Amigos!
The Trek to Ciudad Perdida, The Lost City
First off, our trekking team line up, our boys...J Dawg, a US golf pro and Kano, an Aussie (Londoner) on a mission to find a South American bar to buy, Tomas and Aurelian, the lovely French boys and lest we forget Tony, the highly entertaining British Translator that bonded our wee group together with his crazy antics.
Hose and Enrique, our brilliant chefs and guides
It all started so badly. Semi panic set in on the very very first day. Before we´d even left the restaurant, before even one proper trekking step had been taken, the first returning trekker we saw arrived back on a donkey, yes a donkey. (a true trekker would never opt for a donkey, we thought, being true trekkers ourselves) She was completely defeated and did the slowest most painful cowboy walk we have ever seen, collapsed at the nearest table, tears welling in her eyes. Marvellous.
She told us that day 1 and 2 are easy, day 3 is extremely hard out and she didn´t even want to mention the rest of the days.
So when scrambling up the never ending very FIRST hill, Bee´s chicken sized lung capacity and Beej´s puking tendancies set in. We were struggling.
The boys deserted us, running up the second half of the endless very steep incline and the Frenchies overtook us right at what we now fondly recall as Vomit Point. It nearly destroyed our moral.¨If this was the first hill of the first ´easy' day 1, how the hey are we going to cope with the rest of the day, let alone another 6 of them?????
But with some dry retches, a fair few curses, a few panicy do you think its too late to turn back and just end this? and a do you think its too late to get a donkey? we managed to sort ourselves out and make it up the rest of the hill and enjoy the cool watermelon waiting at the top. This actually was marvellous.
All this in just the first hour, you´ll be blogging forever so here´s a selection of some of our favourite bits of the trek....
1. Now Tony (the translator) is not your typical looking Englishman. He has a tight curly affro (Carribean mother) and its pretty tanned and kind of rugged looking. On returning from the Lost City, Tony fell behind our group walking with Enrique. He spys another group of trekers crossing the stream up ahead and decides to nip behind some rocks, strip off all his clothes, wait until the group is close then jump out yelling gutteral unintelligible cries! He then dissapears back behind the rock leaving the trekkers absolutely speechless. Hilarious. Then while still in hiding, in his best proper english yells ´What are you waiting for? this way old chaps´
This wasn´t all Tony got up to...on the first day he nuded up for the first swim, arrived on the camp covered in clay thought he would go native, did a ´queen of the jungle´¨ act at one camp in front of some local kids...oh the list could go on!!
2. Bee caught leprocee of the legs..sooooo many mosie bites, rock scrapes and infected blisters. Her legs became the map to the lost city, align the spots to the stars, find the extra spot and that's the key to getting there. Latest count was 179 right leg, 160 on the left.
3. Keeping up with the boys...after our first hill attempt we decided we couldn´t let that happen again...so we decided when the going gets tough to seperate...let the boys know this and sure enough we were split up and the boys didn´t put up with any whinging. Although Caino was awesome on the last day after BJ was weak from the vomit disease he pushed her up 3 hills...that boy has way too much energy...he was her hero that day and was brought many beers once back on town.
4. The secenery and rainforest deserves a mention. We had amazing weather the entire time, without fail the afternoons were a massive down pour excellent because by that point we were safely rocking in our hammocks safe and dry, by day it was sweltering...all the better for developing our buns of steel and calves of titanium. We did probably 12 river crossings, one via ´the cage´ (this is why we came here!!!) 21 kilometers ups and downs each way. And the rainforest was alive with so many critters and plants, wild pineapples popping up, I have to mention the massive spiders. The local indigenous people were very sweet, the Black and White Witches made peace with the local kiddies by offering them gifts of pois which we made with the local vines and leaves. To our annoyance and embarrasment they were absolute naturals and nailed it straight away, showing us up big time. Poor witchees.
5. Nearly forgot to mention the lost city, no wonder it got lost in the first place, its friggen miles away. We were blown away, very impressive, especially after climbing up a billion (we counted) midget sized steps to get there.
6. But our proudest moment wasn´t actually reaching the Lost City it was actually making it back to the starting point without breaking down and getting donkeys. It was close, very close, but we made it in true trekker styles. We love trekking. Kinda.
