As we left the airport Monday morning, our taxi driver asked if we planned to rent a car.
No, we said, we thought we might rent a scooter for a couple days, but otherwise we planned to walk.
But your house, he replied, your house is way up in the mountains, in the hills.
We know, but we don't think it will be too much to walk.
He seemed skeptical. A day or so later, as we walked by a neighbor, she called out "Why don't you hire a car? You think walking is good for you, eh?"
We laughed, yes, yes. Walking is good for us.
But really, the walk from the coastal road all the way to our house is perhaps as long as 20 minutes. And that is when we let CutieBabyBoy walk some of the way chasing chickens, pigs, and cats and throwing rocks and coconuts as far as he can.
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| Trailhead |
Yet other than a handful of kids, we haven't seen any islanders walking. They all have motorbikes or automobiles.
All this to say, when we saw a cross-island trek on the map, we weren't sure how to take the descriptor "difficult". One of the tour books wasn't any more helpful, "Experienced walkers only." I've been walking for nearly three decades, is that sufficient?
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| Heading up into the mountains |
After a few days of enjoying the coast of the island, we were ready to explore inland. All of the roads circle the island rather than cut across it, so hiking seemed like a good idea. And really, could you pass up the opportunity to walk from one side of the island to the other?
Well, we couldn't. We had a late start today because we had a rough night last night. (CutieBabyBoy should not eat pomegranate seeds, apparently.)
So after our morning naps, we were raring to go on our cross-island trek. We'll just go to the trail head and see what we think, we told ourselves. But the walk to the trail head was long. Long enough that we figured we were already more than a quarter of the way across. By the time we walked back home, we could have made it to the peak, and once to the peak, it was just as long to finish the walk as it would be to come back to the start. (Apparently our rational skills did not arrive with our other luggage.)
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| CutieBabyBoy happy on Dad's shoulders |
So off we went. Perhaps not the most prepared, even though we do consider ourselves to be experienced walkers, CutieBabyBoy excluded. No problem, though, he can ride Daddy's shoulders. Problem. While the first 500 yards or so was well cleared, the rest is tropical rain forest. Have you been in a tropical rain forest recently? There is not a whole lot of room for heads in among all of the tree branches, much less room for little people riding higher than heads.
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| Riding Daddy's hip |
We were committed though, so CutieBabyBoy just moved to Daddy's hip.
One of the key problems of living in the United States is that we are not trained to think in metric measurements. If we had really stopped to assess the trail, we might have noticed the ratio of incline. As it was, we were very thankful for the thick tree roots that kept the soil in stair-like condition. Imagine climbing a mile-long, uneven, steep staircase.
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| An "easy" spot on the way up. |
We also seemed to recall that this side of the hike was steeper than the other. So as we labored up, feeling like at any moment our hearts would burst right out of our chests, we thanked our lucky stars that the trail down the other side would be so much easier.
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| Glad to be alive at the top. Notice impudent rooster to my right and the ocean to my left. |
Ah, the foolishness of the inexperienced.
We reached the top triumphant, took a picture of the impudent wild rooster who seemed irritated that he couldn't get away from humankind even on top of this mountain, and then quickly started down as we realized we might lose daylight before reaching the opposite coast.
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| SOS and CutieBabyBoy with opposite side of the island behind them. |
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| Looking back at the "Needle," the highest point we reached. |
Where as coming up seemed like a cruel march up a flight of stairs, the way down was perhaps the most treacherous route I have ever traversed. In places, the trail carved in the side of the mountain was not more than a foot wide. Where as plentiful tree roots on the first side broke up the long stretches of steep mountainside, the other side had none of those nifty steps. In a few places previous hikers had left ropes. Other places we could see where ropes had been attached, but now were conspicuously absent to assist us in our slide down the hill. I have no idea how SOS managed with our day pack on his back and CutieBabyBoy riding his hip. I required both arms and a good bit of bum-sliding to navigate the slippery slope. Our path crisscrossed several streams so many times that we lost track.
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| Our trail was marked with these orange triangles. Our excitement every time we saw one prompted CutieBabyBoy to add another word to his vocabulary, and his eagerness to spot them was helpful on a number of occasions. |
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| Part of the trail going down |
I slipped once coming out of the riverbed. My right foot was a good four feet above my left foot. I came back down to the smidgen of flat ground next to the river while SOS passed CutieBabyBoy to me and anchored himself high above me. I then gave CutieBabyBoy back to him and hooked my fingers into his shoelaces to pull myself up.
Even with this and losing the trail once, we thought we were making pretty good time. But still, darkness was descending and we had no idea how far we still had to go. We were so grateful for the little flashlight tucked into our bag for "just in case". And we were even more grateful when we finally saw moonlight at the end of the tree branch tunnel.
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| We later came back to take this picture of the last portion of our trail. This picture was taken in full daylight with flash... imagine the visibility at night. |
In case you are curious, I wouldn't recommend anyone do that. Hike to the top, yes, do it! Carry a toddler and end the hike in the dark? Uh, no. I might even suggest you skip the second side all together and just go back the way we came. Today was the first day we've been here that it hasn't rained... and this is their dry season! I'd hate to think what our path would have been like if it had been wetter.
All that to say, if we came on this trip to make memories, mission accomplished! I think we will probably go easy the next couple days.
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