Hiking Out

Today I wake up at 5am. I seem to no longer be able to sleep and our neighbours are packing to head back out. It was a long journey in, it will surely be a long one out. It starts to sprinkle rain while we are having a quick breakfast in the tent. Shit, this will not be a quick hike if the trails are all muddy. Thankfully it only rained a bit.

We leave camp around 6:15. Let’s do this... Today the sky is cloudy, still a warm day but it helps that the sun is currently blocked. We are doing good time, we make it to the half way point in about 3 hours. At this point we transfer the tent from my bag to Ben’s. What a difference, I feel some much lighter.

On this trail there are many different vegetation areas:
-Super lush trees with guava. A lot of them fall and create a gooey mess on the trail. Plus the smell of rotten guava is strong.
-Stain berries trees (the berries are dark purple and stain things for life, that’s what one of the locals told me)
-Gigantic, I call them, pineapple tops as that what they look like to me. They are taller than me. Watch out for your eyes as they have sharp pointy leaves at the eye level.
-Really tall grasses with whips at their ends that hit you in the face as you walk by.
-Shrubs that have really dry branches that scratch you as you pass.

The beat of the walk is pretty much the same for most of the trail. You ascend when reaching the outer ridges and descend to the inner streams. Some streams are wider than others and require that you cross barefoot if you don’t want to soak your boots. Coming in I had a soaker trying to save time by not taking my boots off... We learn by experience.

Not too long after the halfway point it starts to pour. We get soaked in no time. It actually feels good as it cools me down. The downside is that the trail is now super muddy and slippery. No worries I take my time. I don’t want to slip and fall off the side. As we get closer to the end we see many folks coming in to do the hike to the falls. Some stop us and ask if we did the whole trail. They congratulate us when we told them we did.

I am happy to reach the end. It was quite a difficult trek. I underestimated it, mostly due to the heat for me. Some do it completely in the rain, it must be quite challenging.

At the end of the trail we sign up for the shuttle. The next one is not for where we need to go. Thankfully, Ed, who we hiked for a while with, offers to take us to where we need to our car. It’s on the way to where he is heading. Thanks Ed.

We make it to our hotel, have a well deserved shower and catch up on all the digital life we left behind while we were out. Lots of stuff goes on in three days.

We finish the day by having a great dinner at a restaurant called “Gaylord’s”. I know what you may be thinking... It’s a just a regular restaurant with great food and lovely inner court. I had a dish of sesame crusted seared Ahi. It was amazing.Read more