La Esperanza – Naranjillo (18km). Actual 10.4 miles. 1700 feet elevation. El Camino de Costa Rica stage 14
Summary
Today we continued our descent toward the Pacific but still managed to climb over 1500 feet while loosing a net of 3000 feet. We left the land of coffee and bananas planted side by side and entered into tropical rainforest.
Details
For some reason, the mood seemed lighter than in the past several days. My guess is that people were relieved that the major climbing was behind us. The walking was generally easy and we started to get more views to the west and the Pacific. It wasn’t all downhill though, as we had a couple of short and fairly steep ascents.
We also saw many small songbirds and large swifts this morning. We’ve been making a habit of stopping at small stores (palperias) to get ice cream and cold drinks. Today we also buying treats for bingo that we will play later today once we get to our camping place.
We were still short one member of our group walking as she still wasn’t feeling up to walking. She got a ride with our luggage shuttle and met us at the campground. We made pretty good time today and arrived at the campground in time for lunch.
We were all impressed by the campground when we arrived. It is fairly primitive but it is perched high on a mountain with views all the way down to Quepos and the Pacific. There are little platforms the size of a single tent, each with views that stretch for miles. There are flush toilets and several shower stalls with shower heads that will heat water (as long as the flow is sufficiently low). Clouds rolled in by 1:00 pm and by mid-afternoon we had a very heavy rainstorm for several hours before it cleared a bit before sunset.
The bingo game turned out to be pretty fun as it was run by the people that operated the camp. It was all in Spanish so gave us all good practice in Spanish numbers. As we went to bed we could see lightning off in the distance that continued on for half the night.
Track
