A Lost City Found and a Maternal Revelation.

My Father (who thinks he's a funny man) spent my childhood following my Mother around Europe's various Greek and Roman ruins deriding their 'half-built' state and questioning why we kept taking him to 'buildng sites'. This coupled with a particularly hot traipse around The Valley of the Tombs in Cyprus when I was twelve left me with a deep seated conviction that as an adult I would not 'do' ruins.

However, since I left for Latin America, I have, in fact, become my Mother. I now own a fleece, have enjoyed a rainy hike in Boquete, Panama, and never miss an opportunity to use the loo. So it is no surprise then that last week I signed up for a five day trek to the Cuidad Perdida of Teyuna deep in the Colombia jungle.

Three days hiking to some rubble and the back again all whilst sleeping in hammocks - my Mum's idea of Heaven, my Dad's of Hell.

The hike turned out to be possibly the highlight of my trip so far. Yes it was hard but not overwhelmingly so and we had two brilliant guides, Jesus and Gabriel (so we knew we were in good hands), who were constantly on hand to slice up watermelon and oranges for the weary. Carlos, our translator, knew where all the best, and safest, parts of the river to swim in were and would suggest a dip just as you were thinking 'I'm getting a bit hot'.

The one with the two waterfalls

Over the five days I became quite a connoisseur of these spots weighing up the pros and cons of  'the one with the two waterfalls' versus 'the one with the big rock you could jump off'. My favourite place was 'the one with the really fast current'. There existed in our group a French guy, named Jean, who had a penchant for almost getting swept over rapids. At the spot in question he and a Dane named Rasmus (a common name in Denmark it would seem; his mate was also called Rasmus) finally got dragged down stream. Frantic cries from Gabriel instructed the two to swim with it and to the opposite bank. They then walked upstream and dived back in, across the current, back to cheering group. Well after that we all wanted a go and one by one we swam down the current, off to the side, walked upstream and dived back to safety. 

Lost City Found.

The ruins themselves, although not the trek's highlight, were impressive enough. Two hundred stone terraces soaring above the jungle where the Kogi Indians (who still inhabit the jungle) used to dwell until the Spanish arrived with their European diseases and the city was left to the infected. To my delight at the very top of Teyuna we found six army personal guarding the site from gold diggers, guerrillas and clumsy gringos alike. I may be turning in to my Mother but I am still a Cowley girl and naturally I had to have a picture with the soldiers, wearing one of their hats. The resulting photo definitely trumps my sisters' usual Notting Hill Carnival London Bobby efforts.

So after five days of only washing in streams and having run out of clean socks and t-shirts it was time to return to modern Colombia. In no time we had exchanged the lush idyll of the jungle for the laughably bureaucratic traffic police who impounded our jeep not because it contained twelve people instead of seven, or because the engine and petrol tank were connected by a rubber tube running through the passenger cabin, but because our diver didn't have the correct piece of paper. Civilisation Indeed.