Caption: ¨Sooo touristy.¨When you are traveling there will be a phrase you will hear often. ¨Ah, that place is far too touristy¨. And this doesn´t just go for places that are overrun with middle-aged Germans and Brits with amazing 9 to 5 tan lines. It is said by backpackers to show that this person knows how to spot a virgin backpacker heaven, which is a crock of shit because what backpackers do is trample down the same safe path because it us comforting and filled with other backpackers like themselves. The touristless backpacker spot is an oxymoron. These same people would be dying for another backpacker to talk to after one night in a pueblo just 2 miles off the backpacker blazed path.
In this regard, I don´t reluctantly join the ¨Camino de gringos a Cuidad Perdida¨ but leap well knowingly into it. After all, the last time I checked I was a gringo. Your other option is to carry 6 days worth of food, buy the visitor permit that the military asks for once you enter the national park and then get some maps to follow up to the lost city (in one day we crossed the river 9 times) and find a place to sleep in the jungle. Unless you are a commando or have done the hike before I would say you would have a 50/50 chance of making it up and back before your food ran out or getting lost. In my opinion this hike is still relatively pristine since you are sleeping in an archaeological site on the 3rd and 4th night. The hike was filled with the usual international suspects; Israelis, Brits, Irish, Germans, Aussies, and the token American. They are all ranging from polite to overly-polite. Any topics verging towards the edges of normal (meaning getting interesting) and you´re seen as a freakazoid. The Aussie mentions that Japanese men buy used girls underwear from vending machines in Japan and all the girls in the group make the obligatory, ¨ewww¨. One of the girls says,
¨I wouldn´t want some strange man smelling my underwear,¨ and my knee jerk response was, ¨Who cares what someone does to your clothes if you´re not using them anymore? I wouldn´t care if someone used my body in a gay gang bang after I was dead. I´m dead, it´s not going to bother me.¨
No one saw the connection between the two. You can get the idea of the tone I set.
Caption: ¨I´ll suck your dick if you scratch my legs for 30 minutes.¨Starting the long hot and biting jungle insects walk up I was able to do some firsthand research on the stories I had heard about Colombia. And boy was I excited. One of them was about the young boys ´practicing´ sex and having their first sexual experiences with donkeys.
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=823490101 ¨The Asses of the Caribbean.¨
Jamie, the porter, confirmed the stories but said that it was only rural boys that would do it. Jamie grew up in a rural area. He was definitely uncomfortable about the line of questioning, even denying it happens until I told him I already talked to Colombians that told me it did happen. I guess he didn´t want to tarnish his tough guy ex-paramilitary image. More about the paramilitaries later.
Caption : ¨Jaime, his back to the camera to protect is donkey fuqing identity.¨
The second story was the Burundanga tree I had heard so much about.
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1119242704 (Colombian Devil´s Breath.¨)
This tree grows wildly throughout Colombia in the jungle and even in urban areas. There are stories about tourists making tea with the white flowers and tripping for three days. As my guide, Castro, told me,
¨Remember one liter of water per flower. I had an Israeli and a German in my group before that made the tea with 2 flowers in half a liter of water. They started acting crazy crazy. Instead of going into the bathroom where the imaginary animals were hiding they took a shit right in front of the group on the temple.¨ Ok, good advice.
If you go to Ciudad Perdida you want to pray you get this guy for your guide.
Caption: ¨ Castro. I trust this man with my life.¨Studliness, confidence and charm exudes from this man that not even a dead baby full worth of coke could provide. The man spiffs himself up at each water hole while we lazily bask in the sun and sparkling water to cool our itching bites. Before we are ready he has already gelled up his hair, lathered his arms and chest in hair conditioner, and slathered on a grandpa-sized dose of Hugo Boss cologne.
Castro also had an experience with Burundanga. The great thing about Castro was he would tell you anything about his life, about now or then, very matter-of-factly. He was and is involved in Narco-Trafficking. Back before the Bush assisted Uribe (current Pres of Colombia that is hugely popular with about 75 to 85% popular support) dessimation of coco crops near urban, tourist centers and highways coco was grown in the Santa Marta mountain range where Castro grew up. With its easy access to the coast it was a perfect place to grow coco, turn it into cocaine and ship it to the states in boats. Everyone, and he did mean everyone, was involved in the coke game at some point in Santa Marta and the farm lands that surrounded it. Castro, being just as charming as he is now back then, would wear 6 million pesos worth of gold in sausage thick necklaces and fat gold rings on each finger.
Well Scapolamine, the white powder product of the Burundanga tree, was used then as it is now. To rob your ass blind. Two girls came up to Castro and they started drinking together. But Castro was smart and he would only pour the shots for himself and the girls from a bottle he hid in his pants to avoid being drugged. Unfortunately the ladies were smarter and one put the powder on her lips and kissed him, while the other put the white powder on her nipple and he kissed it. He woke up three days later in a hospital, nearly dying and having lost all his jewelry.
I´m not sure what the moral of that story is, but it seems to me that in every single gangster/cartel building movie the main character achieves exactly what he wants and is then destroyed in every aspect of his life...his empire crumbles, his superficial lady leaves him and his best friend backstabs him and usually ends up banging his lady. To me it seems just like the pursuit of the American Dream. The greatest part is everyone from nerdy Jewish kids in private colleges to rapper thugsters idolizes these great blow ups and blow outs. One of us is missing the point.
There was an additional ¨extra touristy¨ upsell side tour with the coke factory hut. Since when was a private tour to a coke hut in the jungle seen as touristy? But this is what each backpacker was telling me. If they were giving away souvenir t-shirts then ok, I could see that.
Caption: ¨My Ciudad Perdida souvenir t-shirt.¨We go hiking up the river 15 min from where we were staying at 7am to see the coke kitchen. Maybe it was watching too much Mr. Rogers while I was a kid but I was just as stoked on going on the coke factory tour as I was seeing how Crayolas were made when I was 8. We arrive to the plastic tarp held by sticks with a pile of plastic bottles arranged next to a pile of fresh coco leaves. Most of the bottles were not used and was all part of the smoke and mirrors to make you feel like you got your overpriced money´s worth for this 30 minute upsell. Yes, we were ripped off.
Caption : Mostly empty bottles, but ones that had something were extremely toxic and caustic.¨Yes, definitely worth it. I wont bore you with the recipe cause you can surely find it online but what you should know is that the guy was touching these chemicals with this hands, which included gasoline, sulfuric acid, potassium permanganate, salt, and lye.
Caption: ¨He touches his wife and donkey with that hand.¨ The end result was a gray pungent smelling paste that can only be smoked in this form. If you try to snort it rivers of blood will pour from your nose.
Caption, ¨Don´t try to put this stuff up your nose.¨
An undisclosed backpacker said that his brain went numb 10 min after smoking it. The final product is sold to the real drug dealers that have giant ovens that dry out the coke, and then they add 4 more lovely chemicals to turn it into nose candy. The coco farmers and guys that make the toxic paste make pennies compared to the guys that do the final processing and shipping.
Bush and Uribe have been erradicating coco fields by spraying the fields with an agent orange type herbicide. As a result other food crops such as bananas and coffee are dying and they are still trying to figure out if there are any agent orange type nuerological affects on the children being born in the area. I did some of my own research and took this photo of a demon-eyed children from the indiginous village.
Caption: ¨Take the time to blow this pic up and look at the eyes of this kid on the left.¨The best case scenario is the kid needs glasses, and the worst case is he was spawned by the devil. He would beat puppies tied to trees. The child was not right. As usual, best intentions of getting rid of one problem, coke, makes another, neurological problems.
Back to Castro; while walking down the trail I asked him what his craziest Narco story was and he replied very casually, ¨When both of my brother´s were killed by the drug gurrillas. Then I switched to full-time tour operator.¨
A little while later, again walking alone on the trail with him because I was the only person who could communicate with the guide out group of 12, if I noticed the mobile phone call he made before we left the last village before getting out of mobile reception range. Yep, I did. Well, he was checking to make sure that his London ´amigos´ had arrived safetly back in London. He had hooked them up with a few kilos and they had smuggled them back in the country. ¨How you might ask?¨ cause I sure as hell did. Castro´s friend makes European brand shoes with the sole filled with coke. 500 grams per pair of shoes. He says he has many clients from Italy, Spain and the UK that come each year for their holidays and to bring back their kilos. He says he doesn´t solicite buyers and that tourist search him out, yet I got a hunch he was telling me this story to see if I was ´interested´ in bringing back a little investment.
Ah, crackpackers...sooo touristy
