John Allen Costa Rica: Hiking Mount Chirripó

Costa Rica is a mountainous country – you just about can’t escape them here, even at the beach. But the highest mountain (not just in Costa Rica but in all of Central America outside Guatemala) is called Mount Chirripó, at 3819 meters, several hours south of the Central Valley, which itself is about 1200 meters. So naturally Caroline and I decided to hike it! So Thursday after Caroline’s class, we hopped on a quick bus to San José, then hopped on another bus south to Pérez Zeledón (sounds like somewhere out of Lord of the Rings, verdad?), then took a four wheel drive taxi 45 minutes (mostly on gravel roads) to the tiny mountain town of San Gerardo de Rivas, which is the base camp for Mount Chirripó. The final two kilometers to our hostel was about the worst roads I’ve ever seen in my life, AND at an incline of what felt like 45 degrees. Let’s just say we now understand why four-wheel drive is a requirement. The hostel’s name is Casa Mariposa, opened by an American couple as sort of an eco-hostel, and it’s the farthest from town but the closest to the trailhead to Chirripó. We stayed in the 2-bed “Jungle room,” which feels like a tree house because instead of a wall, one side just has a huge screen! One of the most sustainable parts of the hostel is its solid waste policy – the regional landfill closed, so they’re recycling and compost fanatics, and what’s left (like granola bar wrappers), they wash and densely stuff into 3-liter soda bottles, which they use as a construction material buried in the concrete when they build new structures. Zero-waste - pretty cool, huh?

in the Secret Gardens

Anyways, the next day we had to wake up super-early. I’ll spare you all the details, but basically to avoid over-crowding in the national park, they strictly limit the number of tickets per day to hike to Chirripó, and you have to buy the tickets the day before you hike. Since the hike is so popular, the lines start several hours before the park office opens at 6:30, so we got up at 4AM to go get in line, and when we arrived, there were already five people in line! Turns out the park only had seven tickets available that day, and we were #6 and #7! Phew! We felt bad for the dozen people in line after us, some of whom we had enjoyed talking to, who were just out of luck when the park ranger cut off the line after us… But since we weren’t going to start hiking until Saturday, we had a full day to just chill out in San Gerardo de Rivas. We started by walking around in the Secret Gardens, with trails among beautiful flora and a treehouse with a gorgeous view of the surrounding mountains, and then ate breakfast at the house of and with the kind family that maintains the gardens. After the long walk up the road to our hostel for a nap (funny sleeping patterns characterized the whole weekend) and then back down into town, we ended up at the house of a lady named Amable (and sure enough, she was very amable – friendly), who in her backyard has stream-fed trout ponds, and we each caught a nice trout for lunch (pictures below)! Caroline seemed to really enjoy it until she got sad about the whole killing-the-poor-fish part… From hook to fryer in less than 5 minutes! In the afternoon we did some moderate hiking to some nearby waterfalls just before sunset. We also had lots of work to do – we had to plan and purchase all of our food for the next 36 hours, as well as rent a camping stove to cook it. Luckily for us, we were staying in such a great hostel that they had bought lots of fresh local organic produce and had it out for sale at cost, so we snatched up a lot of that and some eggs for dinner, as well as lots of granola bars and peanut butter sandwiches… And luckily for me, Caroline is a world-class packer and happens to own a first class backpacking backpack, and I still don’t know how she did it, but she managed to pack in her bag lots of clothes (it gets very cold at the top), all of our food, and not one but TWO sleeping bags. Amazing. Then finally bed time :)


Step 1: Catch fish

Step 2: Feel bad for the poor little fish.

Step 3: Clean fish

Step 4: Hand clean fish to the cook

Step 5: throw dem thangz in da deep fryer!

Step 6: Add some organic homegrown veggies and french fries and eat!

Cloud forest

in Cloudbridge Reserve

Expert


Without flash

With flash

during sunrise

Saturday morning we woke up around 4:30 to start hiking the 15 kilometers to the base camp where we would be spending the night. Before we set out, I pulled a David-Allen-in-the-middle-of-a-track-event and drank too much water, so Caroline carried the pack for most of the first several kilometers. Our body schedules by this point were quite messed up – at one point it felt to me like the sun had been up for hours and surely it was lunchtime, but when I checked the time it was only 8AM! A trend that would continue… We made it to the shelter at the 7.5K mark in a couple hours and we were feeling great! My how things would change… After the shelter, the next two kilometers felt interminable and straight up. I mean we would walk for two minutes and take a break for two minutes. And it didn’t help that right about that time, due to the altitude, we emerged from the tropical cloud forest into the treeless and shrubby paramo, so our shade disappeared. Kilometer eight took so long we thought we must have missed the sign! Took a heavenly lunch break around kilometer 11 with some new friends (the seven of us who got tickets bonded and took turns walking by ourselves and with each other depending on the timing of our breaks) and felt better after that, which was a good thing because next came “La Cuesta de los Arrepentidos” (Slope of the Repentants), another steep climb but soon followed by the long overdue site of the hostel! After dropping our stuff off in one of the 4-bunk-bed rooms, we very much enjoyed just sitting down in the shade with our two new Canadian friends for a while before cooking dinner. There is a cool rock formation on a mountain right across from the hostel, and it was very discouraging to look up at it and realize we had to climb even higher… After lots of chopping (and sampling – best tomatoes and spinach I’ve ever tasted in my life), we finally cooked everything together into scrambled eggs with veggies and salt (I was CRAVING salt/ electrolytes after all that exertion) and man was it good! And then, straight to bed at 6PM (Andy Belich, you won’t be surprised to know that I called top bunk, just like when we were co’s), using clothes for pillows and each of us bundled up in our sleeping bag because even in Costa Rica, it gets COLD at that high altitude at night.

Still feelin good at Km 6

Not feelin so good at Km 9

This is paramo - feels more like desert than mountains.

Woke up at 2:30 (yes, Dad, I already know that’s when Chinese people go to the dentist), put on even more clothes, and staggered out the door into the pitch dark 40-degree Fahreinheit morning. We were in the middle of nowhere so the stars were gorgeous. Again, first part wasn’t bad, but two hours later, the last part was so steep it was more like rock climbing than hiking. But we finally made it to the summit at 5AM, just in time to catch the sunrise! On a clear day, you can see both the Caribbean and the Pacific from Chirripó, but unfortunately that day it was cloudy, so our view was limited to the surrounding mountains and lakes, which were still beaufiful. The summit was smaller than I had envisioned, just room for a sign, the flag of Costa Rica, a book to sign your name, and the seven of us. Actually come to think of it, we would have been able to squeeze in a hot chocolate/ coffee machine (we were freezing), but I didn’t see one… After like an hour, back down we went the 5K to the hostel, where we took a much-needed break before continuing our descent. Although it presented its own challenges (worse for joints and toes), going down was so wonderful compared to going up – faster, easier, lighter backpack, and in better spirits. Got to town around 3 o’clock in the afternoon after 12 straight hours and 27 km of hiking. Celebrated with ice cream first and then two cold Imperials before eating dinner at 3:30PM, followed by three buses and a taxi back to Heredia. So glad we did it, but never again!