How did we not know it was here?
Ciudad Perdidad sits high in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on Colombia's northern coast. The story goes that back in the 70's someone was flying a helicopter in the area and saw circular stone rings that when he asked the locals about, no one new what he was talking about. In the 30 years between it's first sighting and my visit a small but dedicated team of locals and indigenous tribespeople have reclaimed from the jungle dozens of terraced stone ringed platforms that at one time were the home of a thriving city.
People believe that at the time of the conquistadors the indigenous folk (the Tayronans) split into two camps, those who embraced the European newcomers, and those that feared them. The latter retreated to the mountains and hid, and this city was their sanctuary.
The clandestine nature of the settlement is only really experienced when you visit. After a 4X4 drive as far up the mountain as the track goes you arrive at the town of Machete (allegedly named after the habit of previous inhabitants involved in the drugs trade executing thieves on the spot with machetes), we spent 2 days hard hiking to an unassuming river bed. Into the bank an equally unassuming lump of stone is set, a little higher is another, and then another, little more than a foot across you climb a dozen or so of these stones before you realize they are a rudimentary staircase. Climb a little higher and the steps get a little wider, a little more uniform, and before you know it half an hour has passed and your ascending a grand staircase into the city. A carved rock depicts the scale of the site, only a third of which has been taken back from the encroaching vines, trees and other assorted jungle flora.
To keep the area free of "special interest horticulturalists" the army patrol the area, and nothing has ever struck me as more Indiana Jones then seeing the Colombian military re supply helicopter come into land on the highest terrace; previously the site of the tribal leaders hut.
No one knows what happened to the indigenous who built their home in the clouds- maybe they returned to the coast and the conquistadors, maybe they simply faded into the mist that hangs in the mornings around their lost city.
For me the biggest mystery was how this place had evaded the prying eyes of the world for hundreds of years.
