Cerro Escondido

Writing this from La Jolla, near San Diego, CA, where my uni friend Greg Scherman and his family have welcomed us into their home for 3 days. They've been wonderful, and it's great to be able to relax after a long 2-day journey from Nosara to San Jose to Denver to LA to here. More of this later. In the meantime, back in Southern Nicolya...

Carlos and his brother inherited the ranch from their father. They own a huge area of rainforest on Cerro Escondido. Now aging and with no children they've protected the land by helping form the Karen Morgensen Reserve National Wildlife Refuge of which their land forms a part. He has great sparkling eyes and plays guitar duets with his brother, which sadly we never heard. They make some money from a restaurant at the foot of the trail to the lodge.

After another great CR lunch and fresh juice we set off up the trail to the lodge (see photo in earlier entry), disturbing an armadillo at the start. Cerro Escondido Lodge is set in the mountains surrounded by primary rainforest teaming with wildlife. The path that leads there has about 3000 steps up the hill through the forest, up which we trod in a 40C afternoon. The kids did amazingly to get there at all, and I promised them they wouldn't have to go down until we left 2 days later. At the top we found a set of rugged buildings including an open-sided kitchen and dining area, some farm buildings and two cabins. our hostess Mary showed us to 2 simple rooms in a cabin with a balcony overlooking a forest valley, where howler monkeys greeted us with feirsome howls and grunts. The guide in Fortuna had demonstrate how to call them with bigs grunts back and Laura got into quite a conversation with them, presumably on the lines of L:Hello? Howler Monkey: This is my forest, go away! L:You smell of fish (or other insult). Howler Monkey:I said bugger off. etc.

So we just stood there and wondered what turn of fate took us to this amazing place.

In the afternoon I hiked with our guide Gravy to a lookout up on the hill from where we could see Chira in the Gulf of Nicolya the East, Nicolya mountains to the West, and the roofs of the lodge amoung the canopy to the North. The objective was to get mobile signal, and Gravy let me use his phone to call Ma using my calling card. "Hello I'm on top of the world watching a flock of bright green parakeets...".

On the way back we heard a heavy crackling russling moving through the undergrowth; we froze, but just as it was about to cross the path in front of us Gravy's mobile went off. The crackling thing turned and thundered off at 90mph leaving Gravy cursing the phone - apparently it was a wild boar. What a shame!

Next day Peter got up early to go bird watching. After breakfast we hiked down to Velo de Novia (Bride’s Veil) waterfall. It turned out to be from a path at the bottom of the 3000 steps, causing me not only to break my promise to the kids about not having to go down, but also making them walk up all over again on the way back. Still, despite it being the dry season and the river being lowm the waterfall was beautiful and the swimming hole ever better. 8 foot deep and warm! We shared it with tadpoles, crayfish and freshwater shrimps, and swam for about an hour.

Back to the lodge (getting used to the steps now) for lunch cooked by Mary. In the afternoon took Nicky and kids to the lookout we'd been to the day before. Saw another armadillo close up.

Next day we had to get up to say goodbye to Mary and head back down the hill. She'd was a great hostess, very patiently conversing with us in Spanish, and cooking chico-friendly food and cakes for the children. Mary's husband usually helps out but had had to go to a funeral of his cousin who had died after a branch fell on him. Hard life.

At the bottom of the hill we had refreshments, met up with Alex the taxi man and set off to get some of our luggage (that we'd left for safe keeping), and go on to Corillo, feeling that the best part of our holiday was ending.

Now I have to go and make some margaritas...