A solo journey: finding myself in Colombia's Páremo del Sol

When the journey means more than the destination

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We all know it: the journey’s more important than the destination. The journey, whether a voyage across the oceans or a trip to the shops, is where experience really happens. If we take care to notice, this realignment to the now is also where a deeper discovery can take place.

Travelling at its best reawakens us to this reality, and to the unfolding majesty of the present. Limited by a chronic dissonance with natural systems, our busy modern lives all too often distract us from the present. But, by getting out into the wild, we can reintegrate with the momentous ecology of which we’re a part.

In February 2023, I set out to do just this. With little resembling a plan, I went to Medellín's Terminal del Sur bus station with a handful of possible destinations. All I knew was I wanted to get out of the city and into the mountains. With a bus leaving in ten minutes, I went with the name of Urrao, a town six hours to the west of Colombia's second largest city.

Urrao is the only way to get to El Páromo del Sol. A semi-mythical island of high peaks amid the clouds, this is one of the last hurrahs of seven thousand kilometres of Andean mountains, rising to over 4,000 metres before finally giving way to the dense, lawless jungle of the Darien Gap and a new continent beyond.

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Arriving in Urrao after ten in the evening, I was told in the town square that the páramo was “closed”. With heavily armed soldiers patrolling the dusty streets, one empanada vendor told me there were "gente en el monte" (people on the mountain). The traumas of conflict, however, loom large in this region, and I was sure the mountains were at least as safe as in town.

In all honesty, however, decisions no longer felt applicable, and I was set to rise at five and take an hour's taxi through lush countryside and up towards the mist-covered mountains to the North and West of town. Arriving at the trailhead of a vast rural valley, my driver pulled away on the dirt road, and two hours hike from the treeline, I was alone.

As the dust settled, I was unsurprised to see there was no signal. I turned my phone off and walked past the last rustic farm building calling “buenos dias” to a lone campesino with a wrinkled, weatherworn face. In awe of the hardy lives made from working this rich but remote land, I continued through muddy fields before crossing a desperate bridge of wood and wire.

Entering the wilderness, I felt abruptly alone. I didn’t, however, feel lonely. The sudden experience of finding myself on my own felt simply like the natural, cosmic consequence of all that had come before. Perhaps it was the beauty of the surroundings or the crisp mountain air, but I felt elated.

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Overcoming my fears (of bears, bugs, and solitude)

Before leaving Medellín, and even before setting out for Colombia, I knew that I wanted to go out into the mountains, to go alone, and to find my flow in remote, natural landscapes. Despite my experience in the mountains, I felt anxious about what I was doing, and at every turn I began to observe myself looking for excuses for why I shouldn’t.

There are, of course, real risks with going out alone in remote mountains. But I felt alive to the hazards and I knew I had the technical expertise and fitness for what I was doing. The truth is the fear was deeper. It was palpably subjective and something I knew I had to overcome within myself. Increasingly, I realised this fear would be a prominent feature of this journey.

Once beyond the rickety bridge, birdsong rang out over open, undulating fields of long grasses within which were deep rivers of mud pouring off the mountainside. Jumping to and from patches of high ground, and zigzagging northwards above my new side of the river, my journey began in symbolic form when a huge condor glided gently down and around the lush hillside, swooshing just a few feet over me.

I've seen condors before, but never at such a low altitude, and rarely has a sighting felt like such a gift. For me at that time, alone and amidst the sunshine of the new day, and on land where I had never stood before, this enormous raptor - they have a wingspan of over ten feet! - was a symbol marking the start of my time without humans.

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As I walked silently towards the forested head of the valley, I found a perfect walking stick at the exact moment when I spotted a sparsely spread herd of gigantically horned cattle in my path. Passing through the animals, including a large bull, my stick became my staff, and from then on we worked together. I didn’t go as far as naming my staff, but in my solitude it would become the closest thing I had to Tom Hank’s “Wilson” in the film Cast Away.  

Throughout this journey, I started to connect in a new way with the more-than-human world. This was first apparent with the animals, but also the sun, the wind, and the air. Alone, I began to experience everything in a whole new light, and slowly my entire environment became relational, linked, and unified in a fresh web of energy, within which I was now part. The longer I was out there, the more reverence I felt, including for the rain, water, rocks, clouds, and plants.

Having studied a map the day before, I knew that in one full day's hike, travelling light and fast, I could navigate the subtropical rainforest that separates the agricultural fields below and the peaks of the páramo above. In the time it took for the sun to cross the sky, I felt like I was travelling into a timeless place, both in the past and beyond the age of civilisation. The wilderness does strange things to perception, and chronological time seems to be one of the first victims to her cyclical patterns. This, together with the dense jungle before me, reinforced my fear.

I didn't know what to expect, but I knew there would be life in these jungles (and lots of it). From countless varieties of birds, spiders, snakes and insects, to bears and pumas, I was acutely aware of the immense biodiversity of this place. While climbing up through deep, overgrown trenches, I quickly found my fear diverted to hornet-like bugs that sounded to me like miniature blackhawk gunships circling their pathetic, sunburnt victim.    

While moving up the jungled mountainside through tunnels of thick soil, this felt like another challenge to be overcome, and the five hours of hard hiking, climbing 1,200m, was the easy bit. Once again, the main obstacles were in my head, and, as I had for weeks, I continued to imagine and plot routes, reasons, and excuses for why I should turn back. I’m happy to say, I didn’t.

Emerging above the trees, into the world of big monks

As the forest began to fade in the cooler, higher altitude air, I emerged from the trees and into a new, sunshine filled world: the páramo. Páramo is an extraordinary ecosystem found only in the highlands of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Essentially, it’s immense glaciers of mud, sustaining vast, cold bogs of slow growing plants, mosses, lichen, and fungi. A land of seemingly endless aquifers, this unique neotropical biome provides 80% of Colombia's fresh water.

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Shaped by rocky outcrops above, and bordered by a sea of clouds and jungle below, this is the land of the frailejones. These are human-sized plants found by the thousands, standing over the landscape like legions of terracotta warriors. That night, I would see them silhouetted on the horizon, illustrating again the fragility of my imagination as well as the spectacular beauty of this delicate ecosystem.

Perhaps it was the altitude, or the fear of meeting the “people on the mountain”, but more than once I was startled by a nearby frailejon, standing behind me with his six foot frame, wide-brimmed hat, and the rugged wisdom of decades spent in this place. I have since learned that the word “frailejon” means, suitably, “big monk”. Feeling my way through this landscape, it’s no surprise that these remarkable species are considered holy.

At this altitude - up to just above 4,000m - survival becomes a core part of the journey, and balancing physical exertion and refuelling is critical, as is avoiding additional toil such as the worst of the sun’s intensity. Moving through the páramo, I headed for one of the few areas dry enough to pitch a tent. The place is called Cueva del Oso, and I had read that it was distinguishable by a large boulder that had at some stage rolled down from a nearby peak.

Arriving in the late afternoon, as the bright sunshine began to fade and the temperature started what I now know was to be a rapid and significant descent, I considered what Cueva del Oso means: cave… of… the… bear! “Shit”, I thought, before remembering that the Spectacled Bear is incredibly shy and almost entirely herbivorous. Nevertheless, the fear I mentioned previously had not yet dissipated.

After desperately rehydrating (I had stupidly only brought one bottle for water), I rested in my newfound home. I guess at this point, I felt I had made it: was this the destination? In some ways it was for the day, but my endpoint content was quickly interrupted by a chilly eastward wind. The clouds that I had watched with awe in the valleys below me were creeping at an increasing pace, and bright, sunny skies - as they can in the mountains - gave way to ominously deep, cold darkness. The tent! Fuck, I need to get the tent up.

As the cloud rushed across the plateau towards me, the spots of rain began to fall within minutes. The rain was freezing, and suddenly I was aware that I would be in real trouble if I let my clothing and/or gear get wet. I had heard previously about temperatures here falling to 12°C below zero (10°F). That seemed unbelievable earlier in the day, as I hiked in 30+ degree sunshine, but now, combined with the freezing rain, this felt terrifyingly realistic.

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When destination and journey become inseparable

With the tent up, I dived in with my bag. Avoiding getting anything too wet, I wrapped a tarp over the very basic tent I had borrowed from a friend in Medellín. The rain became heavy and lasted for an hour or two, before clearing for a while. It then rained again throughout the night, but during that break in the weather - probably between 8 and 10 pm - I wandered slowly in the freezing temperatures, not straying more than a couple of hundred yards from the camp.

Night skies in the high mountains are a wonder to behold, and taking in the blanket of stars above me, steaked with low bands of cloud, I felt deeply grateful to be where I was, and for every cause and effect that got me there. Looking out at the cosmos, with the stars swirling and shooting through the blackness of eternity, I felt more aware than ever of my own movement within the great play of this universe. Being high up on a mountain, and having climbed that height in the same day, it felt easier to feel the reality of being tethered to a spinning globe.

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Coming to terms with having no destination, I spent the next couple of days exploring, resting, and surviving. I had limited food, and didn’t take a stove, but I had found water and had fruit and bread to get by. Up there, I actually needed very little to survive. If nothing else, humans are extraordinarily adaptable, and I soon found myself at home in my little corner of the Páramo.

Although without a plan or a preconceived notion of how I should structure my time up there, I devoted my experience to exploring the nature around me, meditating in the thin air, and reflecting deeply about all the experiences that had come before this, contributing in a myriad of tiny and incomprehensible ways to my journey, both in the páramo and more broadly.

The Páramo del Sol is stunningly beautiful, bewilderingly diverse, and perfect for all nature lovers as well as those wishing to escape into the wilderness by foot. My journey there was a personal rewilding of the mind and a process of deep, nature-based therapy. This was the perfect place for rediscovering an eco-centric sense of self, and there are few experiences, or places, I can recommend more highly.