Corcovado to Puerto Jiminez
So next day the Taxi driver was supposed to pick us up at 5:30. He was late (he was grumpy about coming to this hotel, remember, so I think it was passive-aggressive resistance). He brought the 2 liter bottle of local milk I had asked him for, which cost me 2$, which was quite cheap, and it was quite good. I had had him chill it so it would be good and cold so it would last on the trek. He took us to the horses we had hired, which cost about 22$ each, and carried us about 7 miles up the trail to the edge of Corcovado park.
From there it was about 5 minutes to the first park station, which I THOUGHT was Los Patos, but apparently it wasn´t. And, in case you need to know, you have to register at the park station before 10am or they won´t let you start the hike. Which is just as well, since we started at 9:30am and finished at 6pm.
At this juncture let me say that Corcovado is very poorly signed and the trails are not well maintained. I mean, most of the time they are wide enough and easy to follow, but they have a lot of trees down across the trail that require detours through the jungle, not all of which are easy. For the price paid by a few hikers, that could have been fixed. And there were at least 60 people in Sirena when we got there. Sirena is the ranger station in the middle of the park where most of the action happens in the wildlife scene.
From the edge of the park, it was about 2 kilometers, mostly uphill, and fairly steep in spots, although not compared to Chirripo. Then we found Los Patos, which was entirely deserted and had been for some time. Huge spider webs were all over everything, it was kinda creepy. From there, the sign said it was 17km to Sirena. But again, I don´t see how that is possible. Everyone I talked to, people who hike all the time, said it was MUCH longer than that. At least 14 miles, or around 25km. It was a long hike, even though it was fairly easy through much of it. It was also a bit monotonous, since the forests were all pretty much the same.
The first 6k was uphill and downhill a lot. The net result was downhill, but it wasn´t noticable until you were on flat ground, and you were like ¨oh, this is flat now!¨ After that it was mostly flat. We saw some peccaries, a wild pig, got a really bad picture of one before they fled the scene. Saw three different types of monkeys, got some fairly decent pictures of them, and saw a few birds. But the NOISE! It was almost unbearable. Some sort of cricket-like bug in the treetops was making a racket, and there were I kid you not, millions of them, and it was almost all you could do to hear anything. Talking was hard, it was so noisy.
We saw almost no flowers and little scenery worth noting. Sirena had a nice platform, covered, for the tents, but their bathroom facilities again, left a lot to be desired. For the price I alone paid for camping, the place could have been wonderful. It´s a shame to see something that close to right, but frustratingly… not.
I had trouble sleeping so I took a hike down to the ocean at about 10pm. It was beautiful, the tide was out, tons of stars, etc. Next morning we decided to leave Sirena though. Didn´t sleep well, for several reasons… mostly, we just weren´t prepared for camping and had none of the things we needed - big tents, pillows, sheets, vents in the tents, etc. Sirena was great, but not for the unprepared. The trail in was harder than they said it was, and longer, by everyone´s account.
On the upside, bugs were only bad at sundown/sunrise, humidity was no worse than East Texas in mid summer, and temperature was about 85 in the daytime, and 70 at night. But it didn´t cool down until around 1am, so… wasn´t much help.
Sunrise from Sirena beach:
It´s a nice beach for looking, but not for swimming or walking. To narrow, too rocky, and too shallow for anything but looking. So we caught a great deal on a flight out of there, since Crystal´s knee was bothering her again and we didn´t think we could walk out via the La Leona trail as we had planned. The flight took us 13 minutes to Puerto Jiminez and costa 50$ each. But I wanted to see at least something at Sirena before we left, so I ran down a trail, about a mile round trip, and saw a Taida (think of a cross between a Mongoose and a black cat) and then heard the plane and turned around and left.
Had soup for lunch in Puerto Jiminez, about 4$ but it was a gigantic bowl. And their soups are really delicious. Called home at about 30 cents a minute, caught a bus for San Jose… and that´s where I´ll stop for today.
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Posted on February 5th, 2009 by Natnee and filed under Costa Rica |
February 14th, 2009 at 1:43 am
HI, Been reading your blog. Jealous of your adventures and glad you get to do them. You write very well, have a real talent there. enjoy and be safe.
Karen