The Pensieve

So today we awoke naturally to the light of the sun, strolled over a little mountain pass to the beach, went for a dip in ridiculously clear waters, strolled back to the hostal, and made ourselves some fresh blackberry juice for breakfast. Life is pretty good for us here in Taganga. Taganga is a little fishing village turned fishers of men, er, tourists. It seems to be an expat haven for dirty hippies and the likes, but the massive kitchen complete with two waffle makers and a blender holds us in its power. My how we love to cook here. Now, what the kitchen may have, the internet lacks. We apologize for the lack of photo gallery right now, but it has been a bit difficult to get things repaired. Alas, we do have lots more stories to tell, so onward ho…

After the coke factory tour, we set out for another four to five hour hike through the increasingly green jungle. We arrived at our next camp around midafternoon and immediately went to ‘the pool’ for a dip. Just outside of camp, the river’s flow had created a series of small waterfalls breaking in to a deep cool pool. A perfectly placed boulder made for a great leaping off point, and the swift current drifted us down to some, again perfectly placed, sunbathing rocks. Heaven. Of course, by the time we returned from swimming, our lunch was just about ready. God Bless that Eleicer and his two shy but efficient helpers. These two guys acted as our porters in the following days, as mules can only make it to this second camp, and they carried all of our food for us, leaping and running up and down the mountains with the surety of pumas. They were amazing people - think sherpa. Anyway, the afternoon was lazed away and then dinner and to bed in the hammocks. This time, as all our hammocks were strung along the same beam, we could all feel one another’s rustles and tussles, ‘’Like we were all sleeping in one big bed together'’ as Taryn put it. Good times.

Up at dawn, on the trail early, as this climb to the Lost City was to be a long and difficult day. We crossed the river nine times in total, zigzagging our way further and further back, passing Cogi homes and villages along the way. The Cogi are the indigenous decendants of the Tayrona culture here in Colombia, or so they say. We learned from Eleicer though, that the Tayrona employed slaves and that these slaves are actually the ancestors to the Cogi, but we’ll get to that in a bit. The current Cogi live in round huts made of wood and clay and thatched with a type of palm frond. They are slowly being exposed to modernity, though they retain much of their culture still. We were offered sugar cane at one of the villages and chewed on the delicious treat while hearing about how they squeeze the cane in a press, using mules or some such animal to turn two giant wheels against one another, extracting the sweet water from the cane. This they then turn into sugar, molasses, and a type of alcohol. These Cogi are semi-nomadic, in that they move to different sites at each phase of the moon - full, half, and new.  Their gods are the sun and moon with the moon being the most important.  They have a representative in the Colombian legislature that is trying to get them the right to live again in the Lost City, as they feel strong cultural and spiritual ties to it.  He has brokered a deal in which every tourist who travels through their land on the way to La Ciudad Perdida pays a fee to the tribe.  This fee, by no means protects their culture from the inherent exposure to modernization that this tourism brings, but it supposedly gives them a bit more of an edge in a society they do not quite understand.  Eleicer spoke of the tendency to go in to town and get drunk or waste their pensions on useless things.  We did meet a few and they were very shy and removed, but they were strong mountain people and very beautiful.  Only the chief of the Cogi has governmental permission to live in the Lost City, and the rest content themselves with proximity.

The last river crossing left us at the steps that one must climb to the Lost City and that is where we wil leave you until our next installment.