Treks on 2 feet and 4

Hello again from San Agustin! Yes we are still here, since we have finally found a place where we can go walking without armed guards or the police coming along with us. It is a town with more horses than cars, some paved and some dirt streets, where parrots chatter happily and cockrels wake you up in the morning. All in all, it is a very very welcome change from capital cities and all the problems that come along with them. The downside is that this internet connection is slower than the slowest snail, so you probably won’t get to see all of our pictures this time around.
So, what have we been up to for the past 2 weeks? When we got out of the “bus” (read pickup truck) from Neiva, we were dropped right outside a tourist office, where we met Columbia, a very pleasant guide/ tourist information agent, who accompanied us to a hostel that was pretty cheap and had hot water. Later that day, her husband Hannibal stopped by to share a bottle of rum with us (a small bottle, which he more or less polished off all on his own), which acts as a Spanish lubricant. Its amazing how well we can speak Spanish sometimes. Anyway, Hannibal and his brother Silvio are guides that work a lot with horses, and our interest piqued at the thought of a 5 day horse trek through the Columbian highlands (yes the area that until recently was overrun by guerillas). Over the next few days, we explored the surruounding countryside, visiting El TAblon, Chaquira, Purutal and Pelota – all sites with statues and / or tombs and often having amazing views. We also went on a hike down to the Rio Magdalena which took us past shrines and through coffee plantations and bamboo forests (and through someone’s garden). It was lovely to be able to walk for the whole day, for free, without a guide, in the peace and quiet of the countryside. It looks a bit like Switzerland would if it were overrun by jungle, parrots, monkeys and perhaps a few huge cockroaches. A cunning plan developed over these few days, and we chose a trek for Fabrice, Olivia and the guide Hannibal (no one else) to visit 3 lakes – Lago de Magdalena, San Sebastian and Cuciyaco. The first day when we left San Agustin we had to get up at 5 am and kill about 10 of the giant cockroaches in the room and wander down to the “bus” (again, of the pickup truck variety). This bus was soon very crowded and had people hanging on the back of it when there was no more room outside. Cries of “oooh no una grande! Un grande mas!” echoed around the pickup when we got in and squeezed our larger-than-the-average-Columbian-sized-bums into a teeny space. We zoomed out of town and up into the mountains, on roads that made our larger-than-the-average-Columbian-sized-bums twitch a bit, especially when we met the inevitable bus coming the other way. We were accompanied along this rather perilous dirt track by a very fit, very crazy black dog, who ran with us all the way either yapping at the tires or leading the way with his tail held high, since clearly he knew the road better than any driver (of about 14 years old) could. Amazingly, it was not a suicide attempt of yet another starving pooch, and he lived to run all the way back down the trail again.
The “bus” stopped in what would be a one-horse town if it had cars and were not the start of a horse trek. We were fed a scrumtious meal of eggs, rice and hot chocolate by a breast-feeding 16 year old (a good age for child-bearing over here), before meeting our beasts of burden (mine shortly to be nicknamed bob for short, even though bob was a girl… reminded me of blackadder, but anyway, we’re getting distracted).
Now, a horse over here is not quite your average arabian stallion. It will not tower over you, muscles bulging as its steamy breath beats down on your neck (or head, depending on how tall you are). The B.O.B.s over here are lithe, often skinny, and are used to carrying maximum 80 kilos (Fab’s horse was not happy). Your feet won’t quite drag on the ground, unless the ground happens to rise up. So with our 3 horses, we started off up a pleasant dirt road into the highlands. The views were spectacular, amazingly green and lush, with farms dotted here and there. The horses behaved well, which was reassuring for 2 people who really don’t know much more about a horse than which end generally goes to the front and which end smells worse, unless it is on a plate. Soon the road dwindled to a trail about a foot wide, which was very picturesque. Then the fact that we were going up in the highlands made itself blatantly apparent as the rocks started. You wouldn’t believe that a horse, with no vibram coated horseshoes or anything of the sort, would climb up and down rocks like these without slipping more. Amazingly, we got off quite lightly, with Oli’s horse falling only once with no damage to Oli and Fab’s horse falling once also and headbutting him in the process (and possibly in protest). They slipped an aweful lot, but four legs comes in handy for catching your balance again. So we proceeded, clinging on and leaning back and foreward as appropriate until our thighs and buttocks could take no more! The jungle bits are green and lush for a reason though, so whenever we had to walk for a bit, it was generally through a stream which was in fact the trail. We had our trusty gaiters with us though which helped with this. The first evening we arrived in San Antonio. Its not a village as we thought, but a house. There might be another abandoned one over the ridge too, so its totally isolated. The house was inhabited by a family who kept chickens, cows, herbs and dogs and a very strange son (Fab says a bloody weirdo- its still an understatement). They fed us rice and eggs and chicken and soup, and then we plodded off to sleep (there was no electricity and it was very dark, and they were clearly saving on candles..). We were exhausted, so sleeping from 7 till 7 was an easy feat. We had only ridden for 4 hours that day. Little did we know that the next day entailed a 9 hour ride! We got up and had fish and rice and agua de panela (hot sugar water- very tasty) and rode down the trail over the bones of a dead cow. She had apparently died of old age. We rode through jungle so dense that it kept knocking the spot off our shoulders & our hats off our heads, through water and across bridges over roaring rivers, through marshland and up narrow gulleys (Fab was headbutted here and started walking). We walked through the marsh towards the Lago de Magdalena (shoes started leaking here). We rode a little more then got to very steep rocky parts and decided to give our B.O.B.s a break (either that or Fab wanted to eat his). We walked through the stream and mud until we arrived at Laoyola where we stayed with a charming family for the next 2 nights. We warmed our sodden feet by the fire in the guinea pig hut (farming them for food) while the Senora prepared us a feast of soup, rice, eggs and chicken, salad and plantain bread. That night we slept like logs again. Close to 12 hours. Day 3 we rested the horses and climbed on foot with a local guide and Hannibal up to the ridge to view the Lago Cuciyaco, which officially looks like a rabbit but Fab has decided has smaller ears like the guinea pigs we met the night before (cuy / couille in spanish – just like the noise they make). We then pushed our way through vegetation so thick that it took quite a bit of muscle power, and climbed down from the ridge the more direct way (it was a good job there were trees and vines to hang on to). The 2 guides gave us lots of useful information on flora and fauna in the region, and even poked around in a couple of bear turds for us. Not sure what we were supposed to see, but a bear turd, it would appear, looks like a cow turd with berries. In case you ever see one in the wild, now you will know what left it there. That evening our buttocks were feeling a little more rested as we settled down for our evening meal of eggs, rice and salad and plantain bread, then relaxed with the guinea pigs some more (we were more relaxed than the guinea pigs who were looking at us in absolute terror as recipies for cooking them were swapped over the fire, and “good tasty ones” were pointed out to us).
The next morning we arose bright and early and took the fastest shower ever in the 11 degree water, before heading off on the B.O.B.s again. This day was to be a high one, climbing up to 3,600m to give us amazing views of the Lago the San Sebastian and Lago de Magdalenda (the other side of it) through the clouds. It was the coldest pee Oli has had to have in a while – luckily Fab didn’t have the camera ready. We then rode down all the rocks again and back through the jungle and across the rivers and up the other rocks again back to San Antonio, to the family of the strange son, where we slept until 4 am, when they clearly thought it was time to get up, so they turned their battery operated radio on full blast to accordian music and bad singing, to motivate them to chop the wood outside our window. We were not amused. We said as much, but the damage had been done and we ate our eggs and rice for breakfast while weirdo son laughed at us (no idea why, he was just weird), and went on our way. We had to ride against the clock to get to the bus that left at 12 on the dot, but we made it, all the way down one valley over the rocks and up the other side over the rocks then down some more rocks to get back to the one foot wide trail, and finally to the dirt road, and finally back to the village (Quinchana). We were knackered, muddy, wet, smelly, and very happy to get off the B.O.B.s when we got onto the bus to go back home. This bus was a big bus, with seats in rows across it. And strangely, no central aisle. To get on, you just climbed up the side of the bus where it had openings foryou to go through to get to the row you wanted. This was the bus that took all the farmer’s produce into the market in San Agustin, so it stopped every kilometre or so to pick up crates of fruit and more people until it was stuffed to the brim and beyond (i.e. there were people sitting on top). Don’t forget, this big bus is going back down the perilous dirt track with the drop that goes down all the way to the bottom. We were glad to be inside the bus, although the lack of windows in this kind of transportation left us with great views. We went to a different hostel that night back in San Agustin with a private bathroom on our room, and took our first hot shower in 6 days and slept for 12 hours again. It was bliss. The trek was amazing, we would do it again, but 5 days is enough for our thighs and bums!

Faboli xxxx