Rain pattered disconsolately on the uneven sidewalk as I and all my dearest friends disembarked from the bus. Sunday demanded our weekly “church” service. I was devout in my “worship”: walking in the Costa Rican campo—countryside. Every week, we selected a different town in the mountains surrounding the Central Valley. We semi-mapped a route to a different pueblo anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five kilometers away. We bused to one, walked to the other, and bused back to San José. We emerged in the gloaming every Sunday, bedraggled, muddy, reeking of river water and sweat, aching, and overall unpresentable, our inside voices gone from having to shout over the wind or river or rain. It did not escape my notice how different we looked from the Sunday late mass faithful who exited the church doors just as we exited the forest. And so the term was coined: “going to church.”
It was a beautiful church, Costa Rican natural splendor, and I was ever-faithful.
This day, all the normal churchgoers were in attendance, including my closest friends, Eduardo, Josué, Ali, and Gabriel. Camaraderie draped over our shoulders as we got off the bus in the rain in San Gabriel. A stoic smile passed from face to face as each of us donned our raincoats and secured them against the wind. My hood flipped off my head three times in quick succession, leaving me with a fringe of dewy pearls adorning my eyelashes. I left the hood down and allowed the rain to have its way with me.
We walked through San Gabriel de Aserrí, down a gravel road that wound along a steep hill toward the basin of the valley. The road turned into a footpath so steep it was easy to fall on my butt—which I did three times—as we navigated grasses higher than our heads, listening for telltale rustling of vipers known to live in these hills.
Forty minutes later, the drizzle lightened off. I pushed aside some young sugar cane to reveal a river gurgling cheerfully as it wended its way along the center of a canyon. I rolled up my pants and waded in. When the water reached my waist, I gasped at the cold. Similar howls of good-natured shock arose from my companions as we all waded across the rapid current. We picked from slick rock to muddy haven with care, arms outstretched for balance.
Once on the other side, we settled on boulders and unpacked our lunches—veggie subs, sandwiches, plastic containers with cold leftover spaghetti, packets of cookies, each person with his own style. I assembled soft corn tortillas, frijoles negros con salsa Lizano, and chunky tomato salsa with a distinct flavor of cilantro. When everyone was full, we meticulously packed up every last scrap of trash and triple-checked our waterproofing in our packs.
We waded again into the river. We stayed in the water for about six hours; we alternated between wading in the water and bouldering along the banks, whichever was most promising at the time. Kilometer after kilometer melted away. Sometimes the river was deep enough for us to simply jump in the water, clutch our backpacks, and float along in the current, occasionally yelping as we banged our knees against hidden rocks. Sometimes we leaped from one huge rock to another.
I exclaimed over the multicolored hues of the riverbed created by volcanic activity—teals, pink streaked with gold sparkle, toxic red, or even blue.
This place was a wonder. Sheer rock cliff faces formed a wall along the river much of the time, and the deep jungle around us resembled something straight out of Middle Earth.
Sometimes the current was so strong, a friend would reach out for my hand to help me fight it. Within an hour, each one of the six of us had fallen. Some gracefully. Some so sudden they elicited a little “whoop!” of surprise as we went down.
All the while, we laughed.
It rained on and off, and we started to wonder how far we had to go until we reached the bridge we’d seen on a map. And then we came to the ravine.
The friendly, rushing river tumbled in a roar of white foam four, five stories down a sheer cliff into a seething pit below. Jagged boulders and fallen trees hinted at an incredibly dangerous fall. By our estimate, we were only a kilometer from the bridge that would get us on a road and eventually take us back to a town where we could catch a bus. But it might as well have been on Jupiter. There was no getting past that ravine.
We made some abortive attempts at crossing, finding alternate routes ahead, but no path existed. Rain- and river-soaked, my friends and I hugged against each other for warmth as we considered our options.
“Well,” said one, “we know civilization is that way.” He jutted his thumb over his shoulder.
In every direction, steep volcanic mountains newly formed by the thrusting of tectonic plates rose from the earth like the spikes on the back of some prehistoric monster. These weren’t the gentle inclines of Tennessee mountains. These babies went straight up. We were surrounded.
The boys muttered their agreement. We all took a few drinks of water, patted each other on the back heartily, and began to climb. After only twenty minutes of climbing, it was so steep that we were on our hands and knees, clutching handfuls of sharp blades of grass. Pants and wheezes replaced the banter that had been the day’s soundtrack. The sky grew dark much faster than seemed possible. No one said it, but we knew we were going to be here until well after dark.
We reached what we thought was the top… only to see that we had at least twice more to climb. A wiry horse nickered at us nearby and almost caused my friend to fall down, startled. The wind sighed though the grass, and there was no sound—none—that indicated we were anywhere near humans. We knew how to get back, but it would take a long time.
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| Barely halfway up, and still smiling |
By this time, I didn’t think of my ex very often. I was well over him. Well past that life.
But in that moment, giggling and hugging my friends, scrabbling through the territory of the highly venomous fer de lance snake, with the sun going down, no flashlights, barely any food left, and real dangers closing in, I thought of him.
He wouldn’t be laughing at the predicament we were in. He would have stopped laughing the first time he fell, and by the third, the scowl would have been a permanent addition to his face. I looked around at all my smiling friends and my grin grew wider. I was enjoying the hell out of this crazy adventure, even if I was tired and only had a few swallows of water left.
I didn’t take a single photo that day (photos in this blog are mostly from later excursions to this same hike), but if I had, I like to think you would be able to see the difference in my smile.
Two hours later we emerged on private property of a coffee farm, almost got attacked by a guard dog, and spilled out onto a quiet country road. Skirting pot holes and places where the road had eroded away, we walked in the full dark of night three more kilometers into town, passed only by four or five cars. When we reached town, we stopped for a quick meal at a soda (the Tico word for a tiny mom-and-pop restaurant that serves typical food). I went into the ladies’ room, sat on the counter, and washed my feet under lukewarm water. It was the most glorious feeling I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I came back out to find my friends gathered around a rickety table, clutching mugs of coffee. “Jess,” they cried. “¡Ven acá!” Come here! I sat among them and inhaled the steam of fresh coffee under the glare of a neon light and the warm sun of my friends’ laughter as we recounted our beautiful day together.
We returned to this hike many times afterward. Below are a few more images from my favorite hike in Costa Rica.
