Colombia Times

It is 9:00am and time to be picked up and whisked away from my little Caribbean fishing town (where I am working on the all important project "get blacker than Nathan") to start a 6 day trek into the Jungle clad hills which surround my little beach haven. It is now noon (In South America time, good work team we are only 3 hours late), 1 Australian, 1 Swiss, 1 Japanese, 1 German, 1 Dutch, 1 Colombian and 1 Kiwi mingle around a juice vendor sucking down the glorious sweet, sweet nectar sold at such outlets. The team is assembled and it is time to go. We pile into a Refitted Landrover and are off via death road to a little village in the surrounding highland region known as the Sierra Nevada. After a quick lunch consumed while fending off the towns mangy dogs which roam the streets of any South American town we begin our journey to find some 2000 year old ruins.
We stumble up a hill dotted with the odd coco bean plantation and various collections of 18 year old soldiers with large automatic weapons having a gentle smoke on Colombians finest pot. Eventually we take a break at an army outpost where we chat cordially with some of the young men on their four month placement in the middle of no where. We soon hack on and find ourselves in our lodgings for the night, a shack perched in a little valley where the coco beans have been replaced by Coca plants. Our shack is nestled alongside the valley shop whose supply truck comes in the form of a donkey, and the lodgings of the local Coca plant farmer. We manage to get in a few hours of sleep in our hammocks and wake to asses the damage done by the mosquitoes that seem to not know that mosquito nets are supposed to keep them from eating me. An old Colombian man wanders into our camp and offers (for a small fee) to show us how to make cocaine, curious we wander off in to the jungle to learn the finer details of the drug trade. After an hour, some coca leaves, petrol, water, sulfuric acid, acetone, bi-carb soda, iodine, and we are presented with a past ready to be dried and cut into cocaine. The troop and I leave the old drug baron with his freshly made paste of dodgyness and return to our camp, albeit rather disturbed but ready for a good cup of sweet Colombian coffee. We continue on our way through jungle, hills, army camps, indigenous villages (whose people can only speak their native tongue), coca plantations. After two days of profuse amounts of sweet, we have arrived at an ancient Tairona city built some 2000 years ago and matching Machu Pichu in size, albeit that most of the ruins are still covered in Jungle. After a day of wandering through a rather eerie set of ruins, not hampered by tourists, gift shops or vendors harping crappy goods we done the packs again and begin the hike back to civilization / a town of fifty people connected to the world by a road which resembles a liquored up cliff. We begin our walk feeling all peaceful with ourselves after our chilled out night and day with the stunning ruins. I am walking through stunning Colombian highlands, but something is wrong, peace and love in my stomach turns to, well.............. I walk out of the jungle and back on to the walking track a little relieved and lighter. The day continues, much as it starts, we walk, talk, I run off for a "nature break", we fend off marauding mosquitoes (scientific name - C$%TS). Day 5 and 6 and and and we continue on in much the same fashion as the previous days, walking. We finally emerge, rather, sweetie, grimy and hairy. I hug Ryo the Japanese girl, who screams as the sweetie beard takes effect. It is really a scream of joy, we have made it and can return to the sane world of Colombia and the Caribbean coast.
I journey to Cartagena, organize passage on a boat to Panama. It is late in the afternoon I have just figured out what my plan is and as such am forced to finally buy a ticket to Santiago to finally start work (2nd of March and I will be re-entering the work force). Time to brush up on the Spanish, I decide to update my blog instead. The blog is done, all there is left to do is proof read it, but hmmmm I think that curing my hunger may in fact prove to be more important.