Cuidad Perdida Trek - Day 1

We woke up around 7 and got prepared for our trek. Packed everything we'll need for the 5 days in our small packs, with the plan to leave our big packs at the hostel. Yesterday dad struggled and fidgeted trying to figure out what to bring.

We went down to pay for the room and find that the pickup got changed from 8:15 to 9:30 instead, so we have an extra hour to get ready and have breakfast. So went upstairs and got breakfast and paid for the room then waited for our pickup, which ended up being over 30 minutes late to.

Finally got picked up and walked to the tour company office and paid. There's also an Israeli couple on our trek.

It was about a 3 hour drive to the start of the trek, part of the drive on a small, very bumpy dirt road. Our guide is a local guide from one of the local tribes in the mountains. They are of very short stature. They struggle to reach 5 feet in height. They are almost like mini humans, very dark skin and black hair. The men wear their hair very long, down their back.

Our guides name is Santiago.

We had lunch before starting the hike.

We started the hike in nice weather and it was easy going at first. We came to a pool where we could jump in off a big rock, it was a lot of fun. Crossing one of the rivers dad slipped and soaked one of his feet and shoe.

After about an hour, the hike started to go up. Steep, steep switchbacks. It just kept going and going. The Israeli couple and Ryan and myself were fine, but dad had a hard time with it. He was like a tortoise, slow and steady, but he had to take quite a few breaks. Either Ryan or myself would hang back with him, and often our guide would stay back as well. He didn't really cause the group to get to the destination late or anything, but he's a trooper and I knew he could do it. Ryan has never seen dad like this before, so was kind of concerned for dad, but I hiked volcanoes with dad last year, so knew what to expect.

About half way up it started to rain and all our clothes got soaked.

We made it to the sleep point around 4 I guess. We got into dry clothes and got some juice (tasted like Tang) and then Ryan set out to try and figure out the difference between the 4 day and the 5 day trek. We are on the 5 day, the Israeli couple are on the four day trek. The guide nor the family running the sleep barn speak English and no one in our group speaks Spanish, so it was pretty funny. Ryan thought he got it all figured out with the guide, then wrote it down on a piece of paper, drawing a map, and then called our guide over to confirm. Once again it got all screwed. Then the owner of the sleeping facility came over and the Israeli couple got involved. Ends up that Michal did take Spanish in school for a bit so can do a decent job at translating. Between everyone, we found out the difference between the 4 and 5 day trek. We decided to not do the 5 day trek, but do the 4 day trek instead. The difference is it takes a longer time to hike back down.

We had a wonderful meal of potatoes, rice, chicken and salad made by the family where we're staying.

It gets dark by about 6:30, and there wasn't much to do. And we're going to have a wake-up call at 5am. We stayed up until about 8 them went to bed.