sometimes paragraphs and making sense are overrated. especially when your legs want to punch you.

Okay so this weekend I just hiked the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, Chirripo. 12,000 feet high, second tallest in Central America. No big deal or anything…anyway, two groups of our friends had already done it and gave us some advice. It ended up being Molly, Maria and me, and it was an excellent group because we get along super well. They are wonderful. Anyway, we left Thursday directly after the earlier Spanish class. We were so prepared-had gone food shopping with a list, packed every article of warm clothing and rain gear we could find, and got directions of how to get there from the Chatman. However, clearly me packing every last thing we could possibly need did not include my hiking boots…kind of like the time I went to the Chili Pepper’s concert and the only thing I forgot was my ticket…so this time, like the time before, I had to pay for a taxi back to my house, have it wait outside, and have it bring me back to the university so that we could leave on time. Typical. Anyway, we took a bus to San Jose, then, rather than walking several miles to try and find the bus station, we decided to take a taxi there. However, even though we clearly explained where we needed to go in Spanish AND this driver happened to speak English, we took off down some highway and were driving for about 20 minutes before I was like “ummmm where is he taking us? We’re not in San Jose anymore…” and we asked him and he literally had no idea where he was going. Seriously people here have the strangest senses of direction. And when they know they don’t know where something is they pretend they do know. Anyway, he calls someone to find out where the station is after we were like “dude what are you doing?” and then turns back around. Even though the Maria said we owed around $40 he only charged us 6. which was still way too much for the actual distance, but we paid it and had wasted about 45 minutes in a taxi. We get to the bus station just in time to get tickets for the 11:30 bus to San Isidro General and enjoyed the amazing mountain views on the ride over. Once there, we took a four wheel drive taxi up to the ranger station to buy tickets to hike for the next two days ($20 a day! Pretty expensive for what we’re used to…) We then had our now new friend of a taxi driver bring us to Casa La Mariposa hostel http://www.hotelcasamariposa.net/ where we would spend the night before starting our journey. We walked in there and immediately wanted to move in. The owners are a hippie-style middle aged American couple, and the entire place is like a cozy log cabin, complete with home made granola bars for the hike, organic raw ingredients for purchase, and free warm clothes to borrow. My description won’t do it justice, so please check out the facebook pictures. It was so clean and cozy with comfy beds and a poem in the bathroom about not killing bugs if you find them. My kind of place! We also met another group of students studying in Costa Rica who were planning on starting the climb the next day as well. We had entirely too much in common with them-one of their girlfriends goes to AU, one of them knows one of my good friends from college because she went to high school with her in Indonesia, two of them play ultimate, one is from the same city as Maria, etc. They were seriously so cool. We also met a super spunky and wonderful British woman named Jules, a couple from New Zealand volunteering at the hostel for a few weeks, a Dutch man and a South African man volunteering in the area, and a few more people. We ate dinner at the restaurant next door with Jules, talked to the owners a bit, packed our bags and made 12 peanut butter sandwiches, borrowed some warm clothes, and went to sleep early. I talked to Jill (the woman owner) about frustrations with Costa Rica and criticisms of “Eco Tourism” and stuff like that, and she explained how the commercialism and uniformity has even started to seep into Chirripo, one of the most remote places. So, what happens now is that they sell a bunch of reserve tickets in advance that the tour companies buy up as soon as they go on sale. These tour companies offer hiking Chirripo in packages, with meals provided, horses that carry your stuff up to the top, hiking at the pace of a big group, etc. There are only 10 walk-in tickets a day that you must purchase the day before your hike if you want to do it this way and hike on your own. Because of the pull the tour companies have, they are looking to eliminate these walk-in tickets in a few months, and everything will be packaged right up for everyone. This will cut any freedom you will have with your trip and make business extremely difficult for places like our hostel, since they rely on the people hiking Chirripo independently. Our hostel owners were frustrated and worried but are planning on taking this as an opportunity to promote visitors to the local free trails, local crafts, cheese factory, and other small, inexpensive attractions in the area to hopefully retain visitors to their hostel.

            So the next morning we grabbed some home made granola bars and hit the trails a little after six. We had two large and pretty heavy (over 30 pound) bags and one small backpack among the three of us, so we rotated bags every two kilometers. I was booking it, we were all talking, Molly was developing blisters in her shoes that were way too small, and Maria was hiking in running shoes. By the last few kilometers to the refuge we were counting our steps to distract us, it was pouring rain, and the hike was pretty darn steep. When we saw the sign for the refuge Maria actually started crying. That was at the 14.5 kilometer point. We walked in and signed in the book, and the ranger there let us use the hot water showers that were supposed to be only for the workers since we were so soaked and probably because we were a group of girls. We didn’t have any towels so we dried ourselves off with toilet paper. The refuge itself was FREEZING. I was wearing about 5 layers on top and two pairs of socks and a hat and a scarf and my feet were numb and I was shivering. We threw our stuff in the dryer and feasted on our chocolate, trail mix, Oreos, peanut butter, and cereal since we had burned so many calories and hadn’t eaten too much on the way up. We then cooked pasta on the tiny little gas burner we had rented from the hostel, which came out pretty mushy and gross. We then attempted to cook the now mutilated plantain my host parents had sent me up with…it wasn’t too bad. We all felt super sick after eating that much. Also, half of the other group of students made it up about an hour and a half after us, but three hours later, the other two (both in great shape!) still hadn’t arrived. And it was getting dark and there were no vehicles that got up there to be able to go and search for them…so they were going to send someone out to look if they weren’t back in another half an hour, and then they showed up. Drenched to the bone, freezing, and exhausted. We were so glad they were okay. Although the altitude was definitely affecting everyone’s functioning. We went to sleep in our sleeping bags, feeling isolated and beat, at around 6 pm to wake up at 1:40 am to hike the last 5.1 km to the top for the sunrise. We hiked in the pitch dark using flashlights and cheering each other on, making a wrong turn at one point, but luckily Molly got us to turn back. By the way, as we had discovered the night before, Molly’s feet were completely torn up from her shoes. But she was such a trooper. We made it to the top after using our hands and feet to rock scramble the last part. It was so beautiful and so so so cold. Around 30 degrees. Not what we’re used to in Costa Rica. I changed out of my sweaty clothes, got in my fleece lining and my sleeping bag, put on my hat and scarf and torn up gloves, and sat there shivering. The sunrise was amazing, but I am a bum about cold. We went down after about 40 minutes. I am so fine pushing through any pain, moving my body as fast as it can go, encouraging my friends to keep up, but cold is my weakness. Like mother like daughter. There will be no paragraph breaks in this blog post. We took about three hours to get back down to the refuge because we were so content and in the home stretch (or so we thought) and the worst was over (HA) and there were SUCH amazing views. It felt like we were in Lord of the Rings slash on another planet. Seriously amazing. We got back to the refuge, got the rest of our stuff, and continued down. It was much faster than going up and easier to breathe and such but it started raining soon after we started and didn’t stop. It got very muddy, and Molly’s feet got to the point where she started walking in socks. I decided, since my feet felt great, to switch shoes with her (even though my feet are a size and a half bigger than her’s) with about 6 km left. Her feet felt much better, and I was fine walking with half my feet in the shoes for a few kilometers. However, it soon started to hurt unbearably and blisters came so I started shlopping a bit in my wool socks, slipping a lot but doing okay. Molly kept offering to switch back, but my feet were nothing compared to hers. So, after it said 1 km left we traveled at least 3 more kilometers, getting sucked into mud, slipping, in pain, soaking wet, and confused as to where the hostel could be. We had kept such positive attitudes until that last, never-ending kilometer. Back at the hostel (finally!) the lovely Kiwi couple helped us get our stuff into the wash and clean things off. We somehow made it into the shower (hot! Yes!) and hobbled into the kitchen to eat the somewhat flavorless food we had ordered that the couple had so amazingly brought us from the restaurant next door. They helped us figure out the bus for the next day, we discovered my lovely blisters and that half of Molly’s skin was peeled off her feet, and went to sleep a little after 8. We woke up at 5:15 to get in our taxi at 6 (Molly in sandles and Maria and me without shoes on) to the bus station. We had to buy tickets for the 9 am bus because all the rest were sold out or standing room (definitely not doable at that point…) and went to a restaurant dirty (not all of our clothes had been washed), shoeless, and limping, to eat breakfast. It was cheap and the shakes were good, but the gallo pinto was TERRIBLE and the platanos were made out of leather. He asked us if everything was okay so we were honest because we really couldn’t eat the pinto. He then took our plates away and started yelling at us. Ranting that he doesn’t use preservatives and that was why it was different and that he gave us Worcestor sauce instead of Lizano because he doesn’t serve “shit” and blah blah blah. All while he had given us a stick of margarine for the toast and there were shelves of candy and soda…anyway, we paid for what we ate, bolted and ate a delicious meal at a nearby adorable restaurant. Of course I then realized I lost my bus ticket probably int the awful restaurant…And we sent Molly over (the only one who had decent food and had eaten it) to ask about it and of course they told us they didn’t have it. I had to wait in line again, buy another ticket for standing room, and thankfully my seat was still open. So then I eventually hobbled home from the bus and had severe stomach issues (food poisoning from the awful food?) as soon as I got home. It was lovely. But my host mom took care of me with tea and hot water. I still can barely walk-it’s worse when I’m sitting for a long period of time first. It also hurts just to move my legs…and now time to get back into work and plow through all of my final work and settling things for my new apartment next semester!