Lost and Found – Ciudad Perdida, Colombia

On the day he found the Rubik’s Cube, Jose Gabriel wore white cloth, just like normal.

Shortly after dawn Jose, a Kogui native who lives in Colombia’s northern jungles, had set off with a group of tourists heading towards Colombia’s Ciudad Perdida, or Lost City. His old comrade Gabriel Ricardo, a lover of the jungle and now a guide for tourists seeking a route to the hilltop town, had asked Jose to help shoulder the load on the final approach.

As usual, the air was damp with overnight moisture as the group set off. Jose and Gabriel both carried large packs, heavy with food for the Westerners’ two-night stay at the summit.

While Gabriel went bare-chested in the high humidity and the tourists simply sweated their way through the jungle, Jose’s outfit was a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous.

His tunic rumpled at the shoulders and his loose trousers were tucked into a pair of good old-fashioned wellies (“Made in Croydon”). His long hair was piled up for the day inside a natty straw hat, and he carried a multi-coloured hand-woven striped shoulder bag, or mochilla. His moustache was trimmed and neat, although mirrors seemed in short supply in the jungle.

After a morning that tested the sure-footedness of the tourists – while Jose simply skipped over rocks, steamed up near-vertical hillsides and forded knee-deep rivers without a second thought – the group rested for lunch at the foot of the 1,200 stone steps leading to the summit and the Ciudad Perdida.

It was then, as he looked over the four sweaty tourists, that Jose saw the small, multi-coloured cube. One of the tourists, the particularly sweaty one who liked to wave his big camera around, was sitting on a rock holding it between his fingers. He seemed to be turning it round and round, in a different direction each time.

Jose made eyes at the tourist. He was friendly, this tourist, and he often tried to speak in Spanish, Jose said to himself. Perhaps he will show me this strange object. The tourist approached, smiling and holding out his hand.

“Un juego,” he said: “A game.” With that the tourist began turning each side of the small cube, dazzling Jose with a bewildering array of moving colours, offering the cube to Jose so he could have a go. He demonstrated the aim of the game – when each side of the cube contains just one colour, the puzzle is complete.

“It’s very hard,” the tourist said. “It can take years to finish.”

All that afternoon Jose thought about the little juego. The tourist let him carry it in his tunic as they group climbed the steep, slippery steps that led up to the Lost City. The city was founded by the Tayrona people, an indigenous group who lived in the jungles of northern Colombia before the Spanish arrived with the conquistadors and their bullion ships.

No-one knows precisely when the city was built, but it was lost and forgotten sometime of the 17th or 18th century when the Spanish had finished plundering its gold reserves and killing its inhabitants. Like many of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, most of those Tayrona who were not killed died as new infections were introduced to the region.

The city was forgotten about until the 1970s, when a group of gold-hunters scouring the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta found the route to the steps and rediscovered the city.

At the top of the steps, as rain clouds gathered and the city, once home to some 3,000 people, prepared for an afternoon soaking, Jose fingered the cube. He would ask the tourist if he could keep it, he thought. A present, perhaps, un regalo.

The rain was already hammering down when the tourist agreed to part with his juego. It really was a present, the tourist told Jose, from his sister. He was trying to complete the puzzle before he left Latin America. He would let it go, but only if Jose promised to work at solving it. There must be some moments in the jungle when life slows down, the tourist told Jose.

“Work hard. Please don’t give up.”

Jose smiled and agreed before turning away. Then, relieved of his heavy pack and free of the slow-footed tourists, he skipped down the slippery hillside and danced off into the jungle, Rubik’s Cube tucked safely inside his own multi-coloured mochilla.