EXPLORING COLOMBIA'S SANTURBÁN PÁRAMO by Aditya E.S. Wicaksono

"You're going to need these," Carmen Carreño said while handing over a pair of woolen gloves on a Sunday at 3.00 a.m. at the end of September last year. Colombia's Bucaramanga was still dormant, and Carmen was ready with her hiking equipment while heading to the city park San Pio to meet other hikers who wanted to go to the Páramo de Santurbán. Beneath the dimming light at the garden, they gathered around the La Gorda statue, made by a famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero, before departing in two buses from the capital city belonging to the Department of Santander. A local hiking community, Caminantes de Santander would guide them. The main destinations were the Pajarito, Las Calles and Surcura Lagunas in the tundra alpine ecosystem in the Colombian Andes Mountain Range. In the tropical areas of South America in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, several types of montane vegetation live in the regions above the continuous forest line, yet below the permanent snowline or between 3,000 and 4,700 meters above sea level (MSL). Such an ecosystem is called a Páramo. And Páramo de Santurbán is one of several páramo corridors in Colombia. Located in the Department of Santander, dotted with 26 lagoons over 11,700 hectares (ha) of conservation area, the Santurbán Páramo is a natural fabricator of clean water which brings life to around two and a half million residents of Santander Department. "Our lives depend on it. We realize we have to protect this place, especially the water it provides us," Maria Caro, a resident of Bucaramanga, said. Starting from Vetas After a three-hour journey by bus, Carmen and the group arrived at the first stop, a small town called Vetas. The highest town in Colombia which lay 3,350MSL was still cold despite the blazing sun that morning. Historically, Vetas was established by the European in 1555 after they found mineral and gold deposits in the region. Houses in that town still retain the old-Spanish architecture with their white-painted clay walls, brown-colored roof tiles, and wooden crafted windows and doors. People who want to attempt the ascent to Santurbán Páramo can stop in Vetas to have some acclimatization, and calibrate the body with the mountain climate. There, you can also have breakfast with a bowl of potato broth served with half boiled egg, or a fattier meat broth and a glass of hot chocolate, to warm the body. "Here, the average temperature is 10 degrees Celsius, but during the night, it could drop to zero," a waiter at the local restaurant said while serving us with a plate of white cheese. Vetas comprises 5,589ha of the 11,700ha area of the National Park of Santurbán, while the rest are within the region of Surata (4,955 ha) and California (1,156 ha). The Vetas-Surata-California Páramo is one of the gold regions in Colombia, and almost half of the millennium the local people have been miners, aside from farming. Lagoons and Frailejones After the breakfast, the ascent began. It was a clear day with an intermittently blue and cloudy sky. After we left Vetas, a vast and verdant pasture was spreading out as far as the eye could see. Formations of massive rocks in grey, black and purplish colors stood still on the horizon while the bus took the group through a gravel road until the furthest point reachable by vehicles. From there, they had to walk through a designated wild path, and sometimes through small rivers where the water was very cold. A near-perfect circle shaped lagoon welcomed the hikers during the first kilometer of the hike. It was called the Pajarito Lagoon. Measuring as wide as a soccer field, the mirror of water was surrounded by a green pasture and a rocky grayish hill. From the distance, the water reflected a blackish color, made even darker from the color of the rocky formation surrounding it, and it seemed like a very profound pit. The hikers were taking photos with the background of the lake from the hill side which was full of the páramo's unique vegetation. "This one is called frailejón," Maria said while pointing to a pale green plant. No plants are so striking in appearance as the frailejón in the páramo. The plant, which grows only one centimeter per year, belongs to the genus Espletia, a close relative to sunflower and aster. What make frailejones distinct from the other páramo's vegetation is the way in which all the leaves accumulate at the top of the stem to form a massive rosette. Some species of frailejón are low-growing, others are tall with wooden unbranched trunks. The leaves are long, slender, thick, and succulent, in addition to being leathery, covered with a dense coating of long hair which sometimes gives them a beautiful silvery luster. New leaves appear and the old ones dry as the stem grows. The persistent and densely overlapping sheaths cover and protect the stem, which makes the remarkable appearance characteristic of frailejones. The branched flower stalks growing from the bases of the bunched leaves that top the stems are densely woolly, bearing flower heads, often nodding, in yellow, and sometimes white colors. More frailejones could be found up ahead. Meanwhile, Pajarito looked smaller and smaller as the legs began climbing. The sloping path and slippery rocks had been torturing the legs although the terrain was not yet too steep. After an hour, some climbers were seen sitting atop a massive boulder, while some others were taking pictures of themselves. "We have reached 3,657 meters above sea level," one of the guides, Carloz Diaz said. It was the second checkpoint, a place from where they can see the Las Calles Lagoon, which was hiding behind a cliff at the south of the climbing path. Las Calles is much larger than Pajarito, extending and surrounded by some ancient rocky mountains of Santurbán Páramo. From above, its calm waters seemed like a frozen lake reflecting the bright colors of the sky. Meanwhile, at the lakeshore, a light breeze surfed above the icy-cold water. No one said a single word. There was just silence and an occasional ripple caused by a fish in the lagoon. And then, the wind swept away the cloud, allowing the sunlight to expose the crystal clear water. However, the weather on the Páramo changes fast. All of the sudden, the clouds returned and sent a white fog from above, obscuring the road ahead. "The final destination is still far, and if you cannot make it, you had better return by following this path to reach the buses," one of the guides said. The road up ahead was not only a steep and slippery one but also wet and muddy. It was like entering the world of novelist J.R.R Tolkien, as the climbers passed through a foggy mountain, scary shrub land, and muddy lands filled with thousands of frailejones. The higher we hiked, the heavier our breathing became, not only due to the steep path but also the thin oxygen level at the higher altitude, demanding extra caution from every climber. Las Calles was left behind and it disappeared among the jagged mountains, while Carmen, who was leading with her green sweater, was spotted dimly behind the fog and the diminishing páramo's vegetation. Some lagoons could be seen from the hiking path, but it was inaccessible from the designated path. Alto Del Viejo An altar with a small statue of a Catholic virgin and wooden crosses welcomed the climbers at the gate of the Alto del Viejo, the highest place at the Santurbán Páramo, at 3,937MSL. The continuous chain of highlands and valleys of Colombian Andes was a source of constant awe as far as the eyes could see from the peak. The climbers sat down to enjoy the limitless pure air and the 360 degree panorama of the world's longest mountain range which stretches from Chile in the south to Venezuela in the northern part of South America. A pair of "aguila", the local term for eagle, was a complementary scene apart of the heavenly view of the Andean mountain range. The only enemy was the wind. The hikers then continued the journey keeping themselves moving to avoid the biting wind on the páramo. Riky Ramadani, an Indonesian student, headed to the Surcura Lagoon, while Carmen and Maria decided to descend. "The Surcura Lagoon is the prettiest among the three," Riky, who got lost while heading to Surcura, around six kilometers from Vetas, said later. "The most remarkable thing is the vegetation. Indonesia also has páramo ecosystem. It is in Papua. I have never been there as the transportation access is still difficult and expensive," Riky said after a late lunch in Vetas. Meanwhile, Maria described the beauty of the Santurbán Páramo with just one word - "magical". The story of the magically beautiful Sánturban Páramo is like a never-ending debate when some multinationals mining enterprises desire to unearth the Sánturban's gold. Large-scale mineral exploitation is feared to have destroyed the natural state of páramo's ecosystem, its lagoons, aquifers and groundwater. "It is the impact of global warming and the government's lack of awareness in preserving nature in the interest of the highest bidder. We are slowly plundering the lives of our future generations," Maria said.