Hiking Volcanoe Poas

So my friend Moriah says to me, "Do you want to go on a caminata with me and some other girls?" A Caminata is like what we would consider one of those "Walk for the Cure" type walks. Moriah told me that it was only 12 km and it would be a fun easy walk and we would all have a great time walking. I had walked the Romeria which was a 20km walk to a beautiful Catholic Cathedral, so I joyfully agreed to go!

I and four other Peace Corps Volunteers traveled to Moriah's sight and we happily ate fried chicken and joked around on Saturday night. We awoke early on Sunday morning ready for a fun a walk!

As we arrived at the sign-in we noticed that most of these Costa Ricans looked pretty serious about this walk. Costa Ricans in athletic gear is REALLY uncommon, but these people looked pretty seasoned. We began to ask around and comes to find out that these were SERIOUS Costa Rican athletes. Some of them do "Caminatas" EVERY WEEK-END and a fair number were doing this caminata to train for HIKING Chirripo the highest mountain in COSTA RICA!

We knew we were in for a rough walk when we were asking when is the first rest stop and they answered "in about an hour!" WHAT?!?!?!? Even the easy part was pretty steep and we were sweating and tired. We got to the first rest stop and they told us something like one and a half hours more to the half way point.... WHAT?!?!?!?!?

We eventually entered the mountain and were hiking up a less than marked trail and there came a point when I just had to convince myself to think "Step. Step. Step. Step." It was ridiculous. The only thing that made it a little bit better is that EVERYONE thought it was hard. Even those in-shape Costa Ricans who knew what they were signed up for were taking it pretty slow with many breaks.

There are NO pictures of the HARD parts because at those parts, we didn't have enough energy to THINK about taking pictures!

There came a point when the muscles in your legs that apparently help you take upwards steps hurt with every step, but there wasn't must we could do, but keep walking. We were in the mountains...there was no way out, but up. At one point, one of our friends started crying. We all wondered why we thought this would be a good idea. And I'm not sure any of us thought it was worth it.

One Costa Rican woman kept telling me, "But look! Isn't it beautiful?" I was pretty honest. I told her "It's not THAT beautiful."

Finally, when we thought we were dead, we came to what was called the REPENTANCE HILL. At this point, it literally got so steep that it was like walking up a never ending staircase....for 3 kms. WHAT THE HECK. Seriously, we thought it would never end and we were all in a lot of pain. At this point, we also realized, that this hike was WAY LONGER than 12 km, it was definitly closer to 15-16kms!!

Finally, we reached this grassy area and there was a Red Cross Worker chilling out. We asked how much longer REPENTANCE HILL was and he told us there was still an hour left. And we were like, there is NO WAY I am going to walk another hour up this hill. SO...HE GAVE US AN AMBULANCE RIDE. Hahahahaha. Funny thing is that he was lying to us and he literally drove us around the corner. But whatever. We got to ride in an ambulance and it was just the pick-me-up we all needed.

It became a running joke, that although this was NOT fun and we were miserable, ATLEAST we got a FREE t-shirt! Hahahahahah....

Becuase, even though we had finally reached the road, there was still like 4 kms left. And we thought we would NEVER EVER EVER EVER get there. But we did. And then we laid down in the grass. And didn't walk again ever. Hahahahahaha.

Word to the wise: Don't hike volcanoes.