Was this the last climb for a long time?.. before finding this youtube post from this year, the last climb of the Sierra I was able to find was in the 1980s..
Pretty neat.. looks like they came in Via Pueblo Bella from the south.. was this before the FARC moved in, before it was considered Sacred? I guess the worst fighting was later, so perhaps so.
This was posted by a guy named Alberto Molano, in honor of his friend Ricardo Ospina, who I am assuming was his partner on the climb.. he seems to be responding to questions in english and spanish if anyone has any..
Was this the last ascent of Colombia’s Highest Mountains.. 26 years ago?
Perhaps not in the Sierra, but by the time I left Colombia and Ecuador I had lost my fear of Burros, AKA Donkeys, and Horses. Not that I fear them, but it’s hard to imagine a climbing expedition supported by them. It seems so, well, old school, and now it fascinates me. The Sierra is loaded with them, as after your feet, they are the only other means of transportation I have seen there in common use. However their day to day use is likely governed by normal transport and harvests.
I had occasion to ride a few in some remote areas, and they are pretty tough, I must admit.. burros especially. I am larger than most people (don’t call me fat!), 90+ kg and I found burros to be resilient for the weight they were carrying. I don’t know much about how they would perform at altitude, above treeline, and what would happen if you were dependent on them and they didn’t make it,and you were stuck shuffling your gear, but I am not above considering them now. Horses are more fleet footed, but I also feel like they would be a little less dependably footed. In other words, for all their kind of stagger stepping, burros almost seem more dependable, the tortoise to the burro’s hare.. I would guess that burros and wranglers could be contracted to drop you off at the 5 blue lakes or any base camp you choose from perhaps Guatapuri, or from natives in any number of places, or even from mestizos in a place like Palomino. Average wages in this area are quite low, 10 or less dollars a day, so I bet they could be had for 50 bucks a wrangler and horse, if not cheaper, per day. How invited they or you would be would be another discussion, especially as you got further up, and the classic thing is for them to demand more money when you are almost there, so you would have to be firm, and have good relations. You also could experience them just saying they can’t go any further, or the pack animals having health issues. You could ride some and have others pack, or walk beside them, or some combination. My experience with the sierra at the end of the wet season was that the Camino Reals, the trails that go up the mountains that might be official old royal roads, were horribly muddy, but that the locals still took their horses though them no problem, and their hoofs seemed to hold up fine. Many of the natives walked in the barefoot as well. Walking from Palomino to the climbable area would be a 4 day undertaking I am told, perhaps more for the unseasoned.. horses might take a huge dent out of that, although the time does allow for healthy acclimation. I would guess that either mestizos or Arawakus would be the most reliable wranglers, but choose wisely. I have done no inquiring of this, but it would be my guess that it could be arranged in a week or less, but you would want to form relationships with the wranglers and be on good terms with them first, and understand their methods of operating, the limitations of the animals, and have realistic expectations of each other, which would be formed by conversations with a lead guy you trust.
there is precedent for this, as the trek to Ciudad Perdido supposedly has some wranglers that hover and wait for gringos to hire them if they want to throw in the towel on what is supposed to be a tough walk. they could potentially be contracted, but they would only know a small corner of the Sierra you would be unlikely to go to, and finding a way to transport them around to your starting point would also be some work, but all possibilities.
Here is a post about using Burros in the Sierra to move school books into the remote areas:
I feel pretty proud to have beaten this web page on my conclusions.. Colombia Reports has become my go to for news in english in Colombia, and it is quite thorough.
So I recently read something that impressed me. tI turns out that the Andean Condor, the Largest Bird on earth (I once had one fly right towards me, and all I could think of was a C-5 Galaxy, the largest plane on earth, wait, ‘in the free world’ since the Soviet Union back in the day designed one like 5 meters longer in competition during the old cold war, not so old in Colombia!), is found in greatest numbers within Colombia in none other than the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, I am now guessing up in the cliffs of the high peaks area that a climbing expedition would be inhabiting. These numbers were about 10 years old, in a book I found in a Hotel on the birds of Colombia, but it talked about a few concentrations of the birds, and it was slim pickings for Colombia, but the Sierra had 40 individuals at that Count. The bird seems to be healthier further south in it’s range, but this little pocket of Condors kind of intrigues me when I think of the kind of odd oasis of Andean topography the Sierra is.
It appears that in the Sierra, Condors are seen at their lowest elevations if I am reading this in spanish right. Makes sense since it also might be the northern most point fo their range, so perhaps relatively cooler at lower altitudes, but that’s speculation on my part.
This might be the most relevant and important entry to this Blog, and the one I worked the hardest to be able to write (although I suffered the most for the entry on Pico’s, that’s for sure!). The following will scare the shit out of you, and then you might be surprised at my conclusion that perhaps for the first time since the 80’s, the Sierra is Climb-able.. this is a news flash potentially worthy of National News in Colombia.. the problem is, or the good part is, that I might be the only person not in the Military who has put this piece of info together, and the Military isn’t in the business of climbing mountains recreationally. My conclusions are derived from personal exploration and a series of conversations with sources within the Brigada (Brigade, which in Colombia can be as many as 10 Batallions, and they currently have defined geographic areas of Operations that I think cover the whole country, but tend to put their units on road blocks and in little fire bases close to Guerilla wildernesses with their headquarters usually in the biggest town around where they have a garrison that locals call ‘El Battalion’)responsible for about 2/3 of the Sierra, with the last third being the western side that has been pacified the longest, which is headquartered I believe in Fundacion on the west side of the Sierra.
The Theme Song for this Entry is One Night in Bangkok, that cheesy 80’s song from the play Chess, because, in Colombia ‘You can feel the Devil walking next to you’… The sad difference between Colombia and Bangkok is that in Asia, the Devil knows he is the Devil and plays his part amiably, and with humor, but in irony deprived Latin America (Mexico and Argentina notably excepted), the devil is either so cunning or so convinced of his own righteousness that he has forgotten or never knew he was the Devil.
If you ask a Colombian Policeman, as I apt to do on occasion, donde estan el FARC-EP!? (where are the Revolutionary Army of Colombia Peoples Army !?) they will give you the standard answer first: Todos Luageres ( Everywhere!) but then, if they feel like being helpful, which is usually, they will either point a finger in the direction of a neighborhood, or tell you “pero no preocupes, es seguro aqui”.. (but don’t worry, it’s safe here… ). For whatever ways in which traveling is somewhat easy in Colombia, pretty low stress, this is a habit of asking this question I have developed that has in fact influenced my itinerary more than once. War has been a fact of life in this country since it’s establishment now 197 years ago (although the revolution began 202 years ago, it almost feels like it never ended, and in a way it didn’t, because the divisions between Santander and Bolivar were the dynamic until the 80’s, when cocaine came along and just added a new even less idealistic player).
For some background, there are 5 human elements to worry about in Colombia. To keep things simple, I am not going to blur the distinctions between these 5 groups, although trust me, things are blurry!:
The FARC
The ELN
Right Wing Paramilitaries
Narco-Trafickers
Petty Criminals
The Military have emerged as the good guys, after again, a blurry past of corruption, then overzealous pursuit of their goals, to include massacres and rampant collusion with the Paramilitaries, and two scandals now entering history, both around 2006, of a commando unit killing for narcos, and another where they killed civilians, perhaps accidentally, then re-dressed them up as FARC to avoid prosecution. But when I see a colombian soldier today I see a friend. I see Operation Jaque and just good people tired of pretending that Colombia will get a better state from Revolution. They have emerged as a professional military in the way that the British Army did in Northern Ireland, kind of a tough extension of the Police, with some protocol skills to boot.
The National Police Force is largely friendly, professional, and what you would want police to be on the street level. I fear cops in the US way more than I ever feared any cops I met in Colombia. They are usually young, friendly, good at giving directions, and are shifted between locations nationwide about once a year to avoid corruption, and again, usually have good people skills. They have a kind of city side with guys sporting pistols, and a kind of almost army side you see in some of the tougher locations.. they can be distinguished from the army by their plain green BDU’s as opposed to the pixellated camouflage of the Army and slightly different ones of the Marines (Naval Infantry). Corruption may exist, but again, when you meet them on the street it has been for me 98% a good experience. The Nationalization was a reform by Uribe and apparently successful, and maybe a good step for Mexico as well.
The famed M-19 no longer exists, they demilitarized years ago after some funny acts like stealing Simon Bolivar’s sword and some not so funny acts like taking the Supreme Court at the behest of Pablo Escobar to stop extradition to the US of Drug lords, with a loss of over 100 lives. The current Mayor of Bogota is a former M-19 member, to show how much they are in the past like a kind of Colombian Weathermen Underground.
So making this relevant to the Sierra, let me remove a few more groups from the Pan-Colombian equation. The ELN’s power base is around Norte De Santander, a department maybe 100 miles south of the Sierra, in the Cordillerra Oriental along the Venezuelan border, and, surprise, surprise, a good area to grow Coca.. it’s a funny theme in Colombia that the People’s Revolution is usually deemed most ripe for success in places that for some strange reason happen to be the mid mountain slopes that make for good coca.. if I wasn’t trying to focus on the sierra, I could expound on this theme quite a bit. Back to the ELN, their Low Thousands if not less strong revolution, a kind of ‘me too’ kid brother to the FARC, is kind of too far away to be of worry in the Sierra.. they have distinct turfs, have battled between each other before, but they have bigger problems and better revenue sources these days than to bother each other.. the ELN has recently made headlines by trying to join the ongoing peace process in Havana, and also returning some recent kidnappers as a sign of good will, although not the two german guys that wandered into Norte De Santander on their Truck trip through South America, but I promised this would conclude in good news!
The Paramilitaries, whom I could smell the stink of all over Valledupar, like if the football players in your high school started picking up guns and killing everyone who made trouble in the halls.. part of you didn’t mind seeing the bully, the FARC, get his, but they often would kill his mom and his girlfriend as well.. it got very ugly… and as I might have mentioned it got very ugly in the Sierra as well. Between Guatepuri and El Atanquez, a battle raged in 2002 that killed 200 people, everything from combat to executions on suspicion of collaboration was to blame.. not to freak you out more, but there were even killings of suspected FARC prostitutes with cans of Bug Spray by the Paramilitaries, not that this is a good way to make the sierra seem attractive, but it was rough for years in Valledupar, which as a cattle ranching town, the home of the Cattleman’s music, Vallenato, kind of a Colombian Austin or Bakersfield musically, was ripe for Paramilitary formation and action. They demobilized in 2006 under an amnesty that tried to wrestle the war back into the hands of the military after it almost went off the skids in the previous 4 years, most notably in somewhat distant Cordoba and Antioquia, although the famed leader of the AUC there had no doubt influence on events in both the Sierra Nevada and La Guajira, Carlos Castano and his two brothers, Vincinte and Fidel, now being immortalized in the somewhat intelligent Caracol Network miniseries Los Tres Caines, the Three Caines. Like Future President Uribe, also from Antioquia, their father, Jesus, had been kidnapped by the FARC and they vowed a revenge that became a national movement. But the paramilitaries are no longer any issue in the Sierra. They are an issue in smuggling in parts of the country, as kind of re-hashed gangs like something out of a bad mercenary movie, and in places where land reform is occurring (one famous group in this instance is called the Black Eagles)..all these areas are in the North of Colombia, but it’s a big country, so nowhere close to the Sierra, thankfully.. all-righty.. so who is left on our rogues list.. ah..
Narcotraficantes.. well, drugs do in fact leave from the Caribbean coast of Colombia still, although I don’t think in the same volume as the Pacific coast and Mexico bound, as Mexico, mostly the Zetas and Sinaloa Cartels, have taken over world distribution, a bit like DeBeers, turning Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia into somewhat decentralized resource suppliers after their previous heydays (first Peru before anyone even knew it was a problem in the 50’s, then Bolivia and Colombia in the 80;s through the rise of Mexico in the last decade or so… Mexico’s Banana Republic’s..oh how the world turns!) These guys work quite silently, but a big group in La Guajira was busted recently, all at a beach party of all things! The Local Gangs shut down Santa Marta on New Years of 2011 as a sign of respect.. no one could party without being killed that year, in kind of the Waikiki of Colombia.. so they are still strong, but they want nothing to do with the high sierra nor climbers nor indigenous would be my guess. the Busted Group seems to have been the newest incarnation of the North Coast Cartel. The production of Coca paste is kind of decentralized, so although the FARC, ELN, or Paramilitaries will control these areas, these guys just buy raw material like any middle man. The big names now in Colombia are Los Rastrejos, and Los Urubanos. They are the heirs of the Cali Cartel. Something called La Officina de Envigado seems to be on the decline, which is the heir of the Medellin Cartel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Rastrojos
In the Hay-Days of the FARC, from 1998 when the FARC went on the offensive but before the election of Uribe in 2002, the 19th front which controlled the Sierra Nevada numbered 800… today: One Squad of about 15 operates in the eastern Sierra in coco growing areas fairly well clear of any areas you might access to climb the mountain.The closest being Guatepuri, and the two valley’s option, but likely still a two day hike for them if not more. I don’t know if they consider themselves the remnants of the 19th front, or are the 59th front I will mention later. I was told by the military that around Guatapuri east you might see 2 or 3 of them at a time, occasionally, but they are merely looking, snooping and pooping as it’s called in the US Army. Guatapuri, with it’s platoon, also feels safe I was told, there has been no FARC action anywhere in the area since 2009. Above Guatapuri, a few people did warn me that in the prior months they had seen the FARC come through, that it was a semi regular occurance, but I had not received the previous information to whittle down whether they come through in force or just to say hi. The Colombian Army actually has pictures of about a 3rd of them on the wall, like yearbook shots.I recently met a Nun in the Anthropology Museum of the Hermanas de Laura (The Sisters of Laura, Laura being a beatified Colombian nun who’s work began with the Embrerra in Choco and western Antioquia about a hundred years ago, and her order spread to looking after and converting natives all over colombia and now other countries) on the west side of Medellin, and I asked her where she had lived.. after a long list she mentioned the Sierra, and I believe their Convent was over in the area I am describing, the mountains above Riohacha. She said that they once threw her off a donkey, but no harm came to her. This is somewhat inconclusive, but the military found it incomprehensible that the FARC would mess with anyone in the Sierra these days.
When the FARC wanted to take over the whole country, the Sierra was a piece of a larger puzzle of taking over all of Colombia. They also see themselves as defenders of the Indigenous, who tolerated and even occasionally assisted them. These days the Sierra has relevance as a short cut from Venezuela to Santa Marta for the dwindling FARC urban presence, perhaps as a trafficking route, but this is the conventional wisdom twice voiced to me why any Guerrillas would be up there..other than protecting so Coca bushes in the east of the range. It is this question that creates the what if? What if two or three did happen by… what if 10 go by headed to Santa Marta?
Who else might be trekking through is the group on the Venezuelan Border. It is now documented fact from a successful cross border operation into Ecuador a few years back that Hugo Chavez for years aided the FARC and even gave them 300 Million USD at one point. There is another group of FARC living on the other side of the Valley in the Sierra Oriental, the Eastern Mountain Range of both the Andes and Colombia. It’s kind of neat that you drive from Maicao and watch the Andes bein as little hills to your left, and by Valledupar there is a 12,000 foot mountain, Painted Mountain, to your left, within maybe 3 hours of the first hill, but that prettiness, like usual in Colombia, comes at a price of them being a bit.. well.. dodgy, 150 strong FARC 59th Front Dodgy.. and mildly active… again, they seem to just be guarding Coca production and smuggling routes (into Venezuela to go to Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean, or out of Colombia via the coast to go to Mexico I am speculating). These guys live up there and go hang in Venezuela when Uncle Hugo likes to have a Bar B Q for them to forget his cancer troubles, and they have committed a few attacks, but against specific targets. It was documented that in 2011 they tried to mess with the rails of the coal train, and they killed a policeman. I don’t know what if anything happened in 2012, although I heard of nothing my first month in Colombia, I hadn’t quite acquired the ear for it yet, still figuring out what was good to eat and where to go. In the 3 months I have been here, to signal the end of the ceasefire they had called for the Havana Negotiations that have been ongoing for a few months, right on a road I had come down weeks earlier, near the junction between the roads to Uruba, Maicao, Riohacha and Valledupar, about 3 miles east of Maicao, they ambushed and killed three policemen, which was national news along with a string of other attacks that all happened to signal that cease fire termination, which was a bit of a negotiating tactic. The few hostages taken that day in other parts of the country, mostly the south west,were released within a week or two as a result of the negotiations. The FARC has, by the way, claimed they are no longer interested in taking hostages, kidnapping as you might call it, in a move that might be seen as a plea for legitimacy to go with these negotiations and a growing feeling of malaise in the country after 50 years of the crap I am writing about.
So the last is petty criminals.. I felt pretty safe with about everyone I met once I was into the Sierra.. there was the Dignity of mountain people.. the Kogui will get drunk and hit you up for cash, claiming it’s for their sick kid, but it’s for a Club Colombia, but I never saw any evidence of crime internally or between the tribes, even though there is a spirited rivalry and distrust between some of them, and of the Mestizos. The Arawaku’s came across as too dignified for such activities, although I once left some gear by a river, and it disappeared, and as I had thought, a few kids had taken it. I found a Mamo, a kind of chief figure, who was a nice measured wise old guy, and he appreciated what likely had happened as I did, asked around and came back with it, although I had to pay a kind of 2 dollar fee which I think they put towards cell phone minutes, but it earned me an offer to stay in their house that night for free, which I took up both out of good nature and curiosity. I didn’t get much of a read on the Wiwa’s although they came across as more patient Kogui’s. The Kancuamos that are basically mestizos now seemed pleasant enough, they party a bit like other modern Colombians but I saw no special tendencies towards delinquency. And no one lives above 7500 ft.. I could see some of the natives being fascinated by modern camping gear and climbing gear, but I doubt you would see them by chance by the time you got the the base camp. I have a friend who wandered up into the sierra two years ago above Nabusimake, and he told me of being quite impacted by Altitude and Malnutrition which was more a condition of his life and inexperience than anything occurring in the Sierra, but a Kogui happened along and insisted he mount his donkey, nursed him for a bit and helped him down the mountain.
video that shows what the sierra was like maybe 10 years ago:
Video on hostage taking nar Santa Marta, but it appears tobe just a criminal thing:
PResident Santos visits an indigenous village in the Sierra, and the Governor’s of all three adjoining states are interviewed.
A police video about taking some doctors to a village to work with the Wiwa’s, someplace on the Santa Marta Side, likely above Minca..
What makes the Sierra Nevada de santa Marta most unusual is that the summit of such a large mountain is so close to the sea, and the Caribbean at that, not usually considered to be a deep sea, unlike it’s nearby biiiiiger brother, the Pacific, whose ring of fire is famous for tectonic activity that has created a ring of uniformly tall mountains, ranging from 12,000 ft.-ish (4000 m) mountains in places like the American West and Canada, Japan, and even New Zealand, Hawaii, and Indonesia to ranges that peak taller like the Alaska Range and the Andes.
The Andes are considered the second tallest mountain range in the world, but dropping from there, only the Alaska range, the nearby Wrangell-St Elias Range and the Caucasus’ reach such heights as this above sea level as Pico Cristobal Colon (you do kick ass, Mauna Loa, at like 35000 ft all told, but half of you is hiding under the Pacific..), so if we go with the maximum height of each range, and consider the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to be a separate range from the Andes, which it is as far as I can tell geologically, despite proximity (I gotta read about tectonics now!?.. it’s like having a girlfriend that get’s angry at you don’t know her first pet’s name..), then by my rough math, it’s the 5th highest range in the world… wait, it might be taller than Mt. Elbrus, in the Caucus’…
holy crap it is, by 200 ft or so.. there we have it… it’s the 5th tallest range in the world by highest peak above sea level, since I forgot the Alaska Range (which is a bit absurd if you knew where I kind of live, but it’s funny how I start to take the old girl for granted, forgetting how special she really is) after:
The Himalayas, with Everest at above 29,000 ft.
The Andes with Aconcagua at 23,000
The Alaska Range with Denali at 20,000
The Wrangell-St Elias Range, with Mt. Logan at 19,000
Colon, like I have said, is 18,701, although I also see it listed on Wikipedia as 18,947..
Honorable mention goes to Popocapatel, smoking all the time, and Orizaba, the highest peak in Mexico but both slightly shorter than Colon, although both of which might be visible from the Gulf of Mexico coast. But they are also both well inland. The mountain of my visual dreams, Mt. St Elias, next to Logan, and also quite close to the Gulf of Alaska in the North Pacific Ocean.. it’s a stunning mountain, white from toe to cap with snow, and to see it on a clear day from the gulf or Yakitat or an airplane is a spiritual experience.. it get’s climbed once every three years or so by an intrepid few, but returns me to the Sierra, since the two share this odd distinction of being so tall and so close to Salt Water, but it might be a good 5 miles further from the coast, 30 miles to Colon’s 25, although from the sea it looks like it’s only 2 miles from shore. I am definitely revealing a bias towards St. Elias.
Anyhow, the Caribbean, if I know it well, bottoms out at like 12,000 ft, not terribly deep, but not shallow either.. again, the Pacific goes to like 30,000 ft down… and of course James Cameron has been there..
So facet number 2, the seaside location, is another point for the sierra, because who the heck would guess that anything that tall could be so close to the Caribbean. I have traveled extensively the sea’s edges, and all through the US, and mostly Pacific Coast of Latin America, and it is marked by it’s flatness in the US and Central America, mangroves and unsettled areas like the mosquito coast of Honduras, with mountains kind of close as aforementioned but hardly hovering over it in Mexico. But then you get to Colombia, and flat flat flat going counterclockwise, and then Boom, where the hell did this come from!? It’s descends into the Sea from Cienega to Palomino more or less, all around Santa Marta, like the north side of Maui (yes it really does take 2 hours to drive to Hana, even though it looks like it’s right there!). Palomino offers kind of the first ocean plane, about a mile wide at the town, which widens by the time you get to Riohacha south of which the Sierra is petering out into (dangerous) hills, ending by Maicao.
So to harp on this, imagine starting at the sea, and weaving up through jungle river canyons, then encountering people living as high as 7500 ft who are dependent upon sea shells for their biggest fix (more about the habits of the Indigenous of the Sierra in other posts, but that weird gourd thing you see them rubbing with a stick all the time, it’s made of boiled sea shells…then still being within sight of the sea, at about 8 degrees north of the equator, and encountering snow and then a glacier.. there might be this kind of proximity in Ecuador, or down in Patagonia, but I am not sure that such an abrupt juxtaposition of all the climactic zones exists anywhere else on earth.. maybe Hawaii, but I am afraid to look, but wait, sure, Mauna Loa is likely as close to the ocean, and at a similar latitude.. maybe 10 or 12 north, but it’s 4000 ft lower…
and then the odd fact that this range is so small… you could drive in a circle around it in a day, and likely not break 2000 ft… it’s literally a pyramid by the sea.. and unlike anything else in the Caribbean. Now throw in a dry side and a wet side, and the truly old school indigenous groups, and you have something unique.. 30 something major rivers running down from it, in every direction creating countless valleys, the most lush and interesting to me in the north and west sides, where the culture and biodiversity likely abounds.
In Colombia, let alone the sierra, I have seen a new bird species just about every day, something markedly different each time.. I am dazzled by it, and I remember decompressing in a little resort in Pueblo Bello, on the south side of the Sierra, sunbathing by a pool that cows also drink out of (moderate your vision of luxury for northern colombia, they were also drying coffee on the cement near the pool, and there was a squad of soldiers camped out in a nearby shack.. I also let a mule into the nearby field by accident and had to chase him out with a teenager who worked there, past the pool..), and trying to distinguish the different bird calls I was hearing led me to see about 8 different species… I was a bit stunned, because I can’t imagine many back yards in the US that could offer more than 4 or 5 at any one time…
Throw in the variety of human experiences occurring on the slopes of the mountains.. Soldiers fighting the last vestiges of a guerilla war, with guerillas snooping about in it’s eastern extremes.. an almost modern city tucked between it’s ridges by the sea, with a port alive with commerce and likely some of it illicit, ranchers and victims of the paramilitaries licking their wounds in Valledupar while a corrupt little government goes about it’s business, and there occur the daily events of a social club that birthed one of the most important music genre’s in Colombia, Vallenato, which was originally the musical storytelling of ranchers until some oligarchs, including a former Colombian President I believe, got ahold of it and started to record it in the ’60’s after paying these guys to sing for them for a bit. Then of course the mestizo coffee growers, and the possible coca growing on the east flanks, a smattering of cattle ranchers, but then of course the three remaining old school indigenous groups living up in the hills, calmly awaiting the time when history proves their method of living correct over ours, acting as if the fools with all the metal contraptions in the valleys will someday figure it out, pensively chewing their coca and seashells and admiring the view.
I wish I could say that there was a bunch of scuba diving all around the Sierra, but it’s mostly in Tayrona park, since the rivers there don’t pump out the amount of mud they seem to on the western and north-eastern shores of the Sierra, but yes, there are tropical reefs and glaciers within I would guess maybe 35 miles of each other.. would have to play with google maps for a good answer… there you have it, tall, small in footprint, and towering over the odd ball laconic majesty that is the Caribbean Sea..not a place anyone associates with mountains, outside of a few volcanos and a few nice hills in Jamaica, all right, they are mountains..
It’s the jungle.. There are some bad diseases about.. But in fact, the jungle ain’t the worst of it.. It’s the disturbed areas, where there is ranching and forest and food web fracturization that the bad shit really lives in…human contact is usually necessary for human diseases.. How do I know this.. because I am sitting in an emergency room right now, likely being diagnosed with leishmaniasis, in Medellin…it’s better than Chagas which was my first fear.. I don’t have swollen organs other than perhaps my colon, which in Latin American can come from any number of things, ask ol Montezuma.
So now writing from Cali, a few weeks later, I will fill in the distillation of my understanding of the disease threats in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. this might be a bit horrifying, but there are problems everywhere.. this is not an impediment to a succesful climb, but it is interesting and perhaps helpful to know. As you have already figured out, in the immediate area, since mountains make their own weather, especially big ones like these, there are like 6 different biomes, from Humid Tropical (Wet Tropical would be the wettest, along the Pacific coast of Colombia, where they set world records for rainfall, but to the uninitiated Humid Tropical might as well be rainforest.. it is rainforest, it can just rain even more if you ever imagined it possible…) to arid to arctic. The variety of diseases possible seems fairly uniform, but I am no expert, but the things I know to exist are Chagas, possibly Malaria, and certainly contamination of water sources due to domestic animal and human waste. Chagas is present enough that studies have been done on the north side of the Sierra especially, charting infection by villages, and the numbers tend to be around 30%. I am not sure I can find the dang study again, but it was filled with graphics of the range.
The method of infection for most of the infections would be bug bites, or ingestion in the case of the gastrointestinal.
Here is a photo of someone after three days in the sierra without gumboots:
it might be hard to tell, but this persons legs are riddled with sand flea and mosquito bites. they spent 2 nights and three days up there.. they slept on the ground in a Kogi farm, instead of the recommended hammock, and due to the heat kept pulling out of their sleeping bag which was rated for two much heat.. most of these bites started to itch, indicative of Sand Fleas, and took about two weeks to heal once the poison was out of them (it is a pleasant sort of itch, the blood aside). A Cortisone shot was refused, but this likely would have accelerated healing. One of the bites got infected, and then blew up after another incursion into the sierra above Guatapuri, just due to the pounding on the feet somehow perhaps creating bruising where the infection could grow.
the bite in question became something called cellulosis I believe, it swelled up like a golf ball, then burst spontaneously while the individual was bed resting:
it was like a volcano of dark brown fluid, indicative of a blood infection. Eventually the scab was checked for something called Leismaniasis, a disease that enters through skin infection, but came up negative, but Staphylococus, also known as flesh eating disease, was present, and was eventually treated with doxycycline.
With more care this is all easily avoidable, but it points out the issues of especially sand fleas, kissing bugs and mosquitos, which are in many areas of the Sierra, from the beaches at sunset thru sunrise, to the newly cleared areas, to even Kogi and Arawaku homes. I never understood two things until now.. why South American natives often clear everything around heir homes down to dirt (I figured they just didn´t like putting effort in to landscaping, Mexican crews charge a lot to get here!) and why new Third World Homes are always made of Cement.. it turns out the thatch roofed homes we are so intrigued by end up being havens for disease carrying insect. Chagas in particular is carried by something called the Kissing Bug which bites people’s exposed faces at night. The classic photo of Chagas is this kid with a swollen lump over one eye.
Alright, I will now link to real info if you are still curious on the possibilities:
So there are multiple strains of Chagas, and more than one vector, basically, different bugs carry it in different places.. but it is generally the Kissing bug, the Pito they call it in colombia. It is nocturnal like I said. The disease comes from it defecating near the bite. Pretty stuff. Wikipedia obviously describes this better than me.
Alright, Leishmaniasis. I recently met a guy who had been in the army in Amazonas for three years, on this beautiful river, and he got it once.
LEishmaniasis comes from the Sand Fly, which is one of the banes here, and I guess it lays its eggs in you, so if it has bitten you, sometimes you will see a little black bump in the middle of the scrape.
Can´t forget ol malaria.. he gets all the attention, incurable and all.
Bogatenos are the most likely to be involved in climbing and mountaineering in Colombia due to what I will describe as facts associated with Sociology, not solely wealth, but Bogota is the Intellectual city. There is money in Medellin and in pockets around the country, but the type of counter-culture it takes to create a kind of climbing fervor seems to exist only in Bogota. To put it in perspective, people want their kids, including Botero when he was a kid, to be bullfighters in Medellin. Obviously Sir Edmund Hillary wasn’t exactly a counter-culture figure, he was just a dude who liked to climb, but in Colombia, a culture like this, both conservative and a bit risk averse, climbing is the kind of thing that comes from an upper class rebellious youth to some degree.
All the developed climbing is from what I can tell north from Bogota to Bucaramanga along the Cordillera Oriental, the Eastern Mountain Range that hovers over the Amazon. Bucaramanga is kind of the capital of all this, with an active paragliding scene there as well from what I can tell. There are also a set of snow-capped mountains in El Cocuy National Park within a few hours of there, unfortunately melting fast. Climbing Magazine profiled a scene in Suesca, about an hour north of Bogota it appears, which is alleged to be the best developed location in the country, with very hard sandstone.
climbing.com/route/ghosts-the-rock-gods-and-colombian-climbing/
this article also mentions an underground salt mine nearby with a Cathedral carved out of salt.. that’s pretty cool.
The Cordillera Central from what I have seen is stunningly beautiful, with waterfalls and rivers like one dreams of seeing, but it is mostly jungle and dirt,and well, perhaps there are lots of illegal activities going on in it’s hills. I have yet to see the Sierra Occidental except if you might describe the mountains west of Medellin as part, but they do look stunning, but again might not be climber country. To the South I know that there is a lot of FARC activity amongst the ranges closer to Cali, and as the ranges come together towards the Ecuadorian Border. As footnotes, there are places in the Amazon with exposed Limestone that look stunning, but I have no idea about security or climb-ability, and there is a small range of mountains in Sur de Bolivar that I glimpsed from the Magdalena, but this area is surely a no go zone, some hostages were taken just recently, as, to quote a boat mate, “That place makes some pretty high quality Coca!” and the FARC have conveniently chosen it as a good spot for the continuation of the people’s rebellion that COMINTERN even forgot about 23 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serran%C3%ADa_de_San_Lucas
The up side is that they have kept it from becoming another of the vast cattle ranches that is Northern Colombia, and that are even creeping into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Which brings us here.. There is plenty of climbing and mountaineering from what I can see in the Sierra, and if it was developed much, it has been years since anyone enjoyed it much, at high altitudes fortunately or unfortunately, but the weather can be crisp and dry even if the sun might bear down, but this brings us back to the subject of this blog.
To The Snows 