Cuidad Perdida and La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia
Friday, April 20, 2007
These pictures are from my trek into the Colombian jungle to visit Cuidad Perdida. Along the trail I ventured into the Kogui village of Mutamyi, where a majority of these photos came from. Cuidad Perdida was discovered in 1975 by a father and son in search for ancient treasures. Buried deep in the jungle, Cuidad Perdida was a thriving city in Pre-Colombian times. Now it has quite the folklore. A duel between the son and another treasure hunter took place on the terraces of the city and the son was killed there in the shootout. Also in 2003 a group of trekkers, led by my quide, was taken captive by the paramilitary group FARC, for 3 months. The jungle is dotted with Kogui villages, where the people still live very semi-nomadic lives and maintain their distance from modern culture.
I feel very fortunate to capture as many images as I did of the people. The jungle also supported numerous cocaine laboratories. The picture where I am holding a machete and the guy has a jar with white paste is taken at one. The stories Adan, the man I´m standing with, were very interesting. He showed us how they processed cocaine up until the paste stage, which would serve as an excellent drug rehab class, and told us crazy stories of how the paramilitary groups are paid off and how the cocaine leaves the jungle. I´m glad I never got into doing blow, the chemical process he showed us was just plain dirty and very dangerous. Now this area is doing well thanks to the tourism business and the campesinos are planting food instead of drugs. For the people of the country who work the lands the money is the same, minimal. The military groups I passed along the trail were mountain patrol divisions there to keep the area secure. They really enjoyed me showing them pictures of snow covered mountains and skiing down chutes. All along the way people took great care of me, I wound up spending the night at a family´s home where the father was celebrating his 50th birthday with his 7 children. We whoooped it up good and my inclusion was another example of how friendly so many of the Colombian people I´ve met along this journey are. I hope you are able to open these photos and can see a little bit of what my eyes are experiencing. mdj
