Semana Santa

Puerto Jiménez

As you know, my friend Andrew and I had major plans for Semana Santa (spring break). We were going to the Osa Peninsula! Buying bus tickets was a pain. I called weeks in advance and was told to buy them the Wednesday before we leave on Friday. We walked a few miles through downtown San José to the bus station, first to the wrong station, only to discover that you can only buy tickets to Puerto Jiménez the day you plan on going. So, not feeling too discouraged and rather feeling good about getting a practice hike done, we returned early Friday morning, gear and all, to the same bus station to buy tickets. It was the wrong bus station. Yes, we were told the correct information on Wednesday as to when tickets were available, but what the employee failed to tell us was that you don't buy them here! Luckily, the station for Puerto Jiménez was just a few minutes away.

What a bus ride. 8 long hours with a few stops to stretch and eat lunch, but I shouldn't be complaining too much. It was mildly air-conditioned and I did have 2 seats to myself. I later heard about the 16-hour ride that another group took to Panama and didn't feel as bad.

A view of a farm of palm trees. We passed many of these farms and apparently palm oil is a huge export in Costa Rica.

The town of Puerto Jiménez, the largest on the peninsula, consists of one main road with a good deal of stores, restaurants and hostels, as well as a handful of surrounding residential neighborhoods. After checking into our hostel ($10 for the night), we walked to the port. I'd never been to a beach with a sandbar like this one...makes it easier to dock boats and such. I waded out a good 100 m and the water barely reached my waist.

A pretty row of palm trees by the port.

Later, we met our guide, William Mora, for the first time in the restaurant Carolina's. He told us the basics for what to bring and when and where to meet tomorrow morning. We had everything we needed except water, gas canisters for cooking, and perhaps a few trail snacks. We went to the town's one giant supermarket and got everything we needed.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 am, locked up my small backpack full of our unnecessary belongings for the trip, and met our guide and taxi driver at the local panadería. Andrew and I split a loaf of custard-filled bread for breakfast and we hit the road. First we had to drive through the tiny town of La Palma before reaching Los Patos, the park's northernmost ranger station. Just want to throw in the fact that we saw not one, but two families in their front yards milking goats. Anyways, it was a bumpy ride after La Palma as we made around 15 river crossings.

Luckily for us our 'taxi' was an off-road jeep :)

Los Patos-Sirena Hike

We showed the ranger at Los Patos our park permit and after William had a second breakfast with the ranger, we hit the trail. After no longer than one minute of hiking we hit our first river crossing. I was expecting a lot of crossings from what I read/the ride in, but being this early on was a little ridiculous. We took off our boots, put on our sandals (or simply went barefoot like William), rolled up our pants, and crossed. Luckily, we only had to do this one more time! Haha.

Right from the start the jungle scenery was amazing!

We were in the middle of a tropical rain forest. Consumed by dense plant and animal life everywhere you look. Having a guide was also a great decision. He wasn't so much useful for finding the trail because it was always easily to follow, but he had the best eye for spotting things! Plus, being a native to Puerto Jiménez and 3 years of guide experience, he was very environmentally knowledgeable. Here are a few highlights to the hike in:

- He spots an 2 anoles on a plant right off the bat. One's male and the other's female. The male has a brightly colored throat and we saw him inflate it several times to attract the female. William felt inclined to catch it for us, too:

- He spots a parrot snake slithering off the trail and borrows my camera to snap a photo of it as it snakes its way up a tree:


- He puts his machete to work and takes a small hack out of a Baco tree, out from which white liquid starts streaming. Indigenous tribes use the liquid for medicinal purposes.

And, of course, we had to try some, right?

- Another tree, the Copal, produces a flammable sap. One more hack into this tree and with the help of a lighter, whoosh! We made fire. Sorry no pics lol.

- There were frogs and lizards and bugs everywhere on the forest floor. You've seen an anole, so now here's a frog no bigger than a grape:

- It seemed like a common occurrence to William but to us, finding puma and jaguar tracks was awesome! One time he found both types of tracks in the same area and he said there wasn't much time in between their respective arrivals based on the crustiness of the mud. Check it out:

Pretty crusty, right? Haha, obviously these aren't the ones we saw on the trail, rather they were parts of an exhibit at the Sirena Ranger Station.

Lunch time!

- We ate lunch at our second and last major river crossing. It was squeeze-tube refried beans and flour (not corn - ick!) tortillas for me and Andrew. Sounds delicious no? William wolfed down the sandwich he bought at the panadería and used the plastic bag to catch fish in the river.

- You didn't need a guide to spot monkeys on the hike: they make plenty of noise jumping from tree to tree and yelling at each other. Our guide, like he hadn't impressed us enough, made a call with his mouth and hands that allegedly represents danger. The monkeys broke out into a frenzy and started to violently shake the branches. After William had had his fun, the monkeys had theirs. William received a nice, stinky thank-you gift on the shoulder for his efforts. Yep, he got pooped on. And of course we heard plenty more monkeys later that day, but one thing we didn't hear was William's clever monkey-danger call.

Note: I'm only posting authentic Andy pictures from here on out. I've used a few internet images in past posts to better show you what I've seen, but I just can't do it anymore! Even if mine are blurry (sorry in advance, haha).

We arrived at Sirena around 4 and set up camp. It wasn't really roughing it, persay, but the humidity made it almost miserable. Key word almost because it's impossible to truly be miserable here, you know what I mean? Haha. Just to further illustrate how humid it was, we took showers which gave us the most refreshing feeling in the world, but they only lasted 2 minutes. Once you step out, it's right back to that lovely high density of water vapor in the air.

The only other people besides Andrew and I in the tent area that night were two girls in their early 30s from California and another American guy about the same age flying solo. We had some great conversations, mostly about wildlife, as one of the girls was a vet.

Dinner was rice (graciously provided by William), more squeeze-tube beans, and cans of tuna. It gets dark at 5:30 on the peninsula, so famished and exhausted, we ate around 6:30 and talked till 8 and it was lights out after that!

Part 2: Exploring Sirena, coming soon!