Ciudad Perdida, Colombia: My Five-Day Trek in 2009

Four nights and five days: that is how I opened my Ciudad Perdida diary on 23 May 2009. Before the paragraphs about the walk, I wrote about camp. Hammocks, insects, dinner and people arriving and leaving were the things I put first. Looking back in 2026, that order tells me something about the trek I actually recorded. The destination mattered, but so did the ordinary business of spending several days on the trail.

This is a retrospective of my 2009 experience in Colombia, drawn from that original post. It is not a current Lost City trekking guide. I am not reconstructing daily stages, quoting today’s prices or treating my younger descriptions as archaeological or safety evidence.

Four nights in the camps

My old account described hammocks that felt too small and camps that felt crowded. Insects were part of the evenings before dinner. I wrote about the coming and going of groups, about mountain-perched lodges, and about the contrast between walking and waiting for the next meal. Those observations give the trek a rhythm without requiring a made-up timetable.

Dinner appears repeatedly in the diary: candlelight, torchlight, woodfire and fireflies. I even tried to turn it into poetry. Then, partway through, I gave up on the poetry and admitted as much. That change of voice is one of the reasons I want to keep the original linked. It captures the enthusiasm and impatience of the person writing then, rather than a seamless travel feature composed seventeen years later.

I also mentioned playing Scrabble during the evenings. That is a modest detail beside the idea of a “Lost City”, but it makes the account more human. Not every hour of a multi-day trek is an exceptional encounter. Some of it is sitting at camp with dinner coming, passing time and preparing to walk again.

The walk in the rain

When I finally stopped trying to write verse, the account became direct. I described jagged rock, steep rocky sections and tropical rain. Mud affected our belongings and visibility. I wrote about moving near rushing water, and about waterfalls where we bathed. Those are the scenes the primary diary supports; I do not have a reliable day-by-day trail log behind them.

The difference matters because it would be easy to embellish this into five carefully staged chapters: a named first camp, a particular river crossing, a dramatic arrival at a specific hour. I have not done that. The dated post tells us that the journey lasted five days and four nights, and that those conditions were part of it. It does not establish the exact sequence of every incident.

Fruit was another detail I chose to record: pineapple, melon and bananas supplied along the way. There is no reason to turn that into a promise about what a visitor will find now. In this archive it belongs simply as part of what I wrote about food and walking in May 2009.

What my younger account got ahead of itself about

I made an unreliable estimate of the Lost City’s size and immediately admitted that my memory was failing me. That is not a measurement. I am not repeating the figure here as a geographical fact or using it to explain the site. The useful evidence in the post is firsthand experience of walking and camping, not the dimensions of an archaeological place.

The same applies to my claim that parts of the walk would have been illegal in Western countries. That was an excited traveller’s comparison, not a checked statement of law. It should not become a claim about permitted routes or official safety standards. Preserving the original does not require treating every line of a young traveller’s prose as dependable guidance.

The language I used about people and the place also deserves distance. “Lost City” is the familiar travel name, not a licence to describe living communities as lost people. My diary does not establish a particular indigenous affiliation, an interview or permission to speak for local communities. This account stays with my own walk.

An original photograph, not a substitute scene

The portrait on this page is the photograph embedded beside my original 23 May entry. Its source filename includes an older numerical date, which I am not using as proof of when the shutter was pressed. Its provenance is the owner-authored diary that published it, not a newly verified camera timestamp.

I have kept it as a portrait rather than cropping it into an invented panoramic view of the trek. I am not adding pictures of local people or a stock jungle image. The written account can describe the rain and the camps without pretending that an unrelated photograph shows a particular moment from my five days.

Where Colombia sits in the wider journey

Ciudad Perdida was part of the South American backpacking period I later recorded as 3 May to 3 August 2009. The collection continues through Sierra Negra in the Galápagos, the back route to Machu Picchu and Bolivia’s Death Road. They are separate encounters, each with its own primary diary.

Running entered the same travelling life later. My Bolivia training notes place the start of Chicago preparation on 1 July. That does not make the Colombia trek a measured marathon training session. It was walking on the trip; Chicago was another commitment. The connection is chronological, not a claim that trekking produced a particular race result.

Reading a 2009 trek in 2026

Access arrangements, route conditions and safety advice can change. This was also travel through land with living communities and interests beyond a visitor’s experience. Anyone considering a visit now needs current information about authorised access, local requirements and appropriate conduct, rather than lifting my old route descriptions into a present-day plan.

I am not offering an itinerary, fees or assurances of safety. What I can offer is the particular texture of my own archive: cramped hammocks, evening insects, rain on rocky paths, fruit and waterfalls, followed by a writer abandoning his own attempt at poetry. Those small details survive better than an inflated story of conquering a jungle.

Sources and notes

Read my full original Ciudad Perdida diary, published 23 May 2009. The portrait was published within that same entry. This October 2026 retrospective reuses the existing archive address; the imported draft and the original WordPress text have not been edited.

Find the other dated journeys in the adventure travel collection. Dates here distinguish the original diary publication from the new retrospective; no exact trek start date, mapped distance or current access rule is inferred from a short historical post.