JJ's Travelogue

With delusions of Indiana Jones, I am leaving this morning for a six-day trek through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida (“lost city”), built some 1,200 years ago (650 years earlier than Machu Picchu), and only rediscovered 30 years ago. It should be quite the adventure.

Here is what one blogger wrote about it:
If I had to choose between Machu Picchu and Ciudad Perdida I would choose Ciudad Perdida. Machu Picchu is like an outdoor museum, with a fine green carpet. And there’s no mystery to it, you can go up the first hill and see it all, and it’s so perfect! Like a model. Just like the photos. Just like all the photos. And by 11:00 there’s so many people there, the world and his dog, his middle aged fat American neighbour and all 60 of his French school children are there. Ciudad Perdida on the other hand is mysterious, you can never see it all, and you can never work out how big it is. And there’s no one else there, just you and the 10 or so guys you’ve just spend three days getting there with. Plus you get to sleep there which doesn’t sound like much, but it really added to the whole trip.

Since the route passes through territory recently held by the FARC and other various paramilitary groups, it’s only possible to visit as part of a tour. It’s a bit pricey at $200, but that includes guides, basic lodging, food, etc. Mules and guides carry the food and camp supplies, we only carry our personal effects. I can’t see it being any more difficult than most hikes I’ve done, although recent trips have reported a lot of mud and rain.
Overall I’ve heard good reports about the the food. However, I just found this report on Lonely Planet’s message board: We ended up getting sick at least twice during our hike. The food is NOT good and NOT sanitary. We witnessed the guides killing a turkey and two chickens for our dinner. They killed and prepared the chicken the same place as they did their laundry. Excellent! This makes me feel good, especially since I’m just now finally getting past the traveler’s diarrhea I’ve had for the last 6 weeks. I expected it to clear up a few days after going off the antibiotics and visiting the hospital, but it’s over a week later and I’m still not totally back to normal. At least I think I’m on the road to recovery.

Here is a nice blog entry about the trek, replete with some great photos.

So I will be off the grid, away from all technology until Sunday, March 22. [How will he cope?! Ironically, I tried to charge all of my batteries in preparation for the trip today (flashlight, water purifier, camera, etc) but the power is out in the entire city until the evening!] If you want to picture where I am, here is a map of the trek in Google Maps. I am organizing the trek through Hotel Miramar, a classic old-school South American backpackers hostel. The nice thing about them is they will store all my valuables in their safe while I’m gone.

In other news…

A large cruise ship docks here in Santa Marta every Tuesday, which transforms the town. The hawkers, hookers, police, and every kind of vendor come out of the woodwork. It instantly triples the population of the city in one day. Then everything calms back down the next day.

I tried to send many of you a postcard today, but the cost was prohibitive – they wanted almost $3 per postcard! Weird, since you can get a decent hotel room for $5/night.. the other odd thing is there are apparently competing postal companies (which you would think would drive the price down, not up), rather than one main nationalized postal system like every other country in the world.
Go ahead and send me your address if you think I might not have it and you’d like a postcard from the southern hemisphere.

Every drink (even beer occassionally) is served with a straw. I hate straws! What’s wrong with just drinking straight out of the bottle?! It reminds me of NYC, where buying a simple can of Coke yields a paper bag, straw, and about a dozen napkins. Huh?? I’ve always thought of how many trees could be saved by training NY deli owners.

Besides the usual windshield cleaner guys at stoplights, I have seen jugglers and acrobats doing their thing at stoplights for hours on end just for a bit of change. Nothing if not creative..
And yes, there are mimes here as well. They really should have died out in the 70’s, if you ask me.

I’ve met many interesting people this week. Just to name two:
A professor of anthropology who lives in New York City. He hasn’t been able to find a tenured position, so he only teaches one semester per year. Since he can’t afford to live in NYC the rest of the year, he spends those six months living in a different developing country where he can stretch 5 grand into six months. Nepal, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America. Sounds ideal.. I met him because the same local who helped me at the hospital helped this guy too – he had dengue fever, which is apparently going around here. It’s a bit freaky since there is no preventative medication, nor any treatment – you just have to let it run it’s course. Then there is bleeding dengue, which recently killed nine people in Bolivia. A hypochondriac could have a field day around here. Fortunately I am not one.

Another interesting gringo I met a few nights ago is a guy who is the director of Emergency Response for Continental Airlines. His team are the ones who swoop into a location after an airplane accident has taken place, overseeing all the logistics in dealing with the grieving families, replacing lost personal effects, cleanup of the crash site, interfacing with the NTSB and tons of other government agencies, lawsuits, etc. It sounds fascinating. Normally they will go a decade or more with no accidents, so all their time is spent training and preparing. But recently he had the Denver and Buffalo crashes happen within only a few months of each other, so he is taking a well-deserved vacation. The great thing about working for a major airline (and being based in Houston) is that he can jet down here (or any other country) for the weekend on a whim. For free. So I’m going to keep him apprised of where I’m going, and he might come down to meet me in other cities in the coming weeks/months.

I’ll leave you with a few more photos from around town: