The High and Lows of El Cocuy

After three days of long crowded bus rides and complicated transfers of moving about in Bogota, we were all big-citied out.  We looked on the map and not too far from Bogota, we found a national park called El Cocuy.


In Colombia there are lots and lots of National Parks, many of which are just lines on a map, with no roads to lead you there, nor any infrastructure of any kind.  These are, you could say, inaccessible.


El Cocuy is, on the other hand, accessible.  From Bogota, you can travel the 400 - 500 km in only 13 hours.  And since only about the 30% of the road has either fallen down the mountain face or been covered up by rockslide, you have a better than average chance of surviving.  And once you arrive in the village of El Cocuy, you still have a 25 km upward hike (~ 6 hour hike) before you reach the edge of the park.  (Or if you arrive early enough, you can ride with the milkman at 6h30 in the morning).  More accessible than this in Colombia : not likely !

When you enter the park, you're already at ~ 4.200 meters.  Other than a volcano in Guatemala, I'd never been this high.  Pauline had never been within two thousand meters of this altitude !  So after a long night on a bus followed by a long day hiking uphill at 4.000 m with little water, my body suddenly quit without warning.  In a span of three minutes, my head started hurting and my hunger diminished and my strength left me.  A bit later, I vomited the contents of stomach, including every grain of rice from the one spoonful I had eaten that day.  I had the soroche !  This was my first encounter with altitude sickness and it is definitely not the way to start a hiking adventure in the mountains.  But all I'd need was a good night's sleep...


Around 9 or 10 at night, it started the rain.  Now I'd slept under my tarp-tent hundreds of times and I know that when it rains, it's a good idea to move to the center of the tent.  Anything that touches the tent walls gets soaked.  I was a bit too foggy and groggy to bother to tell Pauline about adhesion.  Thus when her sleeping bag brushed the tent, she let in the rain.  Now, her sleeping bag is really warm, so she didn't feel the cold and the rain until about 20 L were lying on the groundsheet or inside her sleeping bag.  So my soroche was not the lowpoint of the trip, it was sleeping in a freezing puddle of water.  We switched positions and sleeping bags (I wasn't sleeping anyways), and I think Pauline finally got some warmth and rest.

Pauline with the Dutch.

In the morning, Pauline, my soroche, and I started the descent down to the cabana, where most of the hikes begin.  Despite the descent, I moved like I was ascending Everest.  Two steps, rest, two steps, rest.  Several hours and very few kilometers later, we reached the cabana.  There we met Erik, the Dutch guide, and his two Dutch clients, Elske and her dad.  We spent the evening talking to them and learning about Colombia and about the park.  And since we were planning on walking the same direction as them, Else and her dad invited us to join them for the next day's walk...an invitation we certainly accepted.  By nighttime I was feeling much better, so Pauline and I re-set up the tent and had our best night of sleep so far in Colombia.


The next day, the five of us set out on the trail.  Within 20 minutes, we reached the first of several small lakes, called lagunillas.  After 40 minutes and a few more lagunillas, we left the trail.  Erik assured us that it was the route we were taking was much drier and had better views.  After all, he'd been to this park 21 times !  So we followed.  Up the mountain, 4.000 m and climbing.


- Once we get to the top of the valley, Erik says, it's flat all the way back to the cabana.


After four hours, we reached the top of the valley (more like a cliff), and we started the flat return trip.   Hmmm, what's are those rocky mountains, steep walls, chasms, and marshy lowlands doing up here ?


- Well, it's not flat right here, Erik says, but just after this little section it gets flat, I've been here before.

It's a long way down.

Two hours later, we were still climbing and descending, climbing and descending.  And for the first time, Pauline started to feel the effects of 4.400 m.  And then it started to rain.  And there we were, the simultaneous high point and low point of our trip.


- You see ?!, Erik says when we get to a 50 m long flat section, I've been here before.


The sun was going down quickly now, and everyone but Erik was getting worried that we wouldn't find the cabana before dark.  Seven hours in, and we could see the cabana from the cliffs.  But Erik said we couldn't go down from here, it's too dangerous.


- We just have to pass this little mountain here, then we can go down, Erik says.  There's a trail leading straight to the cabana, I've hiked it before.

Snowing !

One hour and three little mountains later, with Pauline moving very sluggishly, we reached the rim of the valley where we could descend.  There was no trail.  Just a steep wall of loose rocks and pebbles.  We had no choice now; we started going down.  At this point, Erik, Elske, and her dad were moving ahead, looking for "the trail".  But Elske was stopping every 10 minutes, yelling "Pauline!", trying to maintain a line of sight between us.  Despite her efforts, often we lost sight of the Dutch completely.  It had been raining for nearly two hours.  All the rocks were slippery, and Pauline had the agility of zombie from Night of the Living Dead.  I was sure that at any moment that she was going to fall and twist or break something.  She kept repeating, J'en peut plus, "I can't go on."  And then it got colder and snow replaced the rain.


Well this was the turning point.  High up on the cliff, freezing cold, soaking wet, with altitude sickness and no Dutch hikers and no Colombian cabana in sight, right in the middle of this miserable tragedy, Pauline says, "I can taste my own snot", with a little smile.  I knew then that she would make it down the mountain.  Her brain was on auto-pilot, her legs moving and navigating the rocks without any feedback from her upper nervous system.  We just kept walking, the same pace for the last four hours.


Pretty soon, after ten hours of hiking, we see the cabana, and 200 m before the cabana, we see the trail.


- You see, Erik says, I've hiked this before !