The first night here I woke up beside my hammock screaming out load, freakin scared, of something. I didn’t drink of the locally-made spirits around the bonfire earlier in the evening and I’ve never done this before, so I’m wondering what has affected me.
There is a myth that the Wayuu-indians are dangerous…
Miguel remembers: A woman and a child his age fully armed amongst the masculine guerrilla. He remembers that they stole their cow and ate their food, and that the leftist rebels took away his older cousins and wondered off in the jungle to new assignments like cidnappings and killings in the name of cocain and political dissidence.
The dangerous hippos are territorial, so they were left as guards in the muddy waters surrounding the coca-fields. The rest of Escobar’s Ark was left in captivation. Including the tigers. But when the big cats later were stolen by the rivalry Magdalena-cartel, they managed to escape. Now they reproduce and live freely in this excact area. Pablo Escobar on the other hand, was captivated and died in the hail of bullets in 1993.
Convinced that Ciudad Perdida (literally ‘Lost City’) was infected with bad energy, the oldest indiginous group in Colombia, the Tyronas, decided to close the city for a few months in order to cleanse it through their ceremonial practices. Then they opened it up for visitors again this fall. We decided to take the one possible route to see the mysterious abandoned town: A week-long transcendent treck through the tropical jungle of Sierra Nevada.
Change of plans! My longing for the mountains and Siri’s lack of interest in kiting, steers us to a sudden postponing of our indigenous sleep-over in Cabo de la Vela (in reference to my last post). A dig in my budgeted wallet, some sneakers (I’ve just had flip-flops so far) and a sleeping bag later, we’re now heading for a 5 day hike, to The Lost City. Believed to be over 650 years more ancient than Machu Pichu, but only recently discovered, this is a hidden gem (apparently).
A man and a woman, a dog and a house. The man runs a kiteschool, the woman is a journalist and a writer, the dog barks and the house accomodates us. We’re north of Cartagena in Puerto Colombia. We’re kiting, eating, reading, playing and sleeping. And today we were on the prime time news over here…
It was hard for the guy behind the immigration-desk to understand and accept that I arrived this day with absolutely no plans. I didn’t have a single adress in the fourth largest country of South America or a contactperson among the 45 million inhabitats of Colombia. Not even a return-ticket. So while trying to convince the guy that he should let me enter the country, a girl sticks a note in my hand with an adress. “Hey, this is my place!” I tell the guy. And the note gets me over the boarder. I’m in Colombia! On this last day of 2011.
