Semana Santa

About to head out from ranger station #1

Week 7 was boring and not worth reporting on, I actually did my work and such all week and there was no fun to be had which was ok because I was saving up for my camping adventure for Semana Santa. I only get 10 days of not doing my project... technically. So I saved my fun for the Wednesday of Semana Santa. Over the past couple weeks 5 of us got together and planned a camping trip to Rincon de la Vieja National Park which is an active volcano with many a waterfall and hot springs and such. So on Wednesday morning my companera del campo Lauren and I woke up at 5 to catch a large assortment of buses to the volcano. After grocery shopping we arrived at the national park around 3:30pm. We soon discovered that the park only allows camping at one spot and we were 8km away from it. So we figured we would get there around sunset which is perfect because hiking in the dark is dangerous and such right? A quick side note, this park does not have maps for you to take the only one I saw was a half sheet of paper in the rangers station so we headed in map free and entirely dependent on signage to get us to the campsite. So we began our journey and about 2 hours after we began we came upon a familiar looking sign which was a relief at first because we hadn't seen a sign in a while but we soon discovered that we had walked in one giant circle and were at the beginning again and the sun was setting! Upon this discovery we went back to the park rangers and explained that they had instructed us poorly to which they laughed a whole bunch and then explained that what we were actually supposed to do was duck under some "peligro" (danger) tape and continue on that path to the campsite. When we asked why there was danger tape covering the start of the trail they explained that they didn't want people getting confused and going down that trail when they wanted to go in the circle. I am not a fan of these park rangers. But as we were not allowed to camp at the first ranger station we started walking fast to the try to get to the other one. We did not reach our destination... we walked until we couldn't see anymore and it was getting dangerous because these were not flat trails in the least we were going up and down mountain and volcanic rock and sometimes the ground was bubbling so I was starting to get scared. We all decided that it would be best to just find somewhere flat and set up camp for the night. None of us slept well, mostly because we had failed to put the rain fly on the tent and it was raining but also we were sleeping on a rocky path so it was really only partially our fault.

Aguas Terminales

             So we began day 2 a little frustrated and very sleepy but there were white-faced monkeys in the  tree outside our tent so that brightened the day right up. In addition to that about 3ish kilometers away we found the hot springs which we sat in for quite sometime because they are wonderful even if they make everything smell like sulfur. So after that we just kept on treking for much too long but at around lunch time we were getting antsy because we hadn't found the campsite yet but we decided to keep going and about 30 minutes later we popped out of a trail labeled "for horses only" we had taken the much longer trail meant for people on horseback and I still don't know how we managed that but good for us we found the campsite and were able to set up a clothes line to dry our things and make a delicious lunch of peanut butter saltine crackers! In the afternoon we went to a waterfall and began to realize that we were beginning to be attacked by both black flies and mosquitoes. The day ended with a very smoky fire to keep the bugs away and a lovely massage train.

Hiking about in the forest

Cool view from the top of the mountain

           On day 3 we decided that we wanted to see the big waterfall so we hiked the 8km ,stopping at the hot springs of course, back to the first ranger station. We decided that we were going to camp illegally on the waterfall side of the park because we really didn't think the rangers would notice, unfortunately the rangers were more focused on us when we returned and did not let us go to the waterfall because it was too far away to make it back before sundown. This was a bummer but the closest hostel let us pitch our tent on their property so everything worked out ok there.

seriously small hostel room

         Day 4, 3 of my companions headed back to San Jose but my friend Margo and I headed to the coast to celebrate the end of semana santa on a beach called Playa del Coco. It was beautiful, we stayed in a very small hostel and walked and swam about all day, I got quite sunburnt and that along with the bug bites was unfortunate but it was wonderful.

Just a sampling of how many bug
bites I have

        Easter sunday was a different story, we had purchased bus tickets in advance because we knew that it was going to be a busy travel day but what we didn't know was that our bus was going to break down when we were already 2 hours behind schedule. This meant that our 4 hour journey took 9 1/2 hours which was really no fun at all but, silver lining, we got put on a new bus that was standing room only but the bus driver let me sit in the copilot chair which was a really cool view.
       

Playa del Coco