Ciudad Perdida Trek: Everything you need to know

The Ciudad Perdida trek is a four-day slog through the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to reach Colombia’s Lost City — an ancient Tayrona ruins site abandoned hundreds of years ago during the Spanish conquest and only reachable on foot. It’s one of the best adventures you can have while backpacking Colombia.

 

As amazing as this hike is, it’s not easy. And if you choose the wrong time of year or forget to bring bug repellent, it could be truly miserable. So to help you prepare for trekking to Ciudad Perdida and to make sure you have a good time, I put together this Lost City guide, including everything you need to know before you go.

 

(Want to know what the Ciudad Perdida tour is like? Read my day-by-day guide here!)

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you decide to purchase through these links, I receive a percentage of the sale at no additional cost to you, which helps me keep this site up and running. 

 

Where to start and finish the Ciudad Perdida hike

 

 

You depart for your Lost City trek from the city of Santa Marta, about five hours from Cartagena. Tour agencies will pick you up at any hostel or hotel in town. (I recommend Masaya Hostel.) Then you’ll take a two-hour jeep ride along the coast and then up into the mountains. The trek starts from the town of El Mamey before leaving civilization for four days.

 

You return to Santa Marta at the end of your Ciudad Perdida tour — or you can request to be dropped off anywhere along the coast (like the magical Costeño Beach or PNN Tayrona). Your tour company will bring your luggage when they pick you up, so you don’t have to carry your big backpack the whole time. From the beaches, it’s an easy local bus trip (one hour) back to Santa Marta to continue your backpacking Colombia adventure.

 

When to trek to Ciudad Perdida and weather on the trail

 

 

Possibly the most difficult part of the Ciudad Perdida hike is dealing with the weather. Regardless of what time of year you go, expect to encounter extreme heat and humidity. You also stand a chance of facing pouring rain.

 

The best season for trekking is November through February. Temperatures will be (relatively) cool and you have the best chance of avoiding rain. If you have a high tolerance for heat, August is also not a bad option — I trekked in mid-August and stayed mostly dry.

 

Flash thunderstorms and torrential downpours are a risk at any time of year. But outside of the months listed above, they’re almost guaranteed. Your best bet for avoiding rain is to get as early a start as possible in the mornings, so the storms don’t roll in until after you reach your camp.

 

The rain presents a couple of problems. First, everything you own will get soaked. (Keep your electronics in multiple layers of waterproof bags!) Second, since it’s so humid, nothing will dry overnight. Third, the river levels can be quite high during rainy periods, making the three river crossings more difficult. And finally, the rain turns the entire trail into a mud-bath. Get ready to slip and slide down the hills and plan to do laundry as soon as you get back to civilization!

 

The only plus to going in low season is the trail will be less crowded. In August, I was in a group of 15 and trekked alongside four other comparably-sized groups on the same schedule. At times we were well-spaced-out, but at other times the trail felt uncomfortably crowded.

 

Before you go: Arranging your Ciudad Perdida trek

 

 

The Ciudad Perdida trek runs through the Kogi community, who carefully protect the fragile environment they so value and depend on. As a result, the government carefully controls all traffic on this trail. You must do the trek with a guide from a licensed agency — you cannot go on your own.

 

Only four tour companies operate the trek to Ciudad Perdida: Expotur, Turcol, Magic Tours, and Guias y Baquianos. If you book with anyone else, they are just going to add you to one of those four agencies’ tours. I went with Expotur and had a mostly positive experience.

 

Regardless of who you go with, the Ciudad Perdida trek price is $950,000 Colombian pesos ($312 USD). That price is fixed and non-negotiable. If you pay any less, you will be cutting into either the salary of your Lost City guide, their insurance, or the fee paid to the indigenous communities. The price is the same regardless of how many days you spend on the trail. The Lost City trek price includes food, guides, accommodation, admission to the site, and a contribution to the local communities.

 

If you travel during low season or have some flexibility in your schedule, you can show up the day before you want to go and book a Ciudad Perdida hike. If you’re backpacking Colombia in high season, you should book your Lost City tour in advance. Usually the companies require a 10% deposit, payable via PayPal.

 

How fit do you need to be? And should you choose 4, 5 or 6 days?

 

 

If you’re a serious trekker, it’s easy to underestimate the Ciudad Perdida trek. If you look at the distances covered each day and consider that it’s just a few days, you may think, ‘that’s it?’ I did the trek coming off a two-week trip to Nepal and thought it would be a walk in the park in comparison.

 

What the maps won’t tell you is hiking in Colombia is a different ballgame. The trek is near-constant straight up or straight down. Almost none of it is flat. Each day involves climbing multiple hills for at least an hour — often more.

 

Add onto that the ridiculous jungle heat. While the Ciudad Perdida itself is at nearly 1,500 meters and reasonably cool, most of the trek is at lower elevations. Expect to sweat like you’ve never sweat before, especially on the first and fourth days, which involve long stretches with no shade.

 

That being said, anyone in reasonable shape could manage this trek. Our group even included a couple of newbie hikers who had never done a multi-day trek before. It’ll be tough, but it’s not impossible. I highly recommend training a bit in advance (check out my hiking training plan for ideas).

 

Most hikers complete the Ciudad Perdida trek in four days. But you also have the option to extend to five or six days. I don’t recommend this unless you’re seriously out of shape. For one, after four days, you will be so ready to get out of the jungle and be clean again. Additionally, the only real difference is in how the last day is broken up. If you do the four-day trek, you have to hike 17 km before lunch. If you extend the trek, you split up that very long morning — but you arrive at your final campsite at 9 am, leaving you with an entire day to do nothing.

 

Where do you sleep?

 

 

The good thing about the Ciudad Perdida trek is while you are surrounded by nature and far from any roads, you don’t have to sacrifice too many creature comforts. During your Lost City tour you’ll sleep in jungle lodges with decent facilities.

 

Each lodge along the trail has a large room of bunk beds. The beds are reasonably comfortable, with decent mattresses and mosquito nets. The sheets are clean-ish — the lodge operators wash them after each guest, but generally in cold water. You’ll also get a blanket and a pillow, although bringing an inflatable pillow is a good idea if you’re bothered by damp-smelling things.

 

On the second night, everyone stays at the very-crowded Paraiso Camp. The lodge doesn’t have enough beds for everyone in high season, so you may have to sleep in a hammock — it’s actually pretty comfortable!

 

All the camps also have good cold-water showers and reasonably clean Western-style flush toilets (bring your own toilet paper). Hygiene standards are about as good as they could be considering the number of people at each camp and the remoteness of the location. Bring hand sanitizer and you’ll be fine.

 

What do you eat? What about water?

 

 

The food along the Ciudad Perdida trek is shockingly good — I honestly don’t know how the tour companies do it. You’ll get three delicious meals a day, along with snacks and drinks.

 

Breakfast is generally coffee, eggs and toast or arepas (a traditional Colombian corn-based “bread”). Lunch is usually a main dish with rice and veggies, with cookies for dessert and fresh fruit juice. Dinner is a main dish with rice, potatoes, lentils, veggies, or other side dishes and a chocolate bar. You’ll also stop for fruit at least once each day, and you’ll have snacks like popcorn in the afternoons. In short, you don’t need to carry any of your own food for this trek.

 

Vegetarians are well-catered for on a Ciudad Perdida tour. In fact, the veggie dishes looked even better than the meat/fish dishes. Expect lots of lentils and beans, as well as omelettes and pasta dishes.

 

You can purchase snacks like energy bars, Pringles, and nuts along the way — they get more expensive as you get further away from El Mamey. The camps and rest stops along the way sell oottled water, beer, Coke, and even rum as well.

 

One of the best parts of the Ciudad Perdida trek is you never have to purchase bottled water. Each camp has iodine-treated water stops where you can refill a reusable bottle or Camelbak — bring something that can hold at least a liter, as you may not have a place to fill up between camps. The provided water is 100% safe to drink.

 

What should you bring?

 

 

Check out my full Ciudad Perdida trek packing list for more, but for now, suffice it to say that you will have to carry everything you bring — so bring as little as possible. Ideally everything you bring should fit into a day-pack like this one.

 

The essentials include your trekking clothes, a clean pair of clothes to sleep in, a camping towel, a swimsuit, plastic bags to protect your electronics, and — perhaps most importantly — mosquito repellent. Don’t skimp on that last one. The bugs when you’re hiking in Colombia are insane, especially at the Ciudad Perdida site.

 

To keep your clothes dry, line the inside of your backpack with a garbage bag. That way, no matter how drenched the outside of your pack gets, the contents will stay dry.

 

Finally, one important thing to bring that most of the trekking agencies don’t mention — $15-$20 in cash. Even if you never drink beer or soda at home, chances are you’ll crave it on the trail. Or maybe you’ll want to buy a bracelet or other craft product from the Indigenous communities. Better to have a bit of spending money and not use it than to be the one stuck staring enviously at your trekking buddies as they pass around a bottle of rum that you didn’t have any money to throw in for.

 

Is the Ciudad Perdida trek worth it?

 

 

It’s a tough hike through mud, rain, and bug-infested jungle in 90+-degree heat and high humidity. You’ll come away from it exhausted and dirtier than you’ve probably ever been before, with sore muscles and aching knees. Does that not sound like your ideal vacation?

 

But for all the discomfort you may have to endure on the trail, the Ciudad Perdida trek will leave you with an amazing sense of accomplishment — plus the unique opportunity to discover an ancient ruins site that hasn’t been totally trampled by mass tourism.

 

After completing this trek, I can resoundingly say that it’s worth doing for even casual hikers. So don’t miss out if you want to go hiking in Colombia — book your Ciudad Perdida trek now!

 

Am I missing anything you want to know from this Lost City guide? Leave a comment and let me know!

 

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