20K and a Year Away

I am very happy to report that we made it out of our hike alive and well. There were no jaguars to be seen. There were no animals at all, actually. It was a steep climb up to the top. The most dangerous aspect was the wind that was strong enough to move us around on the top.

We headed out with our new BFF the taxi driver toward the trailhead. It is recommended that you take a taxi to the trailhead if you don’t want to spend 6 hours going up the mountain. I know, I know, what’s 6 hours in the scheme of things. Ha! Did I mention it is just going up? All 6 hours is just going up. Well, I think that pretty well answers any questions you have about why they recommend you get a taxi to the trailhead.

From the trailhead, it is only 2km to the summit. This, by the way, is also uphill. Fortunately, it was not raining at the beginning of our hike up. It is the same mud going up this trail, but since it had not rained here much, it was really solid clay. And rocks. Lots of loose rocks that are trying to break your ankle. I only had to tell Axel to be careful 200 times. About 100 of them were probably unnecessary, but it made me feel better. HAHA!

We asked the taxi driver to come back in two hours, which should be enough to get up and back down with time to spare. He said see you later and we began the ascent. We took our time and a couple of rests along the way. We took some panoramic photos because you could see a long way away! We trudged on and finally got to the top.

The top was super windy and covered in a cloud. We were standing inside the cloud and it was pelting us with rain and trying to push us along, on our way. We were drenched. It was kind of nice since we had just walked up here and gotten sweaty and hot to get a refreshing shower. The wind, however, did not feel nice. It was strong and we decided to start our way back down, out of the cloud.

We did go to another peak that had some rocks perched on top and were going to just run on up there to take a peek. We started the climb and saw that the trail was really wet, muddy, and slippery. We were on a time limit and decided halfway up that we might not have enough time to get up and back since we didn’t know the condition of the trail ahead. We turned around and headed back down the trail.

As we were heading down, a group of hikers was heading up. We stopped on a big section of the trail to give them room to pass by. Here is where life helps you put things into perspective…

This group of hikers consisted of a brother and 3 sisters. The brother looked to be the oldest at around 10. The girls were all younger, the youngest was probably 6. They were from the area and it looked like they played up here often. They said hello and rounded the corner up the trail – practically trotting. Keep in mind, it is still raining and slick here. We smile and wave, and then look at their feet. They are wearing sandals! Practically flip flops! They are running up these hills like they are nothing in flip flops! HAHAHA! Here we are being big babies and worrying about slipping and these little kids are running up the muddy trail in sandals. Oh my gosh. We just laughed and laughed. Talk about putting us in our place!

Ok, to add insult to injury, one of the sisters was carrying the other one piggyback as they passed! HAHAHAHA!! I am totally a wimp!!! HAHAHA! Where is that dang jaguar! I deserve to be eaten!! HAHAHA!!

We finished the hike early and started to walk down the mountain to meet the taxi whenever he showed up. Walking down the mountain is a whole lot easier! We talked about those mountain goat-footed, sandal-clad children the whole way. We are duly ashamed of ourselves. HAHAHA!