AMY BANNERMAN... went jungle trekking to find a lost city in Colombia…
Colombia: not exactly Mallorca, is it?
Not in the slightest. And there’s not a sniff of a pina colada or a cut-out swimsuit in sight. The only bit of the trip which feels a bit Love Island is that you don’t actually find out who you’ll be trekking with until day one, when you all meet in the lobby of the Hotel Tayromar, in the northern city of Santa Marta, for a pre-trip briefing. My group was really varied: a mix of couples and singles, from all over the world. I was particularly pleased to see one A-grade hottie who was motivation in himself.
Did you go full-on camo?
As a fashion director, I had fully prepped for this trip as though I was starring in some kind of hiking photoshoot. People had filled my ears with wartime-style horror stories of toes hanging off and ill-fitting boots turning their feet black. I can smugly report that I didn’t use ONE blister plaster. My feet were the only ones in our group that came out unscathed, thanks to a very thorough boot fitting pre-trip at Cotswold Outdoor. Yes, it was excruciatingly embarrassing pretending to “hike” up a step machine. No, I’m not even a little bit sorry I did it.
Jungle trekking: tough as it sounds?
It’s kind of like that song by The Streets, Fit But You Know It, apart from I’m not fit and I didn’t really know it before this expedition. But I definitely know it now. In the interests of journalistic transparency, this was physically the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. You are climbing for seven days. There was one particular moment when it was p-o-u-r-i-n-g with rain – I mean exactly like that scene from Four Weddings And A Funeral when Hugh Grant kisses Andie MacDowell. Apart from I was wearing hiking boots and a rucksack that weighed the same as Danny DeVito. We came around ANOTHER bend and were
faced with ANOTHER steep mountainous path and I just stood there and screamed expletives into the forest. Which made my fellow, rather athletic and clean-mouthed hikers stop and snigger into their eco water bottles.
Ultimate status update?
There is so much Instagram fodder it’s hard to know where to start, although obviously there is no reception so you have to store up latergrams. The point of the lost city trek is to, erm, find the lost city of Teyuna (also known as Ciudad Perdida), which had remained undiscovered until 1972. We were successful in this mission, and the view from the top made the days leading up to it so worthwhile. Forget the 30-day squat challenge; we’re talking 1,200 steps leading up to the highest point – 3,937 feet above sea level. On the way back down, we swam in a Timotei-ad-style waterfall and I found a lost child from a local village and carried her back to her tribe – a moment I’ll treasure forever. One morning, as I woke at the crack of dawn, I found a donkey standing next to my bed. Another night, after about 10 hours’ trekking, and soaked to the bone, we gathered at the camp under an awning with our group leader, Sergio. We ate bowls of warm salty popcorn while he sang us songs about frogs and told us about the local Wiwa tribe’s belief that you must be patient to find true love. I may have cried. OK, I was like Gwyneth Paltrow making her Oscar speech in 1999.
On the final day of the trek, we turned the last corner, lightheaded with relief, and found a shaman from the Wiwa tribe sitting on a rock waiting to greet us and perform a soul-cleansing ceremony. He was devilishly handsome and already had multiple wives, so it felt way more hopeful than any of the dates I’d been on back home.
Anything less Bear Grylls?
There’s not a spa hotel in sight, but on the final night, back at Hotel Tayromar, just having toilet paper and a proper shower felt incredibly luxurious after seven days sleeping in basic camps in the jungle. This trip is not for the faint-hearted, but it is for those who want a truly unique experience (and travel stories you can dine out on for years to come).