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Baclava!

A Greek dessert, in case you’re wondering.

This weekend happened to be one of my best in Costa Rica. Depending on how you look at that, it’s either not a big deal (since they’re all awesome) or it’s impressive (because it had to be pretty freakin awesome to compare). I choose the latter.

Up to this point, I had spent every weekend with a group of gringos no less than 15 or so. It’s a lot of fun to do it that way, since there’s always someone around to hang out with or talk to. Problem is, there’s always someone around. And in a group that large, we’re a bit of a pasty eyesore. So this time we endeavored to travel in a smaller group.

It ended up being me, Aaron, Meghan, and Katherine. Me and A-Ron hadn’t really hung out with them before, but when everyone is cool, what does it matter who you hang out with? We all wanted to do a weekend away from gringos, and we all wanted to do some hiking.

We found a place near Chirripo National Park, a nature reserve called Cloudbridge. Chirripo is Costa Rica’s highest peak, and they say that from the top on a clear day you can see both oceans. It’s on the to-do list; check the post in March where I talk about what a great time I had.

Anyway, we left San Jose on a bus (as usual) and headed down to San Isidro. We ran into some friends there who’d been hit by some thieves at the bus stop, and 2 of them got pickpocketed (that doesn’t really have any relevance, just spicing up the writing with some danger. We made it through fine). It took us awhile to find a cab that could/would take us to San Gerardo de Rivas, it needed to be a 4x4 since the town was in the interior and not serviced by decent roads.

The drive out there was incredible. The town soon melted away into mountains and valleys, with tiny villages and random farms. This was the kind of Costa Rica that I had been longing to see, the rural part away from anything commercialized. It was so cool, mostly because it was very easy to tell that you were in the middle of the jungle! There was tons of crazy lookin trees, the valley had a beautiful river complete with waterfalls, there was color everywhere.

We got to the little town and got our hotel room, the lady just walked us to a room and said “come down and check in and pay sometime later on”. And I thought Puerto Viejo was relaxed! This place makes Trochu look like a metropolis! (I hope Jason reads that sometime, cuz that amused me greatly).

The hotel was perched right above the river, so it was easy to just wander down and sit by the water and watch the world go by. We did that the first night, just laid on some rocks by the river and stared at the stars.

We woke up at 5:50 Saturday morning, and made some sandwiches with bread and Goober (do you know goober? It’s peanut butter and jelly mixed in a jar. Phenomenal stuff). With that, we headed up towards the reserve.

We started our hike in there not much after 7. It was a really cool reserve, founded by a couple from New York. No entrance fee or anything, just donations accepted. So we left them some goober sandwiches.

The trail starts and right away leads to a beautiful waterfall. It was great to just stand there and watch the early morning sun crest the top of the falls, really serene. It was off to a great start, to be sure! Oh, and we didn’t actually leave them sandwiches. We ate the sandwiches and left them a donation. Cookies. Hahaha

The next part of the hike was a little meditation garden, complete with a labyrinth. I had never head of one of those before, it’s basically a bunch of rocks laid out in a large spiral pattern with room to walk in the spirals. The idea is to just walk around and around until you reach the middle, then turn around and walk out the way you came in. I think that this is the sort of thing that people with zen gardens would enjoy. I kinda liked it, but I didn’t reach enlightenment or anything. Maybe next time.

Well what else can I say about the hike? I think the reality of it is that you had to be there to really enjoy it, and if you are a person who likes to hike then cloudbridge is certainly for you. It’s hard to describe what was so good about it… the trees were tightly packed and abundant, the views were incredible, the waterfalls and crystal clear water were beautiful and inviting… I’ve always felt really comfortable and at home in the mountains, and this time was no exception. There’s just something about the views when you break out of the canopies that makes you feel like a part of something bigger than yourself. Like I say, hard to describe, but it’s one of the best feelings in the world.

We saw some neat things, a cool suspension bridge, lots of birds, not too much for wildlife tho. That afternoon we stopped at one of the big pools on the way back and went for a swim. It was bloody well freezing, but it felt great!

The entire time we were in the park, we only saw 2 other people. We ended up hiking till about 3:30; all said and done we figured it was about 12km. It felt great to get that kind of exertion going, as anyone who has done similar can tell you. We wandered back to town and we each scarfed down a medium pizza, since we hadn’t really eaten anything other than snacks since that morning. We followed that up with a 2 hour nap, a dinner at Rocka Dura (the Costa Rican equivalent of the Hard Rock Café, someone definitely has a sense of humor there), and another night laying by the river staring at the sky and solving all the world’s problems. If you’re unfamiliar with that last bit, it just means we had some liquor.

Sunday morning we got up around 7, had some breakfast, had a good hour or so hack sesh until I roofed it on the restaurant… thought it was gone for good until the owner brought out a ladder so I could climb up and get it. Nice guy, eh?

The return trip was likewise uneventful, just got to sit and relax and soak in the memories from another great weekend.

Random thoughts and shout-outs:

- Hi Grams and Gramps!
- I love Lizano. May you all be graced with this divine flavor at some point in your lives.
- Shout out to Scizames and the Indy’s for a great time in Puerto Viejo. Thanks for the invite guys!
- Hacky sack is now our official event, daily at 10am. Startin to get the legs back again!
- Shout out to Jason, thanks for having a funny hometown.
- Spanish is a cool language.
- Shout out to the flashlight crew, and our honorary member, Meghan.
- Go Canucks Go! (that one will likely elicit a response. Suck it, Rhawn! Hahaha)
- Shout out to the couple from New York that made the Cloudbridge Reserve, you guys did a great job and you have a beautiful chunk of the world to protect.
- I can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next down here.
- Shout out to anyone who is reading this, thanks for all the positive feedback. I started writing this just to save time keeping people updated on what’s going on down here, but it’s actually fun to write! And it definitely makes it worthwhile when I hear about you enjoying the read.

I reckon that’s about it for now.

Thanks for reading!