Take me to church: my weekly wanderings in Costa Rica

I love hiking so much, it became a pseudo-religion for me in Costa Rica.

When I lived in Tennessee, I organized “girls’ hikes” among my closest friends. This only happened once a month or less, and only a few people showed up regularly. I would pick a state park and we'd meet up and walk 2-4 miles along the trails. The longest hike I did in Tennessee was probably 6 miles or so.

That changed in Costa Rica.

As with everything I do, I didn’t go into it halfway. When I learned about the Romería (blogged in detail on this post), a friend and I didn’t hesitate to experience this cultural phenomenon for ourselves.

My first hike in Costa Rica ended up being about 33 kilometers (about 20.5 miles) in a single day. The next day we walked several more kilometers. When I finally returned home late the next day, the rain pattered on my rusted tin roof as I grinned uncontrollably. My spirit was rejuvenated, and it wasn’t about the religious trek we had taken, or what I found in the basilica.

I felt alive.

It was the green trees, the fading of traffic noise. The rolling vistas. The nickering horses. The serene coffee plantations. It was putting one foot in front of the other. Breathing unpolluted air. Being outside. It was the long bridges, where we stopped to listen for trains before scurrying across, à la Stand By Me.

And it was the nature of the walk. This was no mere jaunt of a couple easy miles along a mulched trail in a park. It was a real hike.

It was the ache in my legs, the twinge in my ankles, the sweat-soaked clothes, the weird tan lines on my shoulders, the dirt under my fingernails, the grumbling of well-earned hunger.

I was addicted.

My friend, who had used Wikiloc to find hikes and bike trails others had logged, suggested we do it again. And so began our new tradition. We’d pick a town within a couple hours’ bus ride of San José, pick another town between 10-25 kilometers away, bus to one, walk to the other, and bus back. My friend gets all the credit for finding the routes. We started tame and our walks got more and more adventurous with time.

Almost every Sunday, we went on hikes through the Costa Rican countryside. At the end of the day each Sunday, we would stagger into some small country town, sticky, muddy, sweaty, and sunburned, just as devout folk emerged from their church’s evening mass as their children careened off onto the football pitches, laughing raucously. The contrast between us and the churchgoers was so absurd, our hikes earned a fond nickname: going to church.

Orosí

Cachí

Orosí

Orosí

Cartago

San Juan del Norte 

Ujarrás

Ujarrás

Zarcero

Laguna

Rosario

And what a church it was.

Turrialba

Braulio Carillo

Turrialba

Turrialba

Acosta

Acosta

Acosta

Acosta

Atenas

Atenas

Atenas

Braulio Carillo

Braulio Carillo

San Gabriel

Paraíso

Rio Celeste

Tapantí

Tapantí

Tapantí

Tapantí

Zarcero

Zarcero

Turrialba

La Fortuna

Turrialba

During this time, I got fit. At first, even eight kilometers was a huge deal. I was still working off all the weight from my depression in my previous life, and I huffed and puffed. Ten kilometers was a feat. Every hill just about killed me.

Over time, the hikes became easier. My knees and ankles strengthened. My calves and hamstrings bulked up, and my waistline slimmed. Church was the biggest reason I eventually was able to lose about 16 kilograms (35 pounds). The most remarkable part was when I returned to the same walks after a couple months and discovered how easy they had become, how I needed to find ways to tack on a few kilometers to the end to keep them as challenging.

Costa Rica opened up to me like a flower as I grew fitter. This month I’m celebrating a solid year of maintaining my goal weight (más o menos) after slowly sloughing off all that sadness.

My journey to happiness and my journey to fitness went hand-in-hand. And it was all because of church.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll profile some of my favorite walks in and around the Central Valley of Costa Rica, and snippets of our friendship, misadventures, and discoveries along the way.

Here we go!