I did WAY too much over the course of the last month to write it all here. From Yopal I went to Cali with another professor, and then to Medellin to visit Br. Martin, to Jerico (a small town a few hours from Medellin) to visit Martin's sister and her family, to Bogota, and to Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy. It was absolutely incredible to be free from work for a little while, to explore Colombia, to see its landscapes and meet its people. I went dancing, I went tubing, I saw super cool Christmas lights, I went to a wedding (and I won the bride's garter, so who knows if I'm ever coming back from Colombia), I ate tons of food, I had quiet days in Bogota just me and Harry Potter (in Spanish, of course), and did all sorts of other things. Since I can't tell you about everything, I'm going to focus on just one. The best for me, my favorite part of the month off, was the 5 days I spent hiking in PNN El Cocuy. I should warn you now, this might get a little long. If you don't feel like reading it, just skip straight to
the pictures.
I arrived in Guican, a tiny town in the department Boyaca, after a 12 hour bus journey from Bogota that started 3 hours late. My bus driver thankfully guided me to a fine little hotel where I got a good night's sleep and a cold shower (virtually all showers in Colombia are cold) for 20,000 pesos (about $16). I rolled out late the next morning, about 7:30AM, in search of food and information. I found information first, stumbling upon the park office and paying my entry fee (13,500 pesos, about $10) as well as lining up 8:00AM transportation to the top of the road, a little sooner than I preferred, actually. I found a little restaurant where I ate a bowl of soup for breakfast, grabbed my pack from my room, and headed out. There was another American hanging around town trying to find a group to hike the trail with, and he split the cost of the taxi with me up to the trailhead, hoping he might have better luck there finding people going the same direction he was. Long story short, between Guican and Las Cabanas Kanwara (the trailhead) I agreed to let him come along the trail with me, and he turned out to be pretty good company. A 23 year old Philadelphian, he had a good attitude, a good pace, and his own food (very important).
The trail, sometimes called La travesia de El Cocuy or La vuelta de la Sierra El Cocuy, starts at about 4100 meters (almost 13,500 feet) and never comes down until you're headed back to town on the last day. We started up the road from Cabanas Kanwara, which turned into trail about an hour later, and an hour after that we were on top of the first pass of many, Alto de Cardenillo (14,300 feet). From the very first moment this trek offered spectacular views, but I never could have imagined what was in store. From Alto de Cardenillo we looked down on Laguna Grande de los Verdes and across to some of the most incredibly stressed granite I have ever seen. The mountains here look like they've been punched out of the ground from below, or ripped up by crowbars like you'd tear out an old hardwood floor. Billions of years worth of rock layers sit exposed, one next to another, pointing toward the sky at over 15,000 feet. Immense cliffs have boulders bigger than apartment buildings sitting precariously on their faces, and among it all the white faces of glaciers reflect the sun as they feed the streams and lakes dotting the valleys. Lukas (my new hiking partner) and I descended the north side of the pass to the lake and stopped early, sitting around in the sun and exploring the cliffs around us. I made camp about 300 feet up the hillside on top of a little cliff with a great view, and from there I marveled at the stars and the half moon while fighting off the cold of the night. My resistance didn't last long, I retired to my sleeping bag to dream away the night in an alpine paradise.
The moments before dawn, when the light of the sun is just starting to brighten the horizon, are always the coldest. I woke with the chill at about 5:00AM and wasted no time getting moving. I packed up and descended to Luke's camp, about 200 feet below mine, where I cooked up my morning tea before we started up the next pass, Alto de los Frailes (13,800 feet). Lukas had recovered from his altitude induced headache of the day before (a potentially lethal condition if the body doesn't adjust, as it can be the precursor of cerebral edema) and we made excellent time up the pass, topping the ridge to find the first sun of the new year shining strongly on our faces.
The awe of those first days at every new landscape never left us the entire trip. Every time we peeked over a new ridge, or even just turned to look behind us, the park offered up a new vista, a new perspective to contemplate, a new reason to just stop and breathe. We climbed a second pass that morning, Alto de la Sierra (15,341 feet), and descended to Lake Avellanal before noon. From Lake Avellanal, the normal route is to descend another 400 meters into La Valle de Los Cojines, but we studied the topo map and asked another pair of hikers what they knew about the area, and decided to abandon the trail. A wide plateau runs the length of the valley at 4400 meters, and we opted to traverse high rather than descend.
Our traverse started in a bit of a swamp, the most interesting bog I have ever seen. Los cojines (the cushions) are what I would like to describe as a "tuffet" (you know, Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet). They are these round, green, moss-like growths that look soft but are actually very firm. What was so interesting was that we found some pools of water about five feet deep, surrounded completely by these cushions, with a strange white algae covering everything in the water, and the water was PERFECTLY clear. It really was like looking at an excellently clean, white bottomed swimming pool (full of glacier cold water). We found a couple others where the water was a crazy turquoise, and we couldn't figure out why. Surely it has something to do with the algae, but exactly what is going on is totally unclear.
Anyway, we passed the bog and had easy walking among the frailejones for a while (I cannot describe this plant, it looks like it's from another planet) Eventually our luck ran out and we found ourselves slowly picking our way over a ridge of boulders, carefully placing each step and risking an ankle or broken leg at every move (it's the nature of walking across boulder fields). What seemed like hours we inched along those granite traps before, mentally exhausted, we found a little flat spot tucked in against the cliffs and made camp.
Camp that night made every boulder worth it. With glacier-capped crags behind us, La Valle de los Cojines below us, and another valley falling away to the plains just ahead, we seemed to have the whole world to ourselves. We gathered up some dry brush and fought off the evening chill with a 4400 meter high campfire.
I went to bed happy at about 7:30 and woke up cold at 5:30AM. The dew turned into a frost and my fingers felt the same as I packed up my camp and struggled to light my stove for a cup of tea and some warm cardboard (oatmeal). Regardless of the quality, or lack thereof, in the food, that was the most beautiful breakfast I have ever cooked. The sun burned its way from the plains thousands of meters below us and lit the glaciers behind us with a golden glow that reflected back and brightened our little ledge.
We bid farewell to the beauty of that moment and trekked on, sometimes moving easily along granite ridges and other times relegated to the careful tip-toeing along boulders that so strains the nerves and wearies the feet. We made the end of the valley mid-morning, climbing a ridge to look down on Laguna Rincon and the trail yet a kilometer away. The ridge we ascended we had to traverse, and it turned out to be a treacherous, packed sand knife edge. With the utmost care we made it across the most difficult parts of the ridge and descended into a scree field, the traverse of which turned out to be not much less difficult.
We did eventually gain the trail and were moving along well up the pass (Alto el Castillo, 15,000 feet) when we encountered a German or Swiss couple who appeared to have also chosen to stay high on the plateau, but had failed to descend to the trail at the crucial moment. Rather than turning back, I found the man contemplating a nearly impossible looking scramble with a very serious fall potential to gain the trail at elevation. The wife wasn't too keen on the plan to start with, but it took us half an hour to convince the husband that he needed to acknowledge the ridiculous risk and descend the ridge he was on until they could safely traverse to the trail. Deep in the backcountry, a two day walk from help, the man was willing to risk his life (and very likely lose it) for the sake of 45 minutes worth of difficult walking. We saw him again at the top of the pass an hour later, just as we were ready to head down the other side, and from his attitude you wouldn't have known anything ever even happened. He gave us a very friendly 3-minute geology lesson (which I actually found kind of interesting) and we bid him adieu.
From Alto el Castillo we descended to Laguna de Panuelo, crossing a landscape that made me think of the photos I've seen of Mars. The rocks were a copper red color mixed with black, the wind was blowing tremendously, and everything was dry. I have a lot more respect for those little rovers we keep sending to the red planet after walking through that valley.
We took a long lunch at the lake before ascending two other shorter, steeper passes that finally revealed an incredible view. The reds and blacks of iron and cobalt (I know from our German/Swiss geologist friend) that we had picked our way along all morning suddenly and drastically changed into huge slabs of granite - great, gray monoliths careening into the sky, separated from us by a lush green valley trekking away to the east. We set our sights on some small ponds the other side of the valley that seemed not too far away, and off we went again. As we descended, the oxidized cobalt shale turned to granite boulders (ugh, more granite boulders) beneath our feet. We passed under the shadow of the mountain to the west and climbed a boulder ridge, our weary feet and tired nerves expecting to see a gentle plateau heading up to our campsite. Instead, we discovered a steep descent over table sized granite rocks to the Rio Mortinal.
We must have passed an hour working our way to that crystal clear glacial river. By the time we got there I was finally feeling the day's mental and physical stresses, just as the walking promised to finally become relatively easy again. We continued on, but gave up our goal of the ponds almost the moment we found a flat spot on dry ground. We pitched an early, weary camp and gathered wood, what we could best compare to juniper, for a small campfire as the sun sank behind the peaks towering over us. I ate a modest meal and Lukas ate granola - turns out he has celiac disease. We just talked about nothing over that heartwarming little fire as the chill of dusk turned into the cold of a beautiful clear night, and by 8 o'clock I was drifting way in my sleeping bag with only the sound of my own breathing to whisper me to sleep.
The pre-dawn cold woke me and, eager to warm my bones (and especially my hands), I packed my frost covered tent and skipped my morning tea. I told Lukas I'd stop and wait for him when I could feel the sun on my face, and with that I was off. The morning always touches the mountains first, warming them in a bath of golden light long before turning its attention to the valleys, so rather than the sun coming to me, I walked 45 minutes to it. I passed our pond destination that we had failed to make the day before and rather went all the way to the north end of Laguna Grande de la Plaza. There, finally, I found the warmth of day coinciding with a beautiful mountain lake crowned by towers of rock. I huddled in a nook out of the wind, basking in the sun as I had my morning tea and waited for Lukas.
Here at last our feet encountered the unbroken slabs of granite that so inspired us the day before as we strolled along the east side of the lake. For an hour the going was easy, and then it stopped altogether.
To the southeast Laguna de la Plaza drains via a series of cascades into a valley so deep and long that it feels like it must go all the way to Venezuela. With the still young morning upon us, we stayed and stared in awe at the beauty of the land. Each of us with journal and pen in hand, we turned inward and, for at least an hour, a chill wind trying to rob us of the warmth of the sun, we sat apart and were conscious only to ourselves. I think, had clouds not finally blown up the valley, that I could have stared at the vastness of that landscape the entire day.
As it was, we eventually continued on a little farther to the designated camping area at the south point of the lake and spent a couple hours there just lounging in the sun and staring at the water and the mountains. Laguna Grande de la Plaza is essentially the last major feature on the circuit, and it made no sense to rush away. Early starts and long days plus a good general pace but us well ahead of our original schedule. We'd let our itinerary on the trail be dictated by the words, "well, we'll see," and had arrived at the Laguna a full day before we really needed to. With plenty of food and no plans, we were free to do whatever we wanted.
We sat around until 1 o'clock or so, finally moving on and climbing a little pass (Alto de Patio Bolas, 14,370 feet), then making a long descent among the frailejones to the bottom of Alto Cusiri, the last high point of the trek. I wanted to continue over Cusiri and camp at a pair of lakes on the other side, but, weary of feet and unready to leave the paradise of the park, Lukas wanted to camp in our little valley. I conceded, and we set up an early camp, the warm sun still shining down from overhead as we searched out clear flat ground.
That night got colder than any other had, freezing the water in my Nalgene and the hose of my CamelBak, so by necessity I again forewent my morning tea and started the trail in the predawn, climbing toward the sun and the warmth it promised.
From the top of the pass (Alto Cusiri, 14,470 feet) I climbed a ridge to the northeast for one last view of the park. Already I felt a little bit of sadness, a certain nostalgia, at leaving the beautiful gem with its hidden wonders. Years would not be enough to know everything about that incredible place. Nonetheless, I filled my heart with beauty (and my stomach with food, as my water had finally thawed) and headed back toward civilization, yet a full morning's walk away.
There is so much more that I could say about the month I spent exploring Colombia, about the other things I did and the people I met, and there's even more I could say about the 5 days I spent on the trail in El Cocuy, but as I'm slightly tired of writing, and you surely tired of reading, I'll leave it where it is. I hope my narrative here didn't bore you too badly, and do look at the pictures, because they tell the story much more elegantly than I ever could.
As always, if you have comments, please leave them in the section below or feel free to send me an email.
Sincerely,
Alex
