Colombia's Lost City Trekking Tour
A Six Day Guided Tour Through The Sierra Nevada of Northern Colombia
Experience the unique adventure of taking a guided 6 night trekking tour in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park of Colombia.
There is no bus option to the ancient city, or even a decent trail there. So, unless you own a helicopter, to get to the ancient city in Colombia's Sierra Nevada jungle, one must book a six-day guided tour either through Turcal Travel Agency or Sierra Tours-both based out of Santa Marta, Colombia.
The cost, which includes everything but the good shape you will need to be in to make the trek, is 480,000 Colombian pesos or about $240.00. While both tour companies offer competitive rates, it is Sierra Tours that goes the extra mile to protect the environment and the local villages along the way to the city. Their guides are both competent and aware of the need to preserve the magnificent environment.
Though it is an ancient city, a lost city not discovered by the outside world until 1971, The Lost City is not the story of what once was, but the story of what in many ways still is. Along the way to the city, one passes through several Tyrona villages-the blood descendants of the tribe who built the city eight hundred years ago. They are still living in the same romantically wild way that their ancestors who built the city once lived.
After a three hour Jeep ride from Santa Marta, it takes three days of trekking through the thick jungle and sleeping in outdoor hammocks to arrive at a riverbank from which one must walk up 2,256 stone steps to enter the forbidding city. It is still possible to see a group of Tyronas dressed in their traditional white garbs walking into the ancient city, their ancient city.
While many other ruin sites are the story of a people lost, a people destroyed; the people of the Lost City still thrive in the surrounding jungle. The city was never destroyed or sacked but abandoned. As the Spanish began to come to distant outlying villages of the Tyrona, the inhabitants of the city simply left and were never heard from again. Some speculate that the descendants of the city's inhabitants are still thriving somewhere in a distant and undiscovered jungle haven (the Tyrona living today are the descendants of those who lived in villages surrounding the city).
The trek leaves the romantic mind standing atop the mountain that was once a thriving city wondering if somewhere amongst the jungle's kept secrets the Tyronas are still thriving in the way they were before the Spanish forced their disappearance.
The city is a place of quiet contemplation of a present way of life far removed from the standards of the West and also a reflection into the past. While Peru's Machu Picchu will continue to attract travelers in hoards, The Lost City will continue to be the adventurous alternative for those looking for something much more than anciently stacked stones.
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