How the Colombian páramo thwarted the Spanish conquistadors

The story I’m about to tell might be total bollocks, but it’s a funny story, so I’m going to tell it anyway. It was told to us by one of our guides as we trekked through the páramo landscape of Colombia last month.

The páramo is a high-altitude ecosystem found between 3,000 and 4,500m in just five countries in Latin America: Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. It is characterised by long, wet tussock grass (known locally as paja), lakes, peat bogs and a number of unusual...