Within my first few months here in Costa Rica, I heard about the challenging Pico Blanco hike. Pico Blanco is the name of a peak in the Cerros of Escazu, and the hike up to this summit is popular with folks training for Chirripo. Even though this mountain range is literally about 20 minutes from where I live, I’ve gone 8 months without having the chance to make it up there. This past weekend I committed to staying in San Jose and decided that it was a great opportunity to finally check the hike off my bucket list.
I spent a couple of days doing research and finding maps of the hike online. Pico Blanco can be confusing because there are multiple routes that will lead you to the summit with widely varying reviews on how difficult each of those routes can be. I finally decided to try a route that began and ended in Bebedero, a tiny little town in Escazu. I rounded up some adventure pals and we made plans to head to the trail around 9am on Sunday. Things got off to a rough start right off the bat as our Uber driver dropped us off at the wrong reference point in Bebedero. I used the Bebedero bus station as our destination, but as it turns out there are two bus stops with the exact same name, about 3km apart. As we debated what to do, our Uber driver miraculously reappeared because my friend Emma left her sunglasses in his car. We asked him to take us to the correct bus station and we were back on track!
We got to the correct stop and had to wait about half an hour for two other friends to join us. At this point I was feeling pretty glad that I brought a flashlight with me, as some reviews of the trail claimed the walk could take up to eight hours. We started down the path and immediately were rewarded with some beautiful views. Green, lush mountains, bright blue skies, and shining green coffee plants surrounded us on all sides. I meticulously checked my trail map as we walked to confirm that we were on the right path. After about an hour of walking, we decided to verify that we were on the right camino. We came upon a group of guys smoking and drinking and asked them if we were headed in the right direction to reach Pico Blanco. Almost in unison they all shouted “NO”, and told us we were walking in the completely wrong direction. My heart sunk with the news.. had I really led all my friends astray? Turns out, yup I had! Oops…
The guys told us that we were several kilometers away from the trailhead and there was no way we could make it there, hike to the summit, and come back down before dark. We didn’t want to just give up on the day though, so we asked their opinion on an alternate hike. They told us that if we continued on the same path for about another hour, past two rivers, we would end up at the trail head for Las Torres Eolicas de Santa Ana, or the Wind Turbines of Santa Ana. I had heard of this hike before, and everyone agreed that it sounded like a good option! We continued on down the road, and picked up an extra companion – Tigre the adventure dog! With stripes like a tiger, Tigre led us on to the start of the next trail in Matinilla. Unfortunately we lost one of my friends, who had coincidentally done the same hike a few weeks prior. Then there were four..
We started the trek up to las torres and things were going pretty smoothly for the first twenty minutes or so. After the smooth sailing start, the path became incredibly steep, with lots of loose rocks and entire chunks of trail completely washed out. I was feeling fine with the trail, but my friend Emma has a bad knee and she started to lag behind a bit until at one point she decided that maybe she shouldn’t continue on. We debated for a few minutes what to do, and we decided that the three of us that still wanted to hike would run as fast as we could up the trail, so that Emma would only be left behind for a short amount of time. Of course, we made this decision with no idea how much longer the trail was nor what condition it would be like. We continued on our way, and were rewarded with some AMAZING views. The path did not even out much and continued to be very steep, muddy, and rocky. With Tigre in the lead, we continued along, debating whether we should turn back for Emma periodically. After what seemed like just a few minutes, but was actually a little over an hour a lone wind turbine appeared in the clouds. We made it to the summit! The summit was completely shrouded in clouds, but we made it all the same! We could only see a few of the turbines because of the cloudy conditions but I was surprised by how enormous they were. They were also quite loud, as they spun round and round generating power for the valley below. It felt good to finally reach a summit, especially after putting in so much work on the steep trail. After chilling a bit on the top, and sadly losing our guide Tigre, it was time to make our way back down the trail. This part went by quickly, but was a lot scarier in my opinion, with such steep trails and loose rocks. We passed back through mystical looking forests and eventually made it back to where we left Emma. I felt like maybe an hour tops had passed, but she had been chilling on the side of the trail for over 2 hours by herself!
At this point we were all quite hungry, but the next part of the adventure was to figure out how to get back to town from where we were. We knew that there was a bus that came to where the trail started, but it was also a Sunday and bus service can be pretty infrequent. We started to walk down the road a bit aimlessly hoping to find someone to ask for help. All of a sudden, we saw a bus heading in the opposite direction, back toward the trailhead so we all sprinted back to where we came from to catch the bus. The bus took us into downtown Santa Ana where we saw a cool looking place with restaurants in storage containers so we got off to check it out and finally get some grub. I ate some Argentine empanadas and had a delicious IPA and never felt happier! We had one more slight misadventure when we tried to take a bus from Escazu to San Jose with no change, but a kind soul lent us some change and we managed to make it on the bus. In the end, I still didn’t make it up to Pico Blanco but it was a super fun day all the same! 😊
Liz Guinessey: A Gringa Living the Pura Vida 