My thoughts are elsewhere as I clutch at tufts of grass and haul myself up the steep hillside, sweating profusely in the soporific heat, all the while desperately trying to keep up with my guide.
Each dry, discarded or felled tree appears in my line of sight as a possible lurking place for some venomous creature or other, and risking increasing the distance between the guide and me, I skirt around the edges rather than suffer the possible consequences. Then we arrive at the crest, and below us the claustrophobic confines and still Caribbean waters of the Gulf of Urabá open out with clear views west onto the famed Darien region. From up here I can understand why, in 1509, Spanish Conquistador Alonso de Ojeda chose this spot.
Pausing for breath and noting that the ascent was steep but hardly impossible; I try and put myself into the Conquistador’s boots. It was here that, 500 years ago this December, de Ojeda was impressed enough to create the settlement of San Sebastian de Urabá, believed by some to be the first European settlement in South America.
It makes sense since this high point would have been easily defended, is strategically positioned for an assault on the mythical ‘El Dorado’, and is within reasonably short sailing distance of established colonies in Santo Domingo – current day Haiti – and Jamaica.
In effect it was little more than a small fortress, located in the outskirts of the modern-day town of Necoclí in a barrio called Canaflechal. But it represents something much more significant to historians, history enthusiasts and to the subsequent conquest of the New World.
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