TRAVEL: LOST CITY OF GOLD

The ruins of an ancient settlement, built by Tayrona Indians high in Colombia's Sierra Nevada mountains, can only be reached on foot. Frank Gardner and his party hiked into remote jungle to find a city lost in the clouds

Their faces were as taut and as stretched as old parchment. Their long black hair fell down to their waists and their clothes were in tatters as they marched past us in silence. These were the Kogui people, the last descendants of a pre-Colombian Indian civilisation that resisted the Spanish conquest for 70 years then fled to the remote upper slopes of the 19,000ft Sierra Nevada mountains. For a moment their eyes held ours in a look born of centuries of distrust, then they were gone, bearing their crippled and ailing witch doctor with them. For a long time afterwards the sweet smell of marijuana hung in the air and nobody spoke.

We were in Colombia, narco-capital of the world, where geography, topography and casual violence have conspired to deter most travellers. Having come so far, we were intent on reaching the Lost City of the Tayrona Indians, and had set out that week on a tortuous jungle trail that was only reopened to trekkers last year when the Indians reluctantly granted access.

Within hours of leaving the northern coastal lowlands, the cloying, humid heat of the Caribbean gave way to a downpour, turning the steep track into rivulets of red mud that sucked and clawed at our boots so that we fell back one step for every two taken forward. By the time we reached camp, a long, open-sided hut hacked out of bamboo and wood, everyone's kit was soaked. The rafters became festooned with soggy sleeping bags.

For the past three hours we had been walking in cloud, moving like ghosts across ridges and gullies. The perpetual twilight turned suddenly to night and we gathered round a fire to eat boiled meat and rice. Already there were two unhappy faces: a new porter, hired specially for the trip, had slipped and smashed the eggs, earning him the tag of Egg Man. Meanwhile, the only German in the party had discovered that his designer jungle kit, all pouches, buckles and zips, was already starting to fall apart - and it was only day one.

We slept in cotton hammocks, fifteen feet long and deep enough to encase us. Over the top the guides had draped mosquito nets like enormous bridal veils and we dozed serenely as the rain drummed on the roof and the nearby stream gurgled over the rocks.

The next morning we awoke to find there were Indians in the hut. They were Arsarios, a sister tribe of the Koguis, and as the rising sun cast shafts of light across the camp they sat around on tree stumps, dressed in immaculate white cloth, calmly drinking our Coca Cola.

Humping our packs after a breakfast of fried arepas (maize fritters), we wound up a trail that revealed a vast hidden valley coated in jungle. Multicoloured macaws flashed between the treetops and smoke coiled from a distant camp fire. The Arsario had overtaken us, powered by their hydraulic calf muscles, and were now busy chopping down a tree. While resting, they chewed coca leaves from woven pouches and licked the lime off a polished gourd they each carried. They would sell the wood, they told us, to lowland Colombians who bought it for pounds 3 a plank after it had been dragged two days down the mountain by mule.

By midday the sweat was pouring off us. Norbert the German was cursing his disintegrating equipment, Egg Man had resorted to making a harness for his backpack out of his own trousers, and the taciturn Israeli commando medic in our group had wound an Arab scarf around his head to soak up the sweat. At a bend in the river we reached a waterfall where clothes were rapidly peeled off as we dived into the clear rock-pool. Swallowtail butterflies danced on the rocks then alighted on our steaming socks as we soaked in the chill water.

Bloated after large portions of Andean potato soup, we lay about in hammocks, chatting and passing the time reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Colombia's Nobel Prize-winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the rain began again. We slept badly, crammed together in a line where it only took one person to shuffle about in their hammock for us all to be set in motion like some executive desk toy.

I closed my eyes and thought about where we were heading. Although the 16th-century Spanish conquistadores never found the mythical land of Eldorado these were the mountains where they came to search, systematically relieving the highly advanced Tayrona Indians of their gold, copper and cornelian. Then, when influenza and other European diseases emptied their once-thriving mountain stronghold, the Lost City of the Tayronas lay buried for four centuries in this dense mountain jungle at the northern tip of the Colombian Andes.

It was only in 1975, after months of chasing false leads, that a party of guaqueiros - grave-robbers - stumbled across the ruins that concealed gold beyond their dreams. In their enthusiasm to plunder the tombs they threw the bodies over the sides of the ravines, and shot at each other. The place became known as El Infierno Verde, the Green Hell. It was months before the Colombian government woke up to the value of South America's greatest archaeological find since Machu Picchu, rescuing the gold for Bogota's fabulous Museo del Oro museum.

Visiting, however, is by no means straightforward. With the ongoing battle to eradicate marijuana in the Sierra, and the Kogui Indians' mistrust of intruders like us, the Lost City has been opening, closing and reopening to travellers with a maddening unpredictability. This was a window of opportunity which we wanted to seize now before the Indians had second thoughts.

I shook myself awake as a grey dawn crept over the camp. "We must move now," said Rodrigo, our guide, "before the river grows too high to cross." Two hours later we thanked him as we inched our way along an Indian rope bridge. This was a real Indiana Jones affair with knotted vines that swayed alarmingly above a raging torrent. We crossed at a snail's pace then braced ourselves to wade through more river upstream.

It was as if the ants were lying in wait for us on the other side. With everyone barefoot they teemed over our feet and up our legs, biting at leisure. We had bought this eco-friendly all-natural-ingredients insect repellent in London, but I am sad to report that it was no more use against the ants than it was against the mosquitoes which settled on our sticky skin in droves.

Rodrigo now managed to convince half the group that rubbing fresh pineapple all over us was the best way to ward off the insects. Needless to say, the opposite was true, and the Colombians rocked with laughter as the gringos went into a frenzy of slapping. Egg Man, though, had problems of his own. While rummaging for items buried deep in his pack his hands closed around a rough, heavy object the size of a large melon. It was a rock, and he'd been carrying it with him for three days.

It was the final day of approach to the Lost City, and the afternoon became a blur of moss-covered trails that clung to the sides of impossibly steep ravines. We slipped on dark, treacherous boulders that seeped slime, we grabbed at creepers and we tripped on roots. At times the jungle would open to reveal an expanse of sunlit scenery below us, a place where parrots flew and toucans squawked. At others we were plunged into semi-darkness as we clawed our way up muddy banks, always climbing.

We drew breath at the upper reaches of the Rio Buritaca, the place where the grave robbers had rightly convinced themselves that there was a gold buried in the surrounding jungle. Above us stretched a 1200-step stone staircase laid at a perilously steep angle by the Tayrona Indians over half a millennium ago. Anticipation hung in the air and Norbert was primed to be first to the top: he stood there waiting for the off with all his kit on while the guides smoked a cigarette.

Then there was a flurry of excitement as one of the porters spotted a snake. "Es una pudidora!" they cried, pointing at a purple snake which bites without alerting its victim. Apparently the bitten flesh then slowly putrefies, leading to amputation. In the ensuing confusion Norbert lost his place and found himself at the back of the line once more.

Breathless, we passed through a dark and mosquito-ridden passage in the foliage to burst into a clearing. We found ourselves standing on a series of neat stone circles that climbed away into the clouds. A jungle pheasant stood watching us as if we had intruded into a private world. We had arrived at La Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, and, save for a Colombian army outpost of six men, we had the place to ourselves.

For two days we wandered, entranced, through the labyrinthine network of stone terraces, burial chambers, and sacrificial altars. Rodrigo, a veteran of over 200 visits, explained how the Tayrona men and women had lived in separate huts, passing food to each other in a stone bowl across a clearing. "Even husband and wife they sleep under different roofs," he grinned, "but they go into the forest when they feel like disturbing the bats."

At the height of its power a thousand years ago, the Lost City held 15,000 inhabitants spread across several ridges, some of which have yet to be explored. To drag up the boulders from the river the men chewed coca and concentrated their minds to bear the pain. Deeply superstitious, the Tayrona slept beside constantly-burning fires and quaked when they heard the howler monkeys roar in the trees, as they did frequently during our stay. But it was the jaguar they feared most, casting gold face masks of half-men half-jaguars. "We are the people of the jaguar," runs a Tayrona myth, "and our land is that of the jaguar."

At dusk that last night we sat beneath a palm thatch roof, watching the mountain mist roll in across these ancient stones. Our feet were sore and blistered and we were pounds lighter. For nearly a week we had lived off soup, rice and increasingly tough plantains while our bodies strained to cope with the gradients. We had drunk water from fissures in the rock and slept curled up like bananas in our hammocks at night. Everything we owned was sopping wet and we had grown used to pulling on wet shirts in the chill dawn breeze. Our arms were punctured with insect bites and some of us has started to hallucinate about plates of grilled lobster waiting for us in Cartagena.

Yet no one wanted the trek to end. For anyone who has ever yearned, as we had, to explore a remote, ruined jungle city in one of the wildest comers of South America, Colombia's Lost City is the stuff of dreams. !

TRAVEL NOTES: GETTING THERE

Journey Latin America (0181 747 3108) offers return flights to Bogota from pounds 405. The company also runs a choice of escorted tours. Avianca Colombian Airlines flies from Bogota to Santa Marta with fares starting at pounds 88 return. Turcol Agency in Santa Marta (fax 0057 21 22 56) will arrange a six-day guided trek for pounds 133 including food and shelter.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Visas: Only Chinese nationals need visas. UK citizens can remain for up to 90 days. Health: Yellow fever and hepatitis-A inoculations are recommended. Consult your doctor about malaria tablets. Mountain water is mostly drinkable but take puritabs. Safety: The Lost City is in a marijuana-growing area that has experienced some guerrilla activity. Check with both the Colombian Embassy and Turcol that tours are definitely running before leaving the UK.