Michael: L'Amistad?

Thursday, April 23, 2015

I swear the monkey
High up in the canopy
Threw something at me.

Yesterday Kimme and I had one of our typical, not exactly lost not exactly certain where we were except at the beginning and the end, adventures.

Kimme’s been wanting to extend her trail runs hoping to condition herself for an attempt to do 100 miles of the John Muir trail in three days. We’ve heard that there’s a jeep road that you can run from Boquete to the top of the Volcano - Volcan Baru, but that would involve a very long bus ride. I’m sure we’ll get to that one of these days. But to be practical, I suggested we keep extending the run we’ve already been doing on Wednesdays; Los Posos. Then we’ll have a tough run we can do all year from out our front door.

To make the Los Posos run longer we’ve been hoping to find the jeep road that serves as the border of L’Amistad National Park. Totumas Cloud Forest has a L’Amistad trail that supposedly terminates into the L’Amistad road. We’ve tried 4 times without success to find L‘Amistad road from the Los Posos road, so yesterday we figured we’d take the Totumas L’Amistad trail to it’s termination point up high in the forest and then we’d know that we would dead end into the L’Amistad Border trail and we’d hike on that for a while and live happily ever after. 

I figured that would make for a good 4-5 hour day. And that would be pushing the limits of  the 40-50 oz. of water each of us were carrying along with our food supplies of one flask each of liquid sugar. Kimme was also carrying a couple of boiled eggs for a snack, while I had a snack bag of trail mix.

After our short bus ride to the trailhead of Los Posos, we were on our way at 9:30. A little late for my taste, but I figured we’d still hopefully make it back before the afternoon showers we’ve been getting lately. At least in that regard, we were fortunate because when we walked back into our cozy little cottage at 7 last night, we hadn’t been rained on.

Yes, that’s correct. We were outside for 9 ½ hours. 8 ½ hours of that on the move and over half of that not knowing what trail/jeep road we were on. And, as Maxwell Smart would say on one of my old favorite t.v. shows, “loving it.”

It all started out well enough. We got to Totumas, found the well marked and beautiful L’Amistad trail and took it to where it terminated into a jeep road. Success. Now decision time, and this is where Kimme’s and my lack of direction make our hikes magical, grueling and dangerous. Which way to go?

We forked left. Fine. But in about 2 ½ miles we came to another fork in the road. We forked left. That trail quickly petered out into fallen trees and dense brush. Not knowing this wilderness area at all, we at least had the smarts to double back. Back home, we’ve taken animal trails and even cross country hiked a bit for far longer than would be advisable given our gyroscopic handicaps.

To the right fork. Fine. That shortly ended into a gate and grass area more suited to a cattle finca. We both doubted the trail would pick up again somewhere across the pasture, so it was back to the end of the Totumas L’Amistad trail and down the jeep road to the right. Again that ended at a gate and a private property finca.

Out of options, we had no choice but to double back the way we came. We had discovered the fun but hard way that perhaps the border of L’Amistad International park was in fact a border and not meant to be used as a trail and that parts of whatever jeep road that was once there is not maintained and therefore impassiblet; at least for people with Kimme and my skill sets.

But of course we still had options and decisions to make. Our day wasn’t going to end that half heartedly screwed up.

Instead of completely doubling back, we had the option of taking a single track trail we’d taken before to the Los Posos jeep road. Somehow, at the end of that trail we got turned around and spent some time wandering around some grass and cows somewhere near the hot springs until, the hell with it, we took a well marked blue circle trail that led us back to the jeep road, and yes, now on familiar ground, we knew where we were, which direction to go, and we were reasonably certain we’d get home before dark.

But again, decisions, wrong decisions. Jogging up the jeep road you can see the vehicles traveling on the main road into Volcan for quite a distance. I saw a bus pass at 4:45. Kimme finished her run at 4:55. I told her about the bus and we both agreed to wait instead of jogging downhill home. We figured it could only be about another half hour before the next bus. Wrong again. At 6:05, to beat being caught out on the road in complete darkness, we starting jogging home. A bus did pass us a few minutes later but at that point on that road there‘s no way it was going to stop to pick up passengers and we knew not to even try to flag it down. Still,  given our limited understanding of the bus system and the extended time we had waited for a bus, jogging home was a good decision. In fact, it was actually pretty enjoyable, even after a very long day. From here on out, unless it’s pouring rain and cars wouldn’t be able to see us, we’ll no doubt jog that stretch.

7 p.m. and we were home. Soup, a veggie burger, pretzels, a couple of pieces of chocolate, trail mix, Nuun, a shower, a few glasses of water, The Daily Show, a stretch out on the couch and half awake watching of a Columbo, lights out and another adventure under our belts.