternoon, making drink bottle holders out of the thin vines….he was THE jungle boy.

On day one our group passed a shabby looking guy (whom I thought lived in the bush along the trail path) that had walked for a full day to the trail head and then proceeded to attempt the trek by himself. Problem for him is that nobody is allowed to do it outside of an organised group. So we were forced to adopt him for the duration of our tour. He was slightly frightening at first…..reeked of BO, muttered to himself a lot and did things suggestive of someone who has spent far too much time alone and gone a little loco. I was concerned he was going to steal everybody’s gear the first night as we were staying in hammock and everything was in the open….pitch black open.

This brings me to another subject. I hate sleeping in a hammock. Can’t do it. Can’t foresee myself being able to unless it is one of those really big ones that you can string out quite flat. I had a shite night of sleep that night. The beds night 2 and 3 didn’t work for me either. Thin mattresses that resulted in me getting bruises on my stomach. I was desperately lacking in sleep. The rather tiring days weren't enough to knock me out.

The first half of the trek is through what I would describe as mountainous farm land. Not as intrepid as I had expected but it did mean we had cold beer the first and fourth nights, room temperature beers the second and third nights and access to other items along the way at fairly reasonable prices despite having been carried there on a mule.

Life in the villages is still very primitive. Horticulture focussed with little desired interaction with the Western world beyond seeing copious amounts of tourists pass through which they’d rather not see if they had the choice. One night we had the opportunity to speak with a local village elder and ask all matter of questions. It was very interesting. A life very much based on centuries old spiritual beliefs and customs. Arranged marriages, sharmans, life after death, good and evil spirits etc.

Our group was fantastic….Cat Woman Lucia, the lovely Alice, a wonderful Italian family, the bubbly Hannah, Rosie from Australia, Deanna from Colombia, two very sweet German girls and Alexis the Siberian ‘The Wildling” from North of The Great Wall. Most of us got along quite well. The Wildling provided a constant source of entertainment as he laboriously did strange things. He carried a large backpack the entire way which seemed to be full of only musical instruments that he couldn’t play very well….a large bongo, a bamboo didgeridoo and a wooden flute. He would attempt to wash clothes in the river (he wasn’t successful), grind and roast his own tobacco, chew coco and calcium…..oh and talk to himself. By the end of the five days we were all quite fond of him. He was harmless in the end.

Four of us decided after having visited the city in the afternoon, we wanted to get up extremely early the following day and go back up there again for sunrise. Great idea in theory but we could stay quite long enough for the sun to actually rise over the mountain tops and hit the city itself as we had a long day of hiking ahead of us already, which turned out to be an even longer day after the camp we had heaped to trek back to was full. Massive 11 hour day. Beers went down well that evening.