5 star living, hard grafting, and J K Rowling dicks my life up yet again

So last time I was in the tiny town of Taganga trying to enjoy the secluded beaches, while knitted bag wearing, 18 cord braclet sporting, not had a wash in months, dreadlocked hippies try to sell me knitted bags and cord bracelets.

I ran off back to Cartagena to begin a treat of treats - 2 weeks of luxury 5 star living with a dear old pal. He'd not had a ´proper´holiday in 4 years and was adament that 2 weeks on the beach and by the pool would be the tonic, and frankly I wasn't going to stand in his way.

Now walking into a 5 star hotel, that is mostly occupied by rich Colombians, wearing a battered white tee shirt and carrying 2 backpacks that are covered with dust from my bus trip is quite a test. The doorman wouldn't open the door for me, I´m sure he'd assumed that I was lost and wasn´t in the mood to give directions, but flashing a smile and a positive nod of the head, he eventually let me in.

The aircon was jet powered and the grandios entrance area bought a tingle down my spine, this is where I truly belonged.

Upon finding my pal we proceeded to drink the hotel bar beers (9,000 peso, I´d been paying 1,300) and get smashed and eat in a very nice restaurant. The salty tears of joy as I climbed into the ice cold bed will be with more for a good while.

But bitter irony put pay to those feelings of contentment as exactly 14 hours after I´d checked in I got the most vicous runs, or the Tom Tits to use the rhyming slang. Now I was faced with darting from the pool area to relieve my bladder waterfall every few minutes in the furnace poolside toilets, and I coulnd´t have got back to the room as it was on the seventh floor, and I was never going to make it safely, unless I wanted to leave a brown snake all the way through the hotel. 3 weeks of questionable street food and dodgy backstreet eateries, and I get sick in a 5 star hotel.

Now staying in a Colombian hotel, that for the large part, only caters for rich Colombians, the sight of a small, sweaty, pale white, ginger man, walking alongside a taller, dark haired, gringo, we experienced a fair share of curious amused looks from the staff and the partons. The pool guy, a short, stocky, man with a loud voice, who also loved playing loud salsa from a sound system a festival would be proud of. at 10am. found us to be a fairly amusing site. His name was Carlos and he quicky began shouting 'motha fuckas' loudly whenever we walked past him, he was a good laugh.

We played pool with him and he said,
"what are you names?"
"Gareth Potter" I replied,
"Gared Podder?"
"No, No, Gareth Potter"
"oh! you meen like a da Harry Potter! you his fukkin cousin or his brodder?" he then proceeded to piss himself laughing, as did my pal.

Now I never liked the assoiciation to Harry, especially when certain larks enjoy calling me 'Gary Potter' but to have to deal with it 7,000 miles away was annoying, but Rowling's fucked me again.

4 days into burning myself poolside, swimming in a pool, and generally lazing around my pal mentioned a trip I'd suggested to him called the 'Ciudad Perdida, or the lost city tour. 5 nights and 6 days trekking through the jungle to visit an ancient city, built by the Tayrona people as a religous and spiritual site. and also lower down the mountain, housing for up to 1,500 people. It was lost in the 15th Century after the Spanish invaded and wiped them out. It was only ever found again by grave robbers in 1975, who plundered the area. Grave robbing was actually legal in those days. which was a little odd.

Either way this little adventure appealed to my friend, mostly because I think he wanted a bit of space between me and him after spening 4 days with me, while hotel staff pondered whether or not we were 'not the marrying kind' or 'good with colours' or 'first on the dance floor' or 'chi chi boys' or 'straight up male prostitutes'.

So it was decided, we'd have another night at the hotel, leave for the trek on the Friday, and start it on the Saturday morning.

Carlos was quite confused as to why two potential homosexuals wanted to climb around the mountains, looking for nothing in paricular, but he kept it mostly to himself.

"Hey Lloyd, wad the fukk is the madder with your friend Haree? all he do is read, sleep, read, sleep, read, sleep" was the parting question to my pal.

On the bus to Santa Marta the driver asks for my name,
"Potter" I reply,
"like Harry" pipes up Lloyd, and the whole bus has a good chuckle.

And so it began. We'd read some websites and quizzed some friends who'd done the tour before, as to what was in store for us, and what did we need to take.

Mostly people said it was amazing, bring loads of mosquito spray, some dry clothes for the evening, maybe a bin bag for you wet clothes, some sandals with straps on them, and a water bottle.

Now if I knew then what I know now I'd have rephrased that advice to:

bring spray, but the higher up you go that more rapid and mental they are. In fact by the top you'll think the spary was a attractive pheromone to them, and that they'd love it
Everything's going to get wet, and stink like the inside of Rik Wallers inner thigh.
you'll be throwing the sandals away on the last day because they've fallen apart and totally humm, so don't spend out on them.
You're going to have to make peace with the fact that you'll be drinking river water. The same river that they throw all the food, faeces, piss, and general waste into.

But I didn't know that did I? As of writing I have 97 mosquito bites on my body, 86 of those were due to being up a mountain with a mosquito net that simply kept the mosquito inside, rather than the other way round. Only my bright little white fella escaped the mauling , but if they could have found it, I'm sure they'd have gone down on it like Devine Brown went down on Hugh Grant.

We all meet at the turcol office in Santa Marta. Our group was like this:
Hans - a large Dutch fellow, who looks like my cousin, and looks at me without hiding the fact that he's thinking I'm odd, and querying why I won't shut up occasionally
Emon - Another Dutch fellow, smaller than Hans, but with an air of a Dutch footballer. Quiet but when he speaks, you tend to listen, if only because it's about football or women.
Idris - A jolly Dutch fellow, who would simply turn to me and say things like,
"you know Gareth, when I get home, I'm gonna eat, sleep, and then I'm going to fuck my girlfriend, and then I'm going to sleep again" most of the time this was unprompted chatter, but being so lovely, I just took it all in
Peter - A very good, honest, American boy. Minus the scary religous zeal, and has been out of the US enough times to know that other people are different , and that they should be respected. Marta and her son Manuel - A Colombian tour operater and veterinarian. who was on the trip to see if she could recommend it to her clients. She couldn't. and her son, who was a quiet, dignified, young fella.
Antonio - A mad engineer from Medellin, who couldn't speak a word of English , but would love to chat away to us, even though he knew we couldn't understand a word he'd say. but he was so animated that we let him crack on. We later found out that he was massive into god, and that he was possibly trying to convert all of us for the full 5 days.

A our guide Edwin, who'd been kidnapped doing the tour in 2005 but went straight back to it a couple of months later.

A that was our jolly crew, a nicer group of people you couldn't find, and if we'd have been in the other groups we saw during the trek, I'd have gone straight back down again on the first day. but more about them later. suffice to say. wankers.

The drive to the jungle was simple enough, until the off road, where the bus would veer dangerously close to the edge as we climbed higher and higher. The volumous mountains began to envelop us, and with every turn we'd climb higher, and the mountains would spread out into the distance. It was beautiful. And before anyone asks for photos, I can't be arsed downloading them all onto this questionable, Colombian computer, in this smelly internet shop.

Now I'm all for a little walk occasionally, I like to walk into town or a stroll down the canal to Canary Wharf, or even a few times round the park. I am not adverse to walking and find it a pleasant thing to do.

This wasn't walking though, this was hard graft, moving up inclines and declines, that would tower over you, or feel like you were going to fall straight down the mountain. This wasn't easy and I realized that this was going to be quite tough. If I hadn't done the marathon training a couple of months ago I'd have really struggled. Marta was having a tough time of it.

I'm a sweater, in the bodily fluid sense rather than the clothing sense. Always have been. Holidays in hot countries are quite taxing, as I expel my body weight out of every pore. And that's when I'm lying down by a pool drinking a beer. combine this with proper hard work and I was sweating like a peado at a school sports day.

My water was done by the first rest stop, some nice people had set up a little shop.
"Yes I would like a small bottle of water please, how much is that? 3,000 pesos? but they were only 2,000 at the bottom? nevermind, if I don't take on fluids soon, I'm going to pass out"

To say they had you over a barrel is one thing, I would say that they've got you half way up a mountain and you're half dead.

We get to the first stop of the day at around 3pm, we swim in the river, and jump off a waterfall. It's a glourious place , and if you don't work out the pissy river thing too early, it's the nicest swim you've ever head.

Dinner, some drinks with the boys to get to know them, then bed. or should I say hammock.

Now lights out in a hammock, you cannot see anything, not even your own hand in front of your face. The sort of darkness that freaks you right out, especially if you live in London, and the street light outside bedroom never goes out, and the only sound you hear is the birds and the animals, that sound like they're getting closer and closer to you.

Following morning after a petrifying, bitten ridden sleep we arise to a cocaine factory tour, as conducted by a little cross eyed fella, who looked like he'd done enough coke to power the Bolivian army for a year or two.

The factory wasn't a working factory, more like a mock shop, or chemical experiment that you'd see in techniquest (one for the Cardiff massive there) but he took us into the jungle and he went through the seven or so stages of cocaine production. It was very interesting and when the acid burnt through the coca plants, you had a acute awareness of what millions of people were stuffing their noses with every weekend. He stopped at the last stage of production, whereby it's dried and mixed with an acetone to release the chemical that gets you high. The finished product that he had was a paste, which looked like toothpaste, and numbed your mouth and face for a good 20 minutes.

He also said that he'd never done coke in his life, and looking around the factory, smelling the gasoline, and the 6 other harmful chemicals, you could totally see why he'd never touched it.

4 days later as we were coming down the mountain another group was coming up on there 2nd day. These long haired twats and jocks had taken all the paste that he'd made for them, and were now trying to smoke it at the rest stop. These boys didn't quite grasp that you wouldn't even get high but they were so annoying that I hoped they'd poison themselves. Wankers.

Bedtime again and lying in the darkness unable to sleep you think about a lot of things. Things like: life, the question of why we are here?, is there a god?, the afterlife, girls, old girlfriends, newer girlfriends, possible new girlfriends, work, films, music, money, ghostbusters, Rocky 4, is it possible to say John Cusack is a great actor? is it acceptable to use the word nigger in polite society? assuming of course that it's done in a satirical, ironic way, by people who cleary are not racist, (it's not by the way) animals, the real chance of me dying sooner than I want to, family, Lovejoy, Only fools and hourses, friends, old and new, the girl I upset at Uni, University, my belongings, my general stench, is it possible to go into shock after receiving 100 mosquito bites? why are backpackers such wankers? the envitable fact that someone's got a bigger penis than me, a lot of people as it goes, sex, not having sex, could I have sex in the jungle? or would I not be able to get a hard on? music, the relization that 3 days is the longest time I've ever gone wihtout listening to music in my life, my bike, my general health, aids, cancer, almost all diseases that can kill me, mosquitos, and was I ever going to actually go to sleep again?

Day three or four and I watch as the local Tayrona children gleefully throw a dog into a river so that it will cross. I can't help but think that us encroaching on their land and disturbing their lives can't be a good thing, especially when I see one smoking fags and basically taking our food rather than finding or growing his own.

We finally reach the summit and Edwin's knowledge ofthe place is facsinating, as is the story of getting kidnapped and running away from the kidnappers.

We get back down in one day rather than sleep another night, this isn't because we weren't enjoying it, but if it could be done in a day then let's get it over with. There was a slight air of competitiveness going to down, but I'm pleased to say that we all got down at our own pace, and that achievement was a shared one.

Lloyd and I headed straight back to a 5 star hotel in Santa Marta, the next day we drank from 10am until well into the next day. I didn't wear any suntan cream because I was under a umbrella, but obviously the 40 mins drunkenly floating in the sea turned my body into a nasty violent red colour. And on my left shoulder a big watery blister had formed, it looked like I been burnt with acid. horrible.

And now I'm here, Lloyd has left and I'm alone. I head to Bogota to learn Spanish and maybe to go and visit Marta and Manuel. And I'll let you know how I get on.