All the Living Things

Day 3: Tres Equis to Atirro (Casa Bambú), Stages 5, 6, and part of 7.

18.9 trail miles plus two bonus miles (21 miles)

3,251 feet gain, 3,505 feet descent (plus more of both with the bonus miles).

The first 10 miles of the day were all uphill. At first, gentle, and then we were really climbing all the way up to 4,000 feet. Crazy to think we were just at sea level two days ago!

The sunrise was beautiful coming over the mountains. We had quite a bit of road walking on pavement to start the day out and it was tricky to find a place to go to the bathroom. These road walks were giving CDT.

Finally, we turned off the pavement to a dirt road where we walked by so many cute little houses and farms. We saw so many adorable baby cows! And a few of them nursing from their mamas. Cow milk is for baby cows y’all! Loved seeing them all so happy! All the chickens and roosters are completely free range, as are the dogs. Most of the domesticated animals seemed so peaceful and just wandered about wherever they wanted. With one exception — the guard dogs who bark and guard their houses. They occasionally would run out into the street to bark at us, but the never chased or left their houses. I carried pepper spray in case we were attacked by a loose dog (something I began doing from cycling in Texas). Both Red Stripe and I have experienced random dog bites so we were glad to have our poles/stick. We learned that the sound “Shh chhhh” makes the dogs back down. We never had any scary dog situations, but this is by far the most dogs I’ve ever seen on a trail ever. Occasionally some sweet strays would accompany us for a little while, but these weren’t the barking guard dogs.

As we embarked on our long descent into La Suiza Town, we missed a turn and got off-trail for about two extra miles round trip. Noooo! This was a bit demoralizing to have to hike back up the steep streets to rejoin the trail. Once we did, we took a break to regroup, elevate feet, down some salty chips, and enjoy much needed shade at a bus stop with a roof and bench.

We then rallied and descended into La Suiza for a delicious lunch (for me, avo, rice, beans, ensalada, and plátanos maduros) and jugo de maracuyá at a bar/restaurant. The food was amazing, but the crowd was not. Some older white ex-pats from the U.S. found some liquid courage and decided to approach us one at a time. No one behaves this way in Costa Rica ever, but the men from the U.S. felt entitled to our time and company and just walked to our table to ask us a million questions while we were trying to enjoy a nice lunch together. It became uncomfortable for me and I wished they would leave us alone. After we left the restaurant, they followed us to the ATM, where we got some more cash. The camino is pure cash economy and there were only two ATMs on trail. We didn’t want to have too much cash on us at a time, so we planned our stops and amounts carefully. We finally bolted out of town and headed to our homestay.

We had some amazing cloud coverage in the afternoon which made the climate so much nicer!

When we arrived at casa bambú, we were greeted by SIX dogs and our lovely host, Jana, a Canadian but has lived in Costa Rica for 23 years. She’s a hiker and trail runner, so she understands the needs of Camino-goers. She was so generous and wonderful, and made us spaghetti and meatballs (vegan meatballs for me!) and a huge salad! It was a nice change from the typical Tico fare.

We had the upstairs of her house as our own space (bedroom, bathroom, and place to eat and hang out). The shower was cold (even though she told us we would have hot water… again… are we missing something?). Her house (and pretty much all infrastructure in Costa Rica) was open air, which is fine, until it’s not haha.

As we laid down to sleep, something flew in the window right next to Red Stripe’s head and she started screaming and buried her head under the covers. She was convinced a bird flew in our room. I turned on the flashlight on my phone and sure enough, something was flying around in circles above our heads in the room! I dashed to the door and opened it, hoping it would fly out. I then ran down to get Jana. She came up to rescue us, although there was nothing she could do. When Jana and I returned, it was no longer visible, so we deduced it had flown out. Phew!

Then… her neighbor, for the first time EVER, decided a night time construction project suited him. The hammering was loud, but the sporadic chain saw brought us to laugh-crying. WHAT?! How could this be? Roosters, dogs, and now this?? We put our ear plugs in and tried to sleep…

And then… I heard the wing flapping vibration right next to my ear and I screamed! “HELP!!!!” I turned on my phone flashlight again and our flying friend was back and doing laps around our room, dipping at my head each lap (the light?). We kept screaming as we were both totally paralyzed this time. Jana came up and asked if we were okay and she saw that we had a fruit bat in our room. Of course, there wasn’t anything she could actually do about it, but we felt relieved to have her rescue us again. She said she’s never had a bat in her house before! Finally, our fruit bat friend disappeared into the roof rafters and we all decided it would stay there for the night and not return.

Ear plugs in, buff over my eyes, time to bring cortisol levels down and try to sleep again. Just as I drifted off to sleep, we were awoken AGAIN by an inebriated man on the street screaming violent threats, then belching, puking, then screaming loudly about wanting to kill someone. None of the neighbors said anything to him! Eventually he stopped, passed out, or wandered away.

The next morning, Jana said she had never heard him before either. Such a freak series of events at such a lovely home that we just couldn’t help but keel over in hysteria with laughter.

Day 4: Atirro to Río Macho (Stages 7, 8, and part of 9).

~23.1 miles, 5,897 feet gain, 3,880 feet descent.

Jana got up at the crack of dawn with us and insisted we take gallo pinto with us for the Camino because we didn’t want to eat such a heavy meal that early in the morning. She had granola and almond milk (and yogurt for Red Stripe) and packaged our pinto in banana leaves for the trail. So sweet!

Today was filled with lots of climbing, reaching about 5,300 feet in elevation. We ate our banana-leaf-wrapped gallo pinto lunches while soaking our feet in a river about two-thirds of the way up the climb. It was the perfect lunch break and soaking our feet helped so much with the swelling.

After leaving the river for the final push of the climb, we entered into a new ecosystem where everything seemed 10x larger than normal! We were in our own camino Alice and Wonderland with the biggest leaves I’ve ever seen in my life. Absolutely magical! Again, we were blessed with cloud coverage, no rain, and no bugs! Trail magic of the best kind!

We descended down into the valley where we headed to our next town, Rio Macho. We accidentally walked a bit further on the road, missing an important turn again, but luckily we caught the error quickly and it likely only added 0.5 mile to the day. We walked past some hot springs we wished we could soak in, but were only a few miles from our destination, so we pushed on.

Río Macho Lodge was our favorite stay on trail! The lodge was 1000% empty when we arrived (maybe it’s still being built?) and we were the only people in the vicinity. With no service, I wasn’t able to call or message our hosts that we had arrived. Luckily, Red Stripe had service, so I messaged from her WhatsApp and the hosts (Gerardo and a woman) greeted us. Gerardo showed us all his fruit he grows there and was the friendliest Tico (they all are though!) The woman made us delicious stuffed squash for dinner and we had freshly grown jugo de guayabana (passion fruit) for dinner. They did our laundry for $10 and it was so worth it! They had just finished building/installing a beautiful jacuzzi that same day, but it wasn’t warmed so we couldn’t use it. Supposedly there was hot water, but when I attempted a shower it was not hot (or warm). I did my usual cold shower rinse and soap and kept my hair dry this time. I messaged Gerardo and he sent a video of how to turn on the warm water so Red Stripe was able to enjoy a warm shower! I was already settled and tired, so I didn’t take a second shower.

Gerardo had prepared us little containers with pinto, plastic utensils, and fresh fruit grown on his property to pack out the next morning! What a treat.

We had the most SILENT sleep that night! The room was completely enclosed to the outside so we didn’t get any visitors from the great outdoors either. We set our alarms for an early wake up as tomorrow seemed like the crux of the hike with the most elevation gain and steepest climbs. We opted to keep tomorrow at only 20 miles as we weren’t sure how long it would take us.

Day 5: Río Macho to Millar de Aves, 20.1 miles, 7,364 elevation gain, 4,318 feet descent

(Part 2 of Stage 9, Stage 10, and part of Stage 11).

Today was characterized by three 3.0-3.5 mile big and steep climbs and a very steep 1.7 mile descent on a loose gravel road.

The first climb was “easy,” with a gentler grade and mostly on road. It was first thing in the morning so we just locked in and barely noticed it.

Luckily, the sun had risen and we had daylight for our very steep gravely descent. My shoes slipped a few times, but I was able to zig zag a little like I was skiing and  use the grassy parts on the side for traction when needed.

We then enjoyed a gradual uphill section to help us get ready for our first STEEP climb. We read comments on FarOut that combining this climb with the next one (Stages 10 & 11) was just plain masochistic. The first climb was on red clay “mud” and people wrote about how they slipped down with every step up due to how treacherous the climb was in the rain. Again, the "trail provided," and we were blessed with NO RAIN!

Red Stripe put in her headphones and we both just went inward and climbed our own climbs. I marched and charged and climbed, breathing heavily and sweating! I got to a spot that seemed like the worst was over, and almost began to celebrate and cheer on Red Stripe when I checked the map and realized I had only climbed 0.6 miles out of 3! Ohhhhh. Okay. It’s like that, huh?

I decided not to check my phone again until I was certain I needed a break. We climbed and we climbed and we climbed! We charged up that thing and finally reached a break in the climb by some beautiful homes with hydrangeas. Two guys on motorcyclists completely decked out, head-to-toe, with padding passed me on the climb (WHAT?!). That road didn’t seem like it could handle motorized anything. They were taking a break at the top so I went a little further down into a shade spot where I waited for Red Stripe. When she arrived, we took a break, but realized we still had one more mile of this climb to go!

We gathered our strength, thanked the weather gods for the cloud coverage, and charged on.

PHEW! We finally made it! We had planned to stop at a restaurant about 0.8 miles from the top for lunch, so we regrouped and headed down. We hit a highway and found Chiquiza Restaurant (after initially missing it and then having to backtrack again!). We were the only ones eating at the bar/restaurant and they were able to accommodate my vegan meal choice of pinto and maduros. Red Stripe got a torta de huevo (egg tortilla sandwich).

We headed downhill on a road and somehow missed a turn AGAIN! We weren’t too off track and probably added 0.5ish miles again. The turn was pretty covert and signage wasn’t super obvious, so we made some notes in FarOut to warn other hikers. The turn also wasn’t where the icon was on the map. Generally, the Camino signage has been quite good and helpful at major turns. The little bird confidence markers made us happy too :).

The third climb of the day was the longest, at 3.5 miles, and just as steep as the last one. However, there were small breaks in the climb sprinkled throughout, which made it seem slightly less “hard.” These two climbs felt like the crux of the middle section of the trail, so we definitely high-fived when we reached the top.

When we reached the summit of the second mountain, we were greeted with beautiful eucalyptus and hydrangea gardens. The property was highly manicured and well-tended to and we discovered later that there are daily tours of the gardens.

Just beyond the summit, we arrived at our next lodging. We were greeted by a very cheerful young man on the side of the road. His cousin was selling fruit at a fruit stand and he, Yosser, was our host for the night. He has begun converting his family property to be a place for people to stay. He built two “cabins” and a small “restaurant” with some tables.

We arrived pretty early because we hiked really well up the climbs (and didn’t take any breaks on the last climb). About 10 minutes after settling into our shelter, it began pouring rain with strong winds. We were so grateful to not be in the weather! We were pretty wet from sweat, having just marched up a huge climb, so we got cold quickly. We skipped out on a cold shower and wrapped ourselves in blankets as we began to snack while we waited out the rain and our dinner time.

We both had bags of chips and were refueling on salt when suddenly Red Stripe SCREAMED and threw the chips in her hand on the ground. “What happened?!” She pointed at the big beetle on the ground which somehow was on her chip she was about to eat! Ahhhhh!!!!! We don’t know how it got in her chip bag and opted to not play detective, but we were spooked for sure. Eventually, she decided to keep snacking and while we were relaxing I looked up at the wall by the headboard of my bed and saw some long legs… is that a spider? I didn’t bring my glasses with me and I couldn’t tell for sure, and my brain definitely didn’t want to believe an arachnid of that size was just chilling a few boards above where my head would be! A few seconds later it began crawling up the wall and yes, it was a VERY LARGE SPIDER! Thoroughly on edge, we pulled our beds away from the walls and figured that would be better…

Finally, around 5:00 pm, we made our way to the adorable little restaurant, where there is no menu, but Yosser’s mom cooked us a delicious two course meal and we had some golden berries to snack on as we waited for our dinner. The soup appetizer was killer. It warmed us right up. The air temperature wasn’t terribly cold, but we were chilled to the bones. The yucca, potato, and other ingredient soup was the exact antidote to our bone-chill and warmed our souls right up.

Yosser was quite adorable and had a shy giggle as he practiced his English and told us about their family and their business. He gifted us some fruit to take with us the next morning, since we would be hitting the trail too early for breakfast.

We made it back to our cabin, and decided to condense our last three days into two. I reached out to our hosts to let them know we needed to cancel and then tried to find us a new host for the next night. I sent about 5 different WhatsApp messages out into the ether and didn’t hear back from anyone. I was getting a bit nervous, but figured we could talk to the townspeople in person if it came to that.

Finally, before we went to bed, we heard back from a lovely woman named Yendry, who said she would gladly take us in tomorrow night!

Our cabin was quiet on the outside, but we felt a bit cold and exposed on the inside.

This trail has more sounds than any other trail I've hiked. There is a daily soundtrack: roosters, dogs, the birds singing in choral melodies, merengue, salsa & cumbia beats from every possible structure or vehicle, cars, cows, sheep, more birds. The sounds of this trail are constant and so beautifully full of life!