The day of walking.

I went today for the hardest trek I ever did, with the possible exception of that one time I climbed on foot the stairwell separating the Valley of Kings from the Valley of Queens, some three or four thousand steps. Certainly harder in purely mechanical terms than any Retezat joyridesⁱ, since we were talking of that recently.

Truth be told the Costa Rican countryside is very beautiful, if a little strange in places :

It was a very modest 8km all told, but blessed by 20% to perhaps as much as 30% inclines the whole way. Satellite data shows 8.12 km total, 371m gain, 375m loss , highest 1267m, lowest 919m -- which is probably roughly accurate, and would come to a 9.13% average incline the whole way (though the climb was a lot stiffer than the descent -- we only climbed for about a third of the way, as these things tend to happen. In any case I tell you I shan't soon forget that spot an Isuzu 4x4 couldn't negotiate and wasn't even the steepest ascent we ran into. None of the road we took would be practicable in any sense or to any degree if it even vaguely froze here at all.

This is how the road goes.

We ran into absolutely no one on foot ; though the occasional dirt biker or obnoxious quad fatty. In fact, I don't think the general population is much into (or for that matter even capable) of hiking. Three out of four cab drivers were winded by a three flight ascent under moderate load (and four out of four were petrified of the extremely friendly and entirely not hostile resident pitbull).

That thing says "Sala de Juegos" and that they reserve the right to select their clientele -- although I can't shake the impression that the only juegos have to do with dropping the soap and assorted parties in your pants that get gate crashed.

In any case, this is roughly where a kid on a dirt bike went two inches past me only to crash into a parked car, hurting his right knee on impact and his left knee in the follow-up fall. He also got his back into a strategically placed fire hydrant, but amazingly enough there was no blood and he stood up afterwards, if a little shakily.

Damn bikes!

Up and down the river.

An extremely shy tree lizard guy. In general Costa Rica enjoys an impressive variety of small reptiles in a dazzling array of coats and colors. Getting them on film is another matter, however. This guy had a distinctive dark blue body with a scarlet head, but you can't really make it out in the shadow he adhesively inhabits.

Names provided by the department of redundancy department.

I betchup they gots shotguns an' bitin' dogs, Jessup!

1. Tropical jungle, bitch. You have no fucking idea. Banana grass grows wild here. [↩]