La Ciudad Perdida ( The Lost City Colombia )
Somehow, I blame Werner Herzog for all of this. Whenever I manage to do something stupid in a “man versus nature” sort of way, I can’t help but to think that somehow the Bavarian madman director is influencing my bad decisions. Anyone that has seen the superb documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo can feel the allure of the jungle, and the romance of capturing the essence of unspoiled wilderness and the people that live there.
This trek in the Colombian jungle is 52 km of pure sweaty hell. There are several river crossings, numerous mountains, thousands of slippery tiny stairs, a hundred billion mosquitos, and the Colombian military thrown in the mix for good measure. You pay a campesino to guide you through this “green hell” to the lost city of the Kogui indians, the only indians on the continent not conquered by the Spanish. The city is frankly not that spectacular, but the journey getting there is forever burned into my psyche. The indian population is stone age, literally lacking in all technology. I had a vision of the pre Colombian indian living a healthy and peaceful agrarian life, free of the torment of the modern age. The reality is different. Infant mortality is more than 30 percent, and what is left of this civilization is kept in relative seclusion by tribal elders and the Colombian government. Often when preserving indigenous cultures we run the risk of crossing a fine line and creating human zoos instead. I believe that we protect their culture as a benifit to us, and I could not help but think that these Indians could have been much better off with something as simple as a hammock, because the woman and children sleep on the cold, hard ground (this is apparently the cause of much illness in their community).
The Koguis are facinating. They practice a form of polygamy, with every man having two separate wives at different stages of his life. As a young man, he is given an older wife to show him the ropes and teach him the ways of manhood. When he gets a bit older, he trades in the older wife for a young one, and he, in turn, becomes the teacher. (Note: I have no idea what the older wife winds up doing.) From my observation the men do very little, and the women tend to most of the hard work. The men spend the bulk of their days with a ceremonial gourd. The gourd contains a small stick, and the man chews cocoa leaves and puts the stick in his mouth and covers it with spit. The stick is then rapidly rubbed against the outer neck of the gourd depositing and drying the congealed mucus uniformly, creating a hard shell of spit shellac that can grow to an inch in diameter. The highly phallic action, not surprisingly symbolizes fertility and spousal devotion. The Koguis would often hang out at our camps looking for food and watching our women shower. I managed a couple conversations with the Indians, the most interesting being when I was holding a picture book of the lost city. The Koguis touched all of the faded photographs in the book with great enthusiasm. It was if I was watching the Sumerians looking at a book on their demise, and the whole experience was very vivid and unsettling.
Photography here is murderous. The humidity is impossible, and the weight of a pro level DSLR with fast lenses in a dry bag made for a 20 kilo backpack. It took at least 4 minutes to set up a shot, and the Koguis were unnerved with having an a large and intimidating black Nikon pointed at their faces.
Bring the best hiking shoes that money can buy, the best hiking sandals that you can find, a great ergonomic backpack, and purchase the mosquito soap that comes in the black package in Colombian stores that smells like a Union Carbide superfund site. The soap is the only thing that discourages the bugs, and I could have sold a bar for a hundred dollars to an Israeli hiker that got positively demolished by bug bites. If you are out of shape, don’t go. If you demand ANY kind of comfort, forget it. You sleep in the jungle for a week in hammocks, eat greasy food, hike in the brutal heat over endless muddy hills, sometimes in the pouring rain. You will cross rivers with a full backpack (mine with a camera). You will be in some dangerous situations where you could fall a very long way down to the river, with the hospital many bumpy hours away. You will smell very, very bad, and my clothing that I wore there still stinks of that journey. Pony up the few bucks for the Cocaine tour on day 2 where you can watch a nervous Colombian farmer in a black plastic tent process cocoa leaves with battery acid, some nylons stockings, and some chemicals that you would never want in your body. You can sample his product for free, but the stink of the process discouraged everyone in my group except a French derelict that eventually got carted off the mountain by the military for dehydration. Do collect as many leaves as you can for chewing on the way. I am convinced that I survived day 2 because of copious cocoa chewing, and it is lighter and more portable then a case of Red Bull. Bring the soldiers that are stationed at the lost city some magazines and interact with them as much as possible because they are bored as hell in the middle of nowhere. One let me play with a mortar (without rocket), but nothing that I could say to him would convince him to let me fire a couple of live rounds of his Galil ARM 5.56mm assault rifle. They are keen to be photographed, and their camp at the top of the hill is a trip. There is a massive, somewhat pornographic mural in their commons shack, tons of tents, and fun weapons. They like to play cards and stare at tourist women, even if the woman looked as haggard and broken as the ones in our small group.
The trip is worth doing, and you will learn how far that your body and mind can go. You will feel like you are so far in the middle of nowhere that is becomes part of your conscious experience, somewhat like the way you feel when underwater or maybe outer space. The motto “Machu Picchu is for pussies and fat tourists” is often overheard, and everyone in my hiking party was well traveled, a badass, and currently living outside of their home country. One couple could have sprinted the whole thing, and remained cheerful and sprite despite the hardship. If the Colombian soldier had allowed me to shoot a couple of live rounds you can best believe they would have been aimed at that couple.
If you have any questions about doing this trek, send me an email at tamarindophoto@gmail.com
-Sean
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Here is an interesting, but overly dramatic documentary about the Kougi.
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That looks like an amzing place, Columbia.
I am hoping to go there next year some time.
Thanks for the post.