I will never ever ever again complain about walking the 5 minutes from the bus stop to home!
We started our 4 day trek in a little town in the hills called Machete, after our 3 hour bumpy ride from Santa Marta. We started at 2.10pm and began our 4 hour hike to the first camp. By 30 minutes in we were all very very hot, luckily our guide Jose said that we could swim in this river and man did it feel good. But then some bad news hit, Jose said it will be up hill (very steep) for about 1 to 1.5hrs.
When we finally made it to the first camp I thought I would never be able to sleep in a hammock, but being as tired as I was, I had no problems getting to sleep.
These are our hammocks with the mosquito netting to keep out the bugs.
This is one of the native Kogi villages that we past along the trek!!
The second day was going to be a bit more of a challenge, 4 hours of walking to the next camp for lunch, then another 3 hours to the Lost City base camp were we would be staying the night.
The first thing we did was trek up more steep mountains for about 1.5hrs then down hill for another 1.5hrs then flat walking until we hit the next camp for lunch and a swim in the river.
Then we started our journey toward the next camp, climbing up a massive mountain then over some rolling hills then crossing a river and climbing down some ladders until we finally arrived to the base camp that we called "yuck camp". All the different trekking companies share this same base camp so it was a bit over crowded with smelly trekkers!
The next day we got up at 5.00am to get ready for the final push up to the Lost City. To get to the Lost City our group had to walk up 1200 and something stairs, slippery stairs if I might add. Anyway we all made it up safely with no casualties.
The Lost City is the best structure I have seen in South America. We spent about 3 hours up there and looked around the whole structure. There are so many different paths that all lead to something amazing. We checked out the native peoples house sites and all the different sacraficing and praising places. Then we walked up the grand staircase and this is what we saw.....
This is what we came to see and it was sure worth it!! We spent about 1 hour here taking photos and relaxing on the nice soft grass before we went a had a swim in the freezing water. This pool and waterfall is what the natives think is the fountain of youth.
But overall it is an amazing structure and archeologists are still finding things today in this place called the lost city.
Then we trekked back up and down the massive mountains to the camp we had lunch at on the second day and slept there.
That night our guide sang a traditional song and said us kids had done a great job taking on the mountains and the jungle.
On the final day we got up at 5.00am and got on the track for another 7 hours of up and down mountains. We were certainly relieved when we finally arrived back In the mountain village of Machete!! And so ended our 4 day trek to the lost city.
After the trek we went back to an amazing place called El Matuy which is an Eco resort in Palamino. We spent 3 nights here and just relaxed and relaxed and relaxed. These 3 days were our final days with Aunty Kat and Aunty Jules before they sadly left us to go back to London.
But our amazing dad had something special planed for our almost final days of South America!
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