Ciuadad perdida - First day

The first day started with a 3 hour jeep ride, half of it on bumpy jungle roads. Side note: So far in Colombia, there have been people selling hats everywhere. For this trek I did have the idea of buying a cool hat to be able to develop an alter ego, Indiana Jonas. However, in Santa Marta there are no people selling hats on the streets so I went into the jungle wearing a baseball cap. Not very Indiana Jonas. So.. Bumpy jungle ride. I was pretty tired and not in the mood for being thrown around like a glove super cramped into the car with strangers that I had to be nice to! Luckily my mood changed for the better quite

rapidly. Having arrived with the car we made our first stop for food. It turned out we would be a group of 10 persons doing the trek together. Kind of a mixed group and on the whole a very good one. Rob Connor from Scotland entered the Jeep looking terrible. He explained that he had had a serious sun burn and to fight that he had taken som prescription medicine the day before. He had then had an allergic reaction and felt very ill. I just hoped he wouldn't throw up. In fact he did throw up on our way to the jungle but he did it while we had a break outside the car. There was the option of doing the trek in 4 or 5 days. I had opted for 5 days to have some more time in the jungle and because I wasn’t sure how I would function in a jungle since I had never been in a similar climate before. Looking back, the climate wasn’t that bad though. Indeed it was humid but not in an unmanageable way and the temperature wasn’t that high either. Obviously water is an issue doing any hike. Since this trek is made for tourists ever few hours there will be someone standing in the middle

of nothing selling cold drinks or freshly pressed orange juice. Kind of nice really! After a couple of hours of hiking/walking, mainly on broad roads fit to be driven on by cars, we had reached our first stop. After the evening supper we were all quite tired, even though it was only nine o’ clock. This was to stay like this for the rest of the trek, go to bed early and get up early. This way we could do some walking before the sun got too strong. The first night was spent in a hammock and I could listen to the sounds of the jungle as I fell asleep. During the night I did wake up once and had to go the bathroom. I am glad I did because looking up at the sky I saw the most amazing night sky I have seen so far, absolutely packed with stars. Waking up the next day was not quite as enjoyable. I found myself more or less surrounded by 20 turkeys fighting and having loud violent sex.