I had bought a rockmelon from a roadside vendor the previous afternoon, so we had fresh fruit for breakfast looking out over the beautiful gardens of the property. It was so peaceful, with the birds chirping and the river cascading down alongside the garden. But we had plans for the day. After bidding farewell to our new French friend, we trekked back down the hill and walked towards the town.
I had noticed a building with some really cool metal sculptures on the sides so stopped to take a photo. There was an hombre there who I started chatting to who ended up giving us a tour of his private museum. Every room in his sprawling casa was filled with items he had collected over the years, neatly displayed. Pedro was most enthusiastic about his collection and insisted on us seeing it all; the piece de resistance being a motorised Santa sleigh he hauls out every Christmas for an annual parade. We eventually managed to extradite ourselves and continued on our way.
We found a bus that went further up the mountain to a tiny village that was within striking distance of Cloudbridge Nature Reserve. Fortunately, we didn’t need to wait long and were soon on our way. The roads in this part of Costa Rica are narrow and wind tightly around the hills. At times, it seemed almost impossible for the bus to manoeuvre around a bend, but these drivers do it day in day out with aplomb and the bus glided without incident around each and every one.
We checked the return times with the driver at the end point and set out on foot (with luggage) to walk the final 2.6kms. One of the locals had told us the route was ‘muy tranquil’ and should only take us about 20 minutes. 30 tops. Encouraged with this information, we anticipated we had plenty of time to get there, spend a couple of hours in the park, and comfortably return for the 1pm bus.
At first, the road was sensibly only slightly undulating, but then we turned off onto a side road which had a steep decline, crossed a pretty, cascading river, turned a corner and went straight up the side of the mountain. And by up, I mean up. The road was in poor condition, which made the traverse even more difficult, and extremely narrow. Any vehicle that went past, meant moving off the road completely. Fortunately, there were few vehicles, although a pack of half a dozen horses were being driven down while we were walking up.
Even though the route was tortuous, it did allow for frequent stops to admire the spectacular view. And spectacular it was. Mountains cloaked with misty shrouds overlooked dense, verdant valleys with little casas dotted here and there. We were up in the cloud forest and the lush vegetation was everywhere. I reflected on our ‘helpful’ hombre’s description of ‘muy tranquil’ and his ridiculous time estimation. By now we had been walking for about an hour.
Just when I thought this road would never stop its steep descent, it began to flatten out. At this point, at a bend, we noticed a little building that looked like it could have been a cafe or something so went to investigate. It happened to be a hombre’s house which he allowed visitors to come and birdwatch. There were a couple of guys from the UK doing exactly that and who were also staying at Cloudbridge so we got more reliable information about the remainder of the journey there. It seemed we had done most of the hard work and the final 700m was relatively easy going. We left our packs with the hombre there and continued on our way.
We finally reached Cloudbridge at 11.30am. I estimated I would need to leave by 12pm to have any hope at all of making the 1pm bus so effectively only had about half an hour in the park. That was enough time to see the main trails and cascades close to the entrance so decided that was all I would be able to do. I needed to be back in San Jose that night and was already pushing it. I was pretty fatigued by this stage and what should have been a breeze to get around, took forever. Still, the park was beautiful and the cascades stunning.
Janie decided she would continue on to the lookout before trying to catch me up. We said our farewells in case we missed each other. I all but ran down the main path to the entrance before deciding there was no way I was going to make the 1pm bus by walking. I asked a couple if they would give me a lift back down the mountain to the bus and they were more than happy to do so. Relieved, I arrived with time to spare. Shortly before the bus left, Janie arrived back to. She had also got a lift down so we jumped on board the bus back to San Gerardo de Rivas. There we did say our final farewells as Janie wanted to go see a coffee finca, whereas I was keen to get going to San Jose.
The bus continued on to San Isidro de El General where I bought my ticket to San Jose. Unfortunately, I had a two hour wait for the next bus which meant I wouldn’t be able to see the countryside after the first couple of hours but at least I would be in San Jose at a reasonable time. My hostel was only a short walk from the San Jose bus terminal and I was relieved to finally arrive, shower and hit my bed. It had been a big day.
Wild Woman Wandering 