peak bagger’s delight

Some fifteen years ago — right before we started dating — we hiked the Peak Bagger’s Delight trail in Acadia National Park. We ascended Bald Peak, Parkman Mountain, Gilmore Peak, and Sargent Mountain in quick succession that day, none of the summits exceeding 500 meters above sea level. It was our first time seeing each other after our initial chance meeting on a bus in Ecuador two years earlier. A couple of weeks ago, we reprised the peak bagger’s delight in Costa Rica, ascending Chirripó — the country’s highest peak — before bagging a couple of other summits on our way back to base camp. These peaks were considerably taller than the tiny mountains in Maine, and the hiking significantly more demanding, especially considering how many years have flown by since our first hike together.

short-timers’ dilemma

Beautiful beaches in Belize. Exotic birding in far-flung locations. Caving explorations and mountain climbing misadventures. If you’ve been following our blog of late, you’ll know that January was kind to us. We still have a handful of posts in the works to catch up on all our travel tales. But while our blog enables us to daydream about our adventures and live a bit longer in our recent past, time simply won’t stand still. We’ve been back in San Jose with our noses to the grindstone for a week and a half now. Schools are mercifully back in session after the long holiday break. Meanwhile, we are entering the final stretch of what has been a dream assignment to Costa Rica.

the long way up

The trail from San Gerardo de Rivas to the Crestones refuge beneath Chirripó takes no prisoners. It ascends from 1,523 meters above sea level at KM 0 to the high-altitude páramo at 3,393 meters of elevation some 14 kilometers later. There is no easing in and no warm-up period. The ascent starts immediately and continues relentlessly for much of the hike. Some relatively flat parts appear like a mirage midway through the hike, but they are few and far between. By far, the hardest part of climbing Chirripó is making it through this slog of an approach hike. If one has the time to spend a night or two at the refuge, the actual summit push is a cake walk compared to the effort required to reach base camp.

high on the Costa Rica bucket list

Underestimate Chirripó at your own peril. Especially if coming from sea level, as we did after spending the previous two weeks in Belize. Especially if you are planning to carry your own stuff up to the refuge instead of using the porter service, as D opted to do. Costa Rica’s highest peak, Chirripó stands tall at 3,820 meters (12,533 feet). In absolute terms, it is far from the highest mountain we have climbed. In his Peace Corps days, D ascended various Andean peaks that tickled the 6,000-meter mark in addition to summiting Huayna Potosi (6,088 meters/19,974 feet). S likewise did some high-altitude climbing during her backpacking days in South America. But we were in our early twenties then, and Chirripó reminded us rather quickly that our twenties are well behind us. We summited and bagged a couple of other nearby peaks in addition to Chirripó during our three-day visit to the namesake national park, but overall this was a humbling, at times uncomfortable experience.

a day at Crooked Tree

After two glorious weeks, our visit to Belize drew to a close, as all good things inevitably do. Before we packed our bags, we set out for one final adventure — an early morning, two-hour drive to Crooked Tree. A village of pine savanna surrounded by long lagoons and marshy wetlands, Crooked Tree is the country’s most impressive bird and wildlife sanctuary. Even though it was a bit far from our accommodations in Hopkins, to D’s mind it was inconceivable that we would fly all the way to Belize for two weeks and then skip this site.

jaguar hunt

There’s a place in Belize — the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary — where with a bit of good fortune it is possible to spot a jaguar in the wild. Is a sighting likely? No, far from it! Jaguars are nocturnal hunters and owe their survival to their innate ability to stalk through the jungle and see without being seen. Even so, sightings do occur at Cockscomb — usually in the early mornings or early evenings, frequently along the access road to the reserve. There were two reported jaguar sightings in the week before we arrived in Hopkins, which is a mere half-hour from Cockscomb Basin. Did we have our hearts set on seeing a jaguar in Belize? No, not really…well, ok, maybe a little. Were we going to try our luck and see if fortune smiled on us? Of course!

bush to beach

One of the joys of exploring Belize is that it is small and supremely easy to navigate. An hour’s drive west from our lodge would have brought us to the Guatemala border. Two hours in the opposite direction, and we found ourselves in Hopkins on the Caribbean coast. Compare this with our recent travels in Colombia, where renting a car in Cartagena and driving to the Santa Marta Mountains locked us into the Caribbean corner of the country for the better part of two weeks. It was time well spent, as D tracked down almost all of Santa Marta’s two dozen endemic birds on repeated visits to the El Dorado Reserve, but we also found that we had less flexibility than we thought a rental car would have afforded us. At any rate, this was not a problem in Belize. So, after spending a week exploring the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, we headed to the beach, stopping for one final Mayan cave tour on the way.

birding the pine ridge

Our first morning at Hidden Valley in Belize’s Mountain Pine Ridge Forest was a gloomy one. D woke up early, eager to sneak in a birding walk before breakfast. Rather than set an alarm, he had left a curtain open just a crack so that a sliver of natural light would filter into the room in the wee hours of the morning. He figured this, coupled with his excitement for birding for the first time in a new country, would be enough to rouse him out of bed while S still slumbered. D laced up his hiking boots, gathered his birding gear, and stepped outside to find the Pine Ridge blanketed in thick fog. It wasn’t raining — not really — but the air was heavy with precipitation, and tiny drops of water would occasionally spray out of the soupy mist. These were sub-optimal birding conditions, to put it mildly.

destination vacation

When we travel on our own, we rarely spend more than 3-4 nights in one place, preferring instead to string together several different destinations so that we can see as much as possible on each trip. With a larger group, however, frequent moves are more difficult to execute. When S’s parents and aunt visit or travel with us, we tend to pick a destination for a week (or two if we travel together for two weeks), supplementing each location with day trips. So it was for Belize, where we split our two weeks between the Mountain Pine Ridge in the country’s interior and Hopkins on the Caribbean coast.

exploring ancient civilizations

In addition to exploring the Maya underworld on several caving tours, we also visited two of Belize’s most important Maya ruins at Caracol and Xunantunich.