El Cocuy National Park: I’ve left it too late to try to record this experience in words – sitting in an apartment in Bogota with swish of cars on rainy streets. The hum of fridge. Static of florescent lights. Wi-fi.
The silence is gone.
A never empty silence filled with the seep and trickle, the rush and [...]
Despite already climbing to over 4000 metres out of Santa Rosa, I have managed to end up – due to the road forbidden to me in Los Nevados – still on the wrong the side of the Cordillera Central. To arrive in Bogota from Villa Maria, I have no choice but to cross the mountain [...]
Also tagged colombia, hot springs, mountainsRain on the roof throughout the night, a constant drip, water pooling near my head. Wind howling, rattling loose roofing, chilly gusts scuttling under the door and creeping into my sleeping bag with me. I am sleeping in a bare concrete cell of a room at the desolate finca, ironically named Campo Alegre**.
I wake early [...]
After days of eating and resting in Ahuas, I decide the time has come to tackle the next section of La Moskitia wilderness. Leaving the settlement, as I ride alongside the official Ahuas airstrip, young men on motor-bikes pass me on their way to work on a clandestine narco airstrip somewhere not far away.
I manage [...]
Setting off from Brus the second time I don’t really have any more useful information than I did the first time but I am determined. I make it back to the confounding fork without incident (apart from my third river crossing). I pause to investigate the left option for a second time and then take [...]
Also tagged honduras, la moskitia, losing it, retro-bloggingAfter I flee the sandfly infested shores of Trujillo, I head, alone again, into La Moskitia.
La Moskitia is a huge area in North Eastern Honduras consisting of large areas of uninhabited tropical jungle, savannah and swamp. The wide flung communities are interlinked by canoe transport on a complex system of rivers and lagoons that leave [...]
In the morning, I cook breakfast, break camp and walk less than a hundred metres before emerging from the trees into a clearing surrounded by a variety of more or less ramshackle structures dotted around a rough football pitch. I survey the scene to identify the building emitting smoke and then make my way towards [...]
Also tagged guatemala, jungle, ruinsThe remains of the ancient city of El Mirador is one of the earliest Mayan sites yet discovered. It sits deep in the jungle not far from the border between northern Guatemala and Mexico.
While most people are content to simply visit the nearby and much more famous and, therefore, accessible Tikal, El Mirador is on [...]
I head towards Calakmul, not primarily to see the ruins, but to enter the jungle again. Calakmul is 60 kilometres off the main highway, deep in the wilderness. I am slowed to a snail’s pace on the ride in by my recent purchase of a field guide to Mexican birds. I am halted every few [...]
Also tagged jungle, mexico, mud, ruinsLooking at my map, Isla Jaina catches my attention, for some reason. I know nothing of the place but the map indicates that there is an archeological site on the island – which is part of another biosphere reserve – at the end of a twenty kilometre dead end track.
I take the turnoff towards Isla [...]