Fern Gully

Day 39: Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo

An absolutely gorgeous virgin primary rainforest park....which has the added benefit of being virtually undiscovered by most tourists...so we were the only ones there yesterday.

I am getting ahead of myself though...first we had to get there...and that mean some bus adventure in Costa Rica...the fun partbeing the bus that was suppose to let us off in the middle of the highway in front of the Zuriqi station.

The driver decided we would like to be dropped off at the Areal Tram station instead, about a 20 minute drive further in. Cincia was the one who spoke for him, so at least it wasn´t the language skills to blame. Now the problem is you can´t take unguided hikes from the Areal Tram station, but luckily the ranger there told us there was a smaller lesser known outpost abotu a 30 minute walk back down the highway in the direction we´d come from.

So we started walking, it is an interesting experience walking down a windy mountian highway with cars and truck doing 70 km/hr near you, but thankfully there was space for us to do so. And the dirvers were really all so supportive, about every second vehicle would toot its horn in greeting, after about 10 mintues we were a little annoyed, after about 20 we gave up and waved back.

We got to the parque entrance and were given the map by the ranger and told there were two trails from that point, one that was a 2-3 hour hike and about 5 km...and another that was abotu an hour and 1.6 km. In case anyone is wandering in Costa Rica they really over estimate hike times.

We set out on the longer hike first, running across the road to the entrance when there were no cars coming.

The hike was amazing...I have absolutely amazing, the forest is breathtaking, and there is ecosystem upon ecosystem existing there. We kept stoping to look at yet another new plant growning. And whoever said rocks aren´t living beings has never been to this parque, there was not an inch that was not govered in something green and full of life.

The mosquitos were not present, which was good because i forgot my Watkins and had to borrow some of Silvia´s OFF! whichis less potent. We were excited abotu this, but 3 out of four of us (myself, Cincia and Eva) did get bitten by some other mysterious but that none of saw and only felt, I managed to squish it and flick it off, but didn´t see what it was since I reacted too fast. Luckily, other than being very painful for the first 5 minutes there seems to be no effects whatsoever, and we proceeded bugfree.

We ran into a very large tree (picture bellow) and a vine that we tried to swing on, but wwas too slippery to get a good hold on. We learned that green and wet means absolutely no tractiona dn so avoided stading on most rocks, the trick beign that sometimes the other alternative was squishy and deep....

I don´t have any pictures of animals because they are smart enough to avoid humans ont hese trails, but we did hear them. THe howler monkeys in particular had a distinct sound...and if you have everheard one you will understand why Eva lost her balance and fell when we heard the first one. They have a deep resonating sound that is kinda between a wolf and a bear...neither of which live in Costa Rican rainforests. We also heard bird, and what was either a capuchin monkey or a very small tamarin...they are harder to tell apart.

I am so glad we did decide to do the hike on our own and didn´t fall for the guided tour option, because it gave us a lot of time to explore and go down smaller paths.

We stopped for lunch by a small river, with ridiculously clear water that I was so scared i was going to step in and pollute when we had to cross the river. The crossing was interesting since we had to do it across rocks holding onto this cable that was secured to the ground. The hight was definitely decided upon by a person much taller than I and there was a ppoint where I slipped into the water. Only ankle deep, and in case your wandering Gore-tek lining does work!

I was the second to slipp and by the end of the day, Sylvia won the traction award and was the only one not to have fallen. Poor Eva fell in a stream and got soaked, Cincia slipped on a wet duct thing, and I managed to missjudge a rock...it was more purple than green. A nice vine near by helped cushion my fall.

We saw lots of bugs, spiders, and even big butterflys! I was soo excited when I saw my first blue morpho (well and the only one so far) it was so cool it was flying across the river and sparkled blue every time the sun hit its flapping wings. It was actually bigger than I expected. We also saw an orange butterfly I cannot put a name to, but was probably as big as both my hands together.

Needless to say we were all absolutely in love with the forest, and it is only 2.5 horus by bus to get there from San Ramon...which is quite close. We decided we definitely had to go again, and next time we might try hiking up the volcano at the north end of the park.

We left just before 4, after completing the shorter hike in 30 minutes...including time to look around and headed across the highway to try and flag down a bus. We were told this was how it was doen here, but we all had our doubts. To our surpirse, 15 minutes later a bus to San Jose was passing by and stopped when eh saw us waving our arms. We were so happy we cheered.

Total cost of the day...including buses, lunch, tea/coffee, and park admission = $19

Not too shabby.




This is the big tree near the start of the longer hike. It is big and that is its trunk, not a concrete wall, despite how it looks. It is the largest we saw, but is definitely not the only tree of its kind in the forest. To help you picture it, Cincia, in the light blue shirt, is probably about 5´10" in hight. yeah.


The beginning of the trail, it got rougher soon afterwards, but stayed equally green. I love it!



The Rio Sucio (dirty river) and a vista of the mountains we found on one of our side trail adventures. The river gets its name because of the volcanic sediment that runs into it from Volcan Barva.




Our lunch spot. *sigh*



Some of the plant life we saw along the way....



On the banks of Rio Sucio, we decided to walk amoung the rocks, which paid off because we found some amazingly beutiful and so clear pools of water. I so want to hit up the north end of the park next time and see the waterfalls, because if the water ehre was this nice, I can´t even imagine.