Rincon de La Vieja

Rincon de la Vieja is a national park located about 25 km from Liberia, but it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get there since the road is almost all gravel.  There are technically two entry areas: the Las Pailas sector and the Santa Maria area.  For my day trip, I went up to the Las Pailas area to do some hiking.  I was in a van on the way up there with three other travelers from Germany (Sandy, Henry and Viktor), and ended up spending the day hiking around with them.  It was really nice to have other people to hike with, and I had a lot of fun getting to know my fellow hikers :)

The name:  So, when I was originally looking up info about Rincon de La Vieja, I found this little blurb about how it got it's name, and want to share it with you:

The name Rincon de la Vieja is translated as 'Old Woman's Nook' and refers to the legend of a young girl whose lover was thrown into the volcano by her father, after which she became a recluse with healing powers.

There are a few different hiking options in Rincon.  There is a 16 km round trip hike up to the Von Seebach peak and Rincon de La Vieja crater which takes about 7-8 hours and it's supposed to be a pretty tough hike (but soooo cool!  You get to see the top of a volcano!).  Two of the Germans I was with (Sandy and Henry) had already done that hike and they said it was really cool, but difficult and while they didn't use a guide, all the park people highly recommend going with a guide and definitely tell you not to go by yourself (When you pay the park entry fees, you actually have to register your hike and you have to check back in when you return so they can be sure nobody has gotten lost or fallen into the volcano! crazy!).  Since I am accident prone anyway and nobody else was headed up to the crater, I decided against that route.  And the cone was already clouded over, so the weather wasn't so great for a hike up to the top anyway.  (Plus, we got up to the park around 8:30 am and the park closes at 3, so time-wise, it was kind of cutting it close...)

So instead, we decided to do the 10km hike (there and back, 5k each way) down to the La Cangreja Waterfall, and if there was extra time, we'd do the 3km "Las Pailas circular trail" when we were done.  We headed off toward the waterfall, and were immediately wandering through the beautiful lush rain forest (yay!!!!).  Shortly thereafter, we crossed a fun suspension bridge and saw MONKEYS!!!  When I was in CR on vacation last year, I saw all kinds of monkeys everywhere I went, and while I've been living in Costa Rica for two months, I haven't seen ANY monkeys! (Except the one chained to the tree in Nicaragua, which just really doesn't count!).  Here are some pics:

Here's a little critter that looked like the guys I saw on the beach in papagayo...We also saw a little guy that looked to me like a miniature wild pig sort of thing, but I don't think that's what it was.  (Does it feel like playing "where's the animal" with my pictures?!?!)

About twenty minutes in to our hike, it started to rain a little bit and we all had to bust out our rain gear, but it fortunately never started raining very hard.  I think that would just have made it more slippery and dangerous :)  But alas, we were in a rain forest, and what's the point of being in a rain forest if there's no rain?  After meandering through the forest for a while, the trail opened up and looked more like the African Savannah.  In fact, near Liberia, there is a "zoo" called "Africa Mia" which is home to a bunch of African animals, like Zebras and Giraffes, so this area is known to have similar terrain to areas in Africa.  Sandy, one of the Germans I was hiking with had lived in Zimbabwe for six months and even commented on how much it looked like Africa:

This was a really interesting hike, because we sort of went back and forth through really lush, green areas, and more open grassy areas.  And there were parts that were nice and "easy" and then there were lots of parts that were super steep and it was like rock climbing!  Overall, definitely a good work out, with lots of good views and crazy tress, and loud sounds (there were cicadas or something similar in the trees that were crazy loud at some parts!  But in general, the sounds of the jungle are just pretty cool.)  Here are more pics:

The pic above is actually, I think, an agave plant, which is what they make tequila from.  I recognized it because my host dad was watching a news report about them and so we had a whole discussion about agave plants and tequila :)  That's what the plants looked like...only on the news, they were on a farm :)

Finally, we made it to the La Cangreja Waterfall, and it was so totally worth it!!!!  I've never seen a more beautiful waterfall in my life!  I really couldn't stop taking pictures!  And fortunately I had packed my swimsuit, so Sandy, Viktor and I hopped in for a very refreshing swim!  That water is actually quite chilly, which was really nice since it's so hot in CR!  The power of the waterfall was pretty impressive too...it definitely pushes you back toward the rocks!

This is the other side of the waterfall pool..the river the water leads into.

For those of you that are wondering, I only fell one time on my hike, which, given the steep/slippery trail/rocks in some areas, is actually super impressive.  The only time I fell was when getting out of the awesome waterfall water.  Turns out I do not have natural grip on the bottom of my bare feet.  Of course, of all the places to fall, that was the best since I just fell back in to the water.  But I do have a few bruises from the fall.  The Germans were like "are you okay" and I was like, "yea, it's no big deal, I fall a lot, I'm used to it."  They probably thought I was crazy.  Whatevs.

After enjoying the view and eating some lunch, I got my co-hikers to pose for a pic with me.  Here are Henry, Viktor and Sandy.  Sandy and Henry are both teachers in Germany, and Sandy is traveling around Costa Rica and Nicaragua for four weeks on her summer vacation (good use of summer vacation for sure!).  Viktor is living in San Jose for a month doing a "practicum."  He's in school to become a doctor, and as part of his program, he has to observe in a hospital in a foreign country for a month.  Not a bad choice of location on his part!  He's obviously using his weekends to explore the country.  And, fun fact, he's half Mexican, half German, so he speaks Spanish really well!  An extra handy skill to have while living and working in CR!

After a delightful swim and break, we began the trek back out to the park information center.  The way back was a little tougher than the way there, because it was a lot more uphill than the way down to the waterfall, but it was still so beautiful that it was impossible to complain!  Once we had finished our first hike, we hung out in the main picnic area for a while and rested.  But we didn't wait too long because we all wanted to get in the shorter, "easier" Las Pailas trail.  

The Las Pailas trail actually was easier, but there were definitely some pretty steep inclines, lots of rock climbing and a TON of mud!  It was way muddier than our first trek, but I guess that makes sense since this path took us closer to volcano-y stuff (and this volcano is known for it's healing-power-filled mud...there's a hotel that makes serious dough on letting tourists get all muddied up).  Here's what we saw:

Cool tree.  The "original tree" was gone, and only the parasitic growth was left.

 One of many lizards and other cool critters we saw.

The "fumarolas" were sooo cool!  Literally just volcanic smoke coming out of the earth in a bunch of different holes:

hehe...super hot Jacuzzi?  (bleh, I hate jacuzzis!)

 The "volcancito" was pretty cool too.  Also, a lot of the "smokey" areas smelled pretty bad b/c of the sulfer.  So it really wasn't that pleasant but it looked really cool!

 HOT HOT HOT!  Beware!

 Mud pots!

 A log bridge :)  fun!

 Water pots:

Coolest plants of all time.  Viktor happened to know a lot about plants and vegetation for some reason, and he told us about these little guys, which just looked like weeds (heh).  When you touch them, they have a muscle-like reflex that causes them to close up.  It's really cool and we had a lot of fun playing with them, though we're not sure how this reflex protects them or how long it takes for them to open up again.  Hopefully we weren't being too mean...

 More water pots....smelled like sulfur!

Here's a brochure of all the animals that we could have seen in Rincon.  In addition to the spider monkeys, we did see the guys in the last column in rows two and three.  I only got a pic of one of them, but it's always fun to see wildlife in the wild :)  I am glad however that we didn't see any snakes!!

After finishing our day of hiking, we were all pretty exhausted!  We literally hiked for like six hours straight and it was amazing!  Other than having to get up at 6 am on a Saturday, it was all worth it!  I enjoy getting up to the mountains at least as much as I like to hang out at the beach, if not more.  Hopefully I will be able to make another trip to Rincon later in the year, when there's less cloud cover, to hike to the top of the volcano (but only if I find someone to go with me!  Any volunteers?!?!).  Yay for beautiful Costa Rican rain forests!  Oh how I love it here!!!  On a random side note, I've officially been in Costa Rica for two months, which means I only have four months left.  I'm having such a wonderful time here that four months doesn't seem like anywhere near enough time.  But I'm glad I've been able to take advantage of all the fun stuff to do while I'm here :)  Yay!