Ruined

"Do you guys know what the biggest agricultural crop is in America?"  Noah asks. "Corn", comes the swift and unwelcome response from the Belgian agriculture student. "Right. Does anyone  know what the 2nd one is? he continues, annoyed, but only mildly daunted, and pointedly avoiding asking the Belgian directly. "Soya", comes the response. He's never had to go to the 3rd before so probably doesn't know it, so this thankfully shuts him down for a while. He's a tall, stringy fresh-out-of-college know-it-all American with floppy hair and a bandanna, which he wears Rambo style. He describes himself as a "a bit hippyish", and frequently uses terms like "bio-fuels" and "sustainable energy". Usually this is to try to change the subject from anything about which he knows nothing. Which is just about everything, including - you realise when you listen to him for longer than 2 minutes - bio-fuels and sustainable energy. He tells frat-house stories involving worrying amounts of male nudity. He laughs delays into them so that he can think where to next, which means that as well as being terminally unfunny, they are - I suspect - not true. I have heard the one about being burst in on in the shower and handed a beer on your first day multiple times. It's always a lie. Or homosexuality is rampant in American universities. Or there is a niche-but-lucrative bathroom door locksmith campus market waiting to be tapped. He has a bizarre repertoire of stretches which call to mind a World War 1 handbook designed to keep the chaps in the trenches occupied rather than fit. They start and end randomly and appear to never actually put strain on any muscle. He also meditates - in the lotus position for authenticity - for as long as twenty seconds at a time. He's been told that he's pretty good at accents. He's not. Over our first lunch he asks me where I'm from and i tell him Ireland. I can see where this is going so i cut him off mid way through his next word (a heavily accented "Oireland"). "No", i tell him abruptly. "No. No. Don't do the accent. Really. Don't." It may have been harsh, but i was not prepared to put up with a bad Irish accent from a try-hard supertool for five days. He fucking hates me immediately as a result, and reverts to a couple of words repeated over and over again in a bad London accent.

All of his attention seeking, his public and fake idiosyncrasies, and specifically the London accent, are for the benefit of Chloe. She's a wispy high-pitched Londoner who craves attention almost as much as Noah. But unfortunately for Noah, not from him very specifically. You can't tell him this, but he's probably just a bit too weird for her. She fake laughs - all the time - like a cat coughing up fur balls speeded up. She and her friend Isy are on a round the world 10 month trip to shag as many men as possible, and the whole thing has been "amazing" so far. Australia was "amazing". New Zealand was "amazing". Tubing in Vang Vieng was "Ah! Mazing". Angkhor Wat? "Ah! Maze. ING". Over breakfast on the 2nd day Isy sees the butter and this too is "amazing". I don't know whether it is the presence of the butter, or the butter itself that's amazing, and i don't want to ask. It is clear that "amazing" is the baseline for everything and the word itself has no currency. After the butter-watershed moment nobody seems to think "amazing" is anything other than "normal", or even "slightly underwhelming".

These, and a few other misfits, are our new best short-term friends. It takes five days of trekking to get to and from La Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) in the jungles of Northern Colombia. Discovered in the mid 1970s, it is still relatively underdeveloped. All available literature tells us the walk is hell (people finishing with hundreds of bites), that it is unsafe (people fall and die, people get kidnapped etc.), and incredibly difficult (hours of trekking up hills). It is the hardest thing many bloggers on South America have done. From this I can conclude that many bloggers on South America are pansies. We walk for no more than three and a half hours for each of the first three days, never rising before the sun. Along the way we have comfortable beds or hammocks, exceptional food, deep river pools in which to swim and beer and rum available on demand. The whole thing could be done comfortably in three days. The majority of our group don't feel this way however, and the level and volume of complaint rises as we go on. These people - I imagine - will go home and tell other people about how it was the hardest thing they did. The main problem as far as i can tell is not that the trek is tough, it is that the trek is undertaken largely by people singularly unsuited to any activity that takes them outside a dance club. Meet Chloe, Isy, and Noah, who, between them, have trekked into the jungle for 5 days with no mosquito repellent, no toilet paper and one 600ml water bottle.

The final push to the lost city itself is a tough one-hour hike including a river crossing and twenty minutes straight up the very narrow "1000 steps". We are lucky enough to be given the chance to make the climb to the city twice, once on the day we arrive to base camp, and once again the next morning with a guide. Less than 20 people per day visit, and of our group of 13, only 6 go up again in the morning. The sense of isolation and quiet makes it hard not to imagine yourself like some of the first modern visitors to Macchu Picchu. This city was after all, they believe, bigger, and equally as reclaimed by the jungle on discovery. The ruins are stunning, and while the afternoon air is hazy from swarms of mosquitoes, the bright clear morning sunshine allows me to reinsert some meaning into the word "amazing".