Penas Blancas

Its been a week since I made it out of the cloud forest valley alive. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my entire trip so far. Last Sunday half of the group hoisted our backpacking packs into taxi vans that dropped us off at the entrance to the Monteverde Cloudforest, while the other half began their homestays in houses throughout Montevderde, or in a little fishing village four hours away called Cuajiniquil. It was really strange saying goodbye. After having been thrown together for six weeks without a single day of separation, we suddenly wouldn’t all be together again for almost a month. For the Penas group, we would be backpacking 16 km into the reserve into an area closed to the public to stay in a small cabin manned by Eladio Cruz. Eladio was a familiar face as he had hosted us in Guanacaste and cooked for us every night there. Words don’t really describe the coolness of Eladio Cruz. He is an old, shy, solely Spanish-speaking, renowned Tico naturalist, who knows the cloud forests here like no one else. Numerous species of flora and fauna have been named after him, either because he had a hand in discovering them or because one of his cool biologist companions did.

But it took us ten miles to get to Eladio’s mystical cabin in the middle of the rainforest. For the most part it was all down hill, as we were traveling into a valley, but I was in rainboots so it wasn’t necessarily easier, and I slid down many a moss-covered slope or wet rocky ravine. I spent the better part of my travels debating with both my fellow travelers and myself whether or not the boots were worth it. When it came to crossing flooded streams I was clearly the winner over the hiking boot enthusiasts, but by the time we reached the cabin my feet were so torn up my choice was definitely put into question. I was part of the first cluster to make it to the cabin, and I can safely say we were all exhausted by the time we reached the bright green cabin. It didn’t help that most of us had gone out the night before, wanting to celebrate before we all separated. I think everyone questioned that decision at least once by the time we reached Eladio.

I was thinking about writing up a post before I left about all the things that could possibly kill me while I was in Penas, but in retrospect its probably for the best that I didn’t do so until now, from the safety of my room in Monteverde…or else I’m pretty sure Mom or Emily would have tried to book me a plane back to California. Our main adversaries on the trip were:

 1. The fer de lance…the most venomous snakes in Costa Rica (2 of which I encountered on night hikes),

2. The eyelash pit viper (several of which I encountered)

 3. Pretty much any other snakes

4. A rickety bridge we had to cross over a river that could support only one person at a time.

5. My personal favorite: the “assassin bug” or “kissing bug”, a large nocturnal insect which is notorious for biting people’s lips in the middle of the night and transmitting the Chagas disease by defecating on the wound. The Chagas is transmitted into your bloodstream and eats away at the tissues in your heart causing you to die of cardiac arrest about twenty years after you are bitten. NICE. (Luckily no encounters with the Assassin bug, as I was COMPLETELY obsessive compulsive with the mosquito net I slept under. I did however wake up from one or two nightmares completely convinced I had been bitten and was going to die immediately from some intensified version of the disease. )

But the unforgettable experiences far outweighed the risks of the trip. Even just the cabin itself was amazing. We had no electricity-so no lights or hot water, and the place was crawling with insects, but the PORCH made just about everything worth it. I don’t think I will ever find another porch like this. The bird watching I did just sitting down on the floor of that porch was some of the best I’ve done in Costa Rica. The forest it looked out to was just so incredibly beautiful. It also gave us a safe viewing spot for the insane rainstorms that hit toward the end of the trip.

The night hikes blew my mind. Things I never imagined I would actually see in real life were commonplace in Penas at night.

The Tabanid flies. Though these little blood sucking demons not only covered me in bites during the day, but decided to fall by the hundreds onto our candle-lit dinner table at night, I can’t help but look at them in retrospect as humorous. I will never forget the night they were so bad that literally the entire table covered their heads with sweatshirt hoods or rain jackets and just yelled constantly as one by one flies bounced off our heads and into our soup. Most of us were completely hysterical before dinner was even over.

The rain: I really don’t know if I’ll ever see rain like this again. The first night it started I sat straight up in bed thinking that a tree had fallen on the cabin, but when the noise didn’t subside, I realized that it was in fact rain POUNDING on the tin roof. Doors started slamming with the wind (this is at 3am mind you) and several of us got up to watch…which really wasn’t necessary since the rain would continue on just as hard throughout the morning and about half the day. Since a hot shower was nonexistent anyway, some decided just to take advantage of nature’s amenities…

The trip back was quite a different trek than the one going into the valley. It rained almost the entire hike, and most of it was uphill. I didn’t fall as many times (probably because I had more sleep) but my feet were KILLING me by the time I reached the end. I was with the first group that made it back again but our level of exhaustion was ten times that of when we reached Eladio’s. When we made it to the information sign the five of us hugged and screamed. It reminded me a lot of (Paden you can probably guess) arriving at the ferry after our insane day of hiking on the last day of wilderness orientation. Not as many miles but I think this trek was equally difficult, and the excitement at seeing the end just as rewarding.