Stupid pretty

Happy weekend!

You would think that after four years of university education, I would have better words to describe the beauty of a trail.  However, you would be wrong.  The other day Marisa, Wrenn (water quality intern) and I hiked a portion of the Sendero Pacifico and I just kept saying "This is stupid pretty."  I also kept saying "No me gusta" (I don't like), but that was mostly in reference to the downhill portions of the trail that were super steep. 

As I mentioned before, there is an entrance to the Sendero Pacifico not too far from campus.  So after breakfast, the three of us headed out with packed sandwiches and started on the trail. 

Map of the trail

Close up of the portion we hiked.  If you look, we started at the Universidad de Georgia Costa Rica, walked along the road toward the Mini Super and the Heladeria, and then followed the yellow/yellow-red portion to the first bit of the Bosque Eterno de los Ninos (Children's Eternal Rainforest). 

You can see why "stupid pretty" fits, right?

Some parts of the trail looked like fairies belonged there

Some of the trail went right through/along people's land, so we passed several pastures with cows.  It kind of blew my mind, seeing the cows in fields that had such steep hills

We made it to the Children's Eternal Rainforest! We didn't really have any distance goals when we set out, we only knew that we would have to turn around before it got too late to avoid hiking back in the rain.  

Kind of hard to capture in a photo, but an example of how steep some of the sections were.  We just went very slowly and carefully down.  

Lunch with a view

Another example of the destruction caused by Hurricane Nate last year

I think we hiked in total about 8.5 miles.  You can go much farther on the trail and there are places to stay along the way, so I hope I get another opportunity to explore more.  Overall, it was a great day of hiking with friends :)

Bonus photo: this is from our walk back after Zumba last week.  We got lucky and not only was it not actively raining, but the sky was incredible.