1 and 2/3 Mountains

These past two weeks (last month, I am finishing this much later) have been filled with burning quads, incredible views, and goods times on the mountain.

Our first adventure was when Josie and I went to the Island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, Nicaragua. The island has two volcanoes, Maderas and Concepción.  Concepción was about 300 meters higher than Maderas, but it seriously looked twice as big, and for a while I doubted whether we could do it. We left at five with our guide, 19 year old Rafino, who was wearing jeans and shoes that we tied back together with my extra shoelace.

The biggest challenge of hiking Concepcion was supposed to be the exposed 2/3 of the mountain and the sun that just beats down on you. We had the luck of being inside of a cloud the entire time, and it was quite cool and even chilly at the top. Our path was an old lava flow, so we were rock scrambling for most of the time or climbing up very, very steep pathways.  A lot of the scenery was made up of small shrubs, wild flowers, and poor man’s umbrella. It was quite lovely.

After 3.5 hours, we made it to the top of Concepción. It was like we stepped into a hurricane with wind strong enough that we were afraid of losing our balance and being blown into the crater. It was also a bit disconcerting that the rocks we were standing on were hot from the steam and sulfur underneath us. Not knowing exactly how far underneath us was the worrisome part. We did not get the spectacular view of the whole lake and the island, but it was way too cold to stay up there and try to wait for things to clear up.

Thus started our descent that took an hour longer than our ascent, and resulted in our walking like crazy people for about a week afterwards. The rest of Nicaragua was wonderful and we stayed at a hippy farm hostel with organic stone fire pizza nights.

The next weekend Josie, Alison, and I jumped on a bus after class and went to San Gerardo, the gateway to Chirripó. Chirripó is the highest point in Costa Rica at 3,820m, and the trail is 48km round trip. Most people do it in three days, and we had to do it in 1 to make it back to class on Monday. Tickets are also required but this would mean we would have to miss class on Friday, and we had friends who had no problem getting to the top without a ticket.

We slept in the hostel for 5 hours before we got up at 2:30 am and started our hike. There were actually quite a few people hiking when we got up, but we soon left behind and got to enjoy the clear sky and wonderful stars in silence. Of course the entire time we knew that a guard could find us at anytime and make us turn around (I actually had no idea what they would do to us). We sang a lot, and enjoyed the AMAZING scenery.

At km marker 12, about 2/3 of the way, we were caught by a guard on horseback who didn’t believe our lame excuse that we didn’t know about the tickets, and sent us back. We sat in the trail a bit of the way back and pouted for about 15 minutes before heading back down the mountain. 

And we saw a queztal, which was life goal for me!

We actually had the idea that we would rest all day, actually buy tickets, and then hike back up that same night. However, by the time we made it down, our screaming knees said no freaking way were we turning around and doing it again.

We made it back to our hostel and ended up having a wonderful time singing old folk songs and playing the guitar with some of the people staying there.

Since I am writing this a couple weeks later I can now say that I bought tickets for Chirripó for my last weekend here, made an arrangement with my professor to take my final early, and my friend Sam and I are headed up to see the sunrise from the top of Chirripó. She will turn 20 on the mountain, I will be saying goodbye to Costa Rica after 9 months, and we will be on the highest mountain in Costa Rica. I think it might be a bit emotional up there.