Up in the mountains of San Jose
Today was a gorgeous, sunny and clear day, perfect for a hike up in the mountains. Despite the fact that we’ve already done the 3 crosses hike, 3 times on previous stays, we decided to do it again. It’s great exercise and you just never know what you’ll see. Each of our previous hikes were a different experience, this time was no exception.
When we got to the 3rd cross this time, we ate lunch and hung out for about 45 minutes. This time we met a guy from the Cruz Rojo (Red Cross) who came up on horse back. Unfortunately we didn’t know enough Spanish to get much of a conversation going. Then, about 6 local young guys came up and one of them climbed to the top of the 3rd cross in about a minute flat, and it’s tall! First time we’d ever seen anyone do that. Got a great pic of him hanging off the top of it. Muy loco!
Not long after they left, a group of 8, 20 somethings showed up. They were a mix of locals and young people from the US. Most spoke both English and Spanish so we ended up talking to them quite a bit. And they were just as crazy as the local guys we’d just seen, 3 of them climbed the cross as well. Turns out 2 of them work for the Outward Bound program. The rest worked for a non-profit group called Young life that works with young kids and teens in the neighbourhoods in San Jose. A super nice bunch of young adults!
Anyways, they’d also done the hike before but they knew how to get down the back side of the mountain to the river. Dave and I had heard there was another way down but we couldn’t never figure out where the path is. The group volunteered to lead the way down and we tagged along. No wonder we couldn’t find the path on our own because it didn’t really exist. You had to know which openings in the fence to squeeze through and then the hike was almost straight down, really, really steep. You couldn’t even see the river from where we started and even halfway down, it looked like the path just ended at a cliff. Once we hiked down from there, you could finally see where the river was.
The river hike is apparently popular with the locals on the weekend because all along it, there were groups of people eating lunch, hanging out etc. Not really deep enough to swim in but I got to soak my feet in cold water and man did that feel good!
Also found out that there’s a waterfall, another 45 min hike along the river, opposite direction from where we needed to go so we’re going to try and do that hike another day.
Check out our pics from this hike. I’ve posted more pics showing the way down since that was new to us this time. But, if you’re interested in seeing more pics of the hike up, check out the album from the first hike.