Ceiba tree

Along the bumpy road into the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains I had to make the jeep stop so I could grab a shot of this regal ceiba tree erupting in yellow bloom over the hills. Ceibas are in the same family as baobobs, those fat upside down looking trees most familiar to the African scrub. In the new world many cousins abound as well, including here in the Sierra Nevada. They are also called silk kapok trees and the silky husk of their seed pods serve to make clothing, nets, rope and all sorts of other things by indigenous peoples. According to Mayan cosmology in Central America the world was held up by the great axis of a ceiba.

Beginning this six day hike into these jungle mountains (the highest coastal mountain range in the world in fact), I'm accompanied by a mixed group of other travelers and men with mules and machetes hauling supplies. Long moving lines of leaf cutter ants parallel the trails like a weaving river of tiny bodies. I pass indigenous Kogi families dressed all in white, heads down chewing coca as they walk and the droning hum of cicadas accompanies the waning afternoon as the warm humidity of the forest wraps around your skin like a blanket.

Welcome to the jungle (literally:)