In search of umami, Author at In Search Of Umami

Pain, sweat and smiles on the way to the Lost City

The Lost City is the Machu Picchu of Colombia. The Tayrona people left it in the jungle, after being conquered by the Spanish, to be forgotten till the 1970s when it was rediscovered by grave robbers. Still we were hesitating if we should go to see it as the pictures of the main square didn't look like anything more than just circles, stone rings. In the end we got convinced by a big discount that I got for translating during the tour as obviously the guide spoke only Spanish 🙂
And there we were walking in a world of pain to the Lost City. It was 1 pm when we started the walk through the mountains without any trees or clouds. The sun was excruciating and we were sweating like pigs. The sweat was literally dropping even from my hands. It was so hot that even mosquitoes were not interested in their walking prey. I was already thinking that I seriously underestimated this hike as I thought after Salkantay and Choquequirao this would be a walk in a park. Only the indigenous kids were full of energy and motivated to pose for sweets from tourists. Obviously I didn't join that tradition, I don't want them to be teethless from that everyday- Halloween- sugar. Although there are three tribes living in the area we mostly saw Kogis, indigenous people who are directly descended from the Tayrona people or so they claim. They live in traditional huts made of wood and palm leaves but cell phones and pesos are already well known wealth that tourism brought to them. So it's hard to say how much of their tradition is still really alive. Along the way we heard about other Kogis communities living higher in the mountains, that are isolated from the foreign money and culture but since we haven't seen them, we can't judge.
Apart from the communities along the way we also saw some spectacular views, high mountains, rivers, natural swimming pools and dense jungle. Our campsites were not a part of that spectacular scenery but they were OK. The main rules were: to take a shower before going to bed and not to put any backpacks on the bed. All of it to keep the beds as clean as possible because no one will change the sheets after every person...or 2nd or 3rd... Or maybe ever. Every time I went to sleep I could smell sweat from the sheets and I was hoping that no bed bugs were in there waiting for me. Gladly I was lucky. Also because I didn't get hardcore food poisoning during the hike. Judging by the look of the toilets (got almost sick from looking) and sinks (of course people vomit there, why would they do it on the grass??!!) at least half of the people got very sick. Some didn't even see the ruins. Well at least not live... Thankfully JD and I were doing quite okish and so we were able to climb those 1200 stairs to reach the top. And it was worth it. The ruins were just breathtaking!! Huge, stone constructions, arising from the jungle. I can imagine it was hidden and forgotten for so many years. And the mystical atmosphere surrounding it. We could hear the birds and the nature was truly singing. We were not alone but the few people that were there got spread through the ruins and disappeared between the terraces. Just us, the ruins, nature and... a few young soldiers with huge guns. Good that it's all safe now because if someone would like to kidnap us (and it happened already in 2003 with a group of tourists and their guide) I don't know if those tiny boys with big guns would know what to do actually.
The Lost City left us thinking what else might be hidden in the dense rainforest in Colombia or maybe in the Amazons. Maybe there are still civilizations to be discovered... It would be history rising in front of our eyes.

Practical tips and info:

The Lost City can be visited only with a guided tour and there are 5 agencies who do them: Turcol, Expotur, Magic Tour, Wiwa Tour and Guias y Baquianos Tour. All of them offer the trek for 700 000 COP and the price doesn't change if you do it in 5 or 6 days instead of 4. All of the agencies are equal, same food, same sleeping conditions, same level of chaos in their organisation. The only difference is maybe that Wiwa sends you with an indigenous guide.
If you speak Spanish you can get quite a deal on the price depending on the level of desperation of the agency. I wrote to all of them a few days before and ended up going with Turcol for 200 000 COP
Bring: repellent (although not too much, it's still not the amazon out there), alcohol to disinfect your hands, electrolytes for those moments when you will be hugging the toilet, toilet paper, small money for water, chocolate and gatorade, a headlamp and a swimming suit for those many natural pools. Don't forget to bring soap and shampoo as there are showers on each campsite:)
The first camp has electricity so you can still charge your camera, later on it's not possible
Don't bring too much clothes, they will all stink anyway!! Bring your own sheets or very light sleeping bag to sleep in your own sweat!!

Where the modern meets the old – Panama City

Panama City is most certainly not like any other city we saw in Latin America. First of all it's really clean, we could walk around in our flip flops without having to jump between mountains of poo. There were way less homeless people lying on the streets. We didn't have to look around anxiously while running through the pedestrian crossings because the drivers were really stopping on red!! And not only a red light would stop them, every time I was taking a picture, they would stop not to destroy my shot. Panama City was definitely a whole other world compared to other cities in Latin America. Rather peaceful, cheerful people and... It was actually really pretty! We are both not particularly city people and for sure we are not in love with cities that we saw so far. But Panama City was so vibrant, colorful and organised. The old city town was charming, full of soul, hip cafes and restaurants and undisturbed by skyscrapers. It was visible that someone thought about the city before building its new part which is completely separated from the old part. They didn't think too hard though as in the middle of the modern part of the city they placed a Donald Trump tower but well ... It still has it's charm. For those who want to drive through the city but skip the narrow streets of the old there is a road that goes above the water. It's faster and it offers incredible views of the old & new.
Honestly we both thought The Canal was the least impressive of all that Panama City had to offer. It was massive but it was nothing special. Big ships passing through a big canal that's pretty much it.
Below few pictures from lovely Panama City:)

Pancakes for a bed- voluntourism

“Where do you come from?” and “How do you pay for this?” are two of the most common questions we get. For the second I’m often tempted to say that I earned it with my body working in the red light district. But let’s face it, with the look that we have now, no one would believe it anyway so we just have to answer with the truth- we saved it. But what if we didn’t have the money…

We met a lot of fellow travelers that focus their backpacking around voluntourism, so volunteering while they are travelling. And we actually spend 2 of our precious months volunteering as well. It saved us money but more importantly we got to stay longer in one place, we felt needed, we learnt a lot and we met amazing people. We had time to actually get to them and understand them and that is the best thing you can get while travelling- new friends.

But how do you do it? Where do you find the spots and what do you actually have to do?

What kind of volunteer opportunities can you get?

What can’t you do would be a shorter list. You can work in a hostel, in any type of wildlife preservation, with kids, with people from the slums, you can teach people yoga, you can heal them. Whatever floats your boat.

How did we find our volunteering opportunities?

Our first volunteering experience was in Argentina on a farm and to get that we used WWOOF.
It’s mostly made to find farms although you can also find teaching opportunities and possibly other things depending on the country you
search in. We don’t use it anymore because every country has its own chapter which means different rules per country, totally different web page each time and obviously a brand new fee as well. It ends up being expensive compared to other communities out there. Unfortunately, the Argentinian chapter was unorganized, the web page was unbelievably terrible to search through (the idea of wordpress still hasn’t occurred to them), the list of the farms was not actualized so we were sending emails to people that had long forgotten what WWOOFing even was. And if they had new farms you actually first needed to contact WWOOF to get their details to write directly to them. That I am not going to mention that there was no feedback about the places so the hosts could write you would sleep in a mansion with a pool and a spa for teaching English for 3 hours and no one would even verify if it’s true.

The two other times we volunteered we did it via Workaway, it’s a much better idea because it’s worldwide so you pay only once for 2 years. And you can have a couple account so if you travel with the two of you, you don’t have to have an extra account. And the places have feedback so the chance that you will end up with a psychopath is much lower. Workaway offers any kind of work really, farms, hostels, construction, schools etc. We also subscribed for Helpx, which is practically the same as workaway and many of the hosts are actually on both.

What do you get for your work?

That’s the question you always need to ask to your potential host. Because it depends. Typically for working in a hostel you can expect a free bed in a dorm (that’s what we got) and maybe a breakfast (we had it in one of the hostels). When WWOOFing it is more common to get also other meals. With other projects it varies, sometimes
you get a bed, sometimes a hammock, sometimes not even a place on the ground. So always ask!

But?

When we were first thinking about volunteering we thought people would wait on us with open arms and everybody would respond to our messages just because we want to help. Nope, there are plenty of people who want to volunteer also many freeloaders who want to stay and take advantage of the fact that something is for free. It’s a big business from both sides so some people don’t even respond or places are booked few weeks in advance. So to be sure you get something you always have to write to a few hosts and always a few weeks before. Don’t forget that some people earn money off the “volunteers” by for example charging a fee. So you have to pay to actually be able to work for free, because you cost money, because they need money for the food and for animals. Sometimes it’s true but many times it’s just a way to earn money off the naïve ones. We realized that when we were going through volunteering options of Volunteer Latin America and some were costing seriously thousands of dollars for a month and unless they are planning to ship you food from home or built a zoo from nothing, it doesn’t cost that much. Volunteer Latin America claims that they also have many other projects that they don’t put online and you need an upgraded account to reach them so we did that and then the only thing they did is to ask many questions about what you’re eager to pay and bla bla bla and then they only send us a list of emails that we could write, from which most of the projects were with a super high fee that we obviously didn’t want to pay. What’s more many of the hosts they have are on Workaway anyway so… 🙂

For those of you who plan on volunteering but didn’t know how, I hoped I helped. If anyone would have any questions, it won’t be hard to contact me to ask them

In “the Mouth of the Bull”- Bocas del Toro

Bocas del Toro is THE destination in Panama formed by a group of islands. Going on a boat to get there in pouring rain, we couldn’t see anything, except for water under and above us. Soaking wet and cold we reached our hostel and we reminded ourselves of the cold winter in Europe as soon as we entered our frozen room (AC!! :O) and a freezing shower didn’t help.

We knew Bocas Town was THE place in Bocas del Toro so we decided not only to not stay in the city but also not on the main island and it wasa good decision. 15 minutes from there it was idyllic and green. Although it might change if they don’t start to pick up their garbage. As soon as we woke up and the sun came through we saw our Bastimentos, charming little island with stilt houses and just behind them, the green almighty jungle. It even had idyllic beaches, one of them called Wizards Beach probably because you would disappear swimming there as the waves and currents were insane even to look at. But there was enough to do above water. Green hikes, bird watching and the cafes!!! There was this amazing café situated in the middle of the greenness. The food and the atmosphere were really worth the hike up the hill so we spent a few hours there going through their books, talking to the staff and other hikers. And at some point I saw a pictures of a red frog, really pretty with black dots. “Do you ever see those here?” I asked to one of the waitresses, “Yeah, strawberry poison- dart frog, they're here all the time”.

And she left everything to go for a search with us. She explained what the sound is that they make and where to search for them. Afterwards we were seeing them everywhere!! And all of them were eager to pose for a picture.

Too bad the boa that we saw on a hiking path was not as friendly.
It scared us probably as much as we scared him and then he ran away. Thankfully he was not that shy and so he didn’t ran away too far and with a bit of effort we managed to take a picture of him hidden in the bushes.

The islands were truly wonderful for us, just so much variety in nature and so much to do. When we wanted nice hikes, we had them just next to us, when we wanted to chill out on a peaceful island there was Cayo Zapatilla. Just the underwater was disappointing, low visibility and even if it was high, well there was not much to see.

And the way back was a nightmare, we went on a small boat back to Bocas Town to take another boat to get to the main land. And as usual, the boat was small, the life jackets were nowhere to be found and the captain was super chilled out and way above the acceptable speed. Out of the sudden we were covered by a huge wave that he didn’t see as he was too chilled out to see anything. Almost we capsized, we got soaking wet and so did our backpacks. At least my first instinct was to grab the small backpacks and push them above my head to save all the electronics. The captain woke up quite fast to throw all the water out of the boat as his only source of income was about to share Titanic’s fate. Well at least it was a free ride and we were “only” going on a night bus soaking wet. Let’s say we have seen enough boats for a while…

From hell to heaven- on our way to Longo Mai

On Costa Rica in most of the places, it's all about the money. And big money. It's an overpriced country, you pay really a lot and what you get in return is not so great. With big money come big people in this case, taken straight from McDonald's. I guess their wallets are as big as their stomaches as prices can get really insane, let's say vacation in Holland would be cheaper and not nearly that crowded. On Costa Rica you won't miss any animal in a national park because there will be a huge crowd staring at it, taking pics in "oh and ah" atmosphere and another crowd next to the first one asking what is there to see. It's difficult to find a place that would be different. That's why it's such a pleasure to end up in the middle of Longo Mai and feel that is all about community and nature...
But before that would happen for us (Ton and I) we rented a car. And hit the road really late. We were already behind the schedule so we didn't want to waste any precious time. Google knows best so we obviously trusted Google on the navigation. When googled proposed a shortcut we gladly took it. Driving up and down, from one hole to another with a speed of maybe 10 km/h we started question our navigation guru. We were intensively thinking about turning back when I saw a shock on Ton's face. The brakes stopped working... Middle of nowhere, no one to ask for help, no one to even rob us... So it was high time to call the rental company. Obviously all of the people there asked us the how and why question and while say "cuz Google sent us..." we felt more and more stupid. But finally they decided to coke and rescue us. There was not much to do so we took a nap and at 3.30 am when the guy came we all went to sleep in a bigger car in a wait for the sun to rise.

Half a day later but with new brakes we arrived at Longo Mai. True paradise after a night from hell.
Longo Mai is a extraordinary community project that gave shelter to refugees from aboard (mostly from San Salvador) but more then that nowadays it's all about environmental projects and eco-tourism as an alternative of preserving the incredible nature in the area and an opportunity for income for still quiet poor community. There are definitely natural beauties all over the rainforest over there: rivers, natural swimming pools, weird plants and bugs. And in the middle of it Antonio's mom. She is an incredible woman very much into all the projects there. To help, to inspire, to teach. An artist on so many levels. We were truely in heaven and it only got better from there. We were gonna make chocolate!! Being completely honest Antonio did the majority of grinding so the most difficult part since I don't have any muscles and Ton's are only to show off. But we helped him eating for sure!:)

Isla Venado

Isla Venado is one of those fewer and fewer places where kids play football barefoot, where they play with each other and not with a PlayStation, where people talk and don't whatsapp and where life is simple, cheerful and slow. It's a place that very recently had marriages between 13 year old girls and men in their 30ties and it was nothing extraordinary or weird. That's how we came to the island. Childhood neighbor of Antonio (friend of my ex-housemate Ton) came from that island to the main land when she met her own John Smith in the person of a Spanish artist. She was a little girl and he was a man in his thirties. Back then the island didn't have electricity, not a single car and school every now and then when the teachers had a sober day. Thanks to her and Antonio we (Antonio, Ton and I as Jandirk was still in Colombia) stayed with her brother and his family. It was an incredible time filled with fishing, talking, appreciating the simplicity and beauty of the surrounding. We went lobster fishing and we actually caught some huge lobsters and we learned how to peel and open a coconut Castaway style, although with our speed we would probably die of hunger and dehydration anyway. From the coconut shreds the family made "apretaditos" simple ice cream which is sold in a plastic bag. Absolutely delicious but the process of making was a true challenge with a home-made knife which cuts the shreds out from the coconuts. I gave up after 5 minutes, covered in sweat and I could tell that the mother of the family thought I was too slow anyway. Next to Isla Venado there are other beautiful small islands one of which was actually a jail (Isla San Lucas), today a tourist attraction and Isla Tortuga where we went to enjoy sun, beach and snorkel... Even though there was nothing to see underwater.
Another income on the island is definitely shrimp fishing which we absolutely wanted to try. I love shrimp and what could be better than to see how it's done and have it fresh. How naive. So in the evening we went for a fishing night, we dropped our net (well Antonio, Ton and I were more of a watching crowd, Freddy our host did the manual part obviously) and cruised around for a couple of hours. Then it was finally time to lift the net and see what we got in there. As soon as the net reached the boat level I saw we had hundreds of small fish in there... The whole content of the net went into a container and the 3 of us had to start selecting shrimp and bigger fish and crabs as our prey and the rest had to be thrown back into the water. To my horror almost all of the fish were dead... Fish, few rays, few eels, many jelly fish. All dead. I felt extremely sick and shocked that for few kilos of shrimp we killed so many kilos of fish and other water creatures. Antonio explained delicately to Freddy that we felt sick and we wanted to go back. But it wasn't over, the shrimp still needed to be sorted from other dead creatures so we did that on the shore standing in water full of dead fish... The shrimp we ate on the next day did not taste the same and probably they never will.