Day 3: Climbing in a Cloud

Largest Leaf Award goes to! It looks like a huge calocasia (elephant ear) to me maybe. I just felt so much excitement and also peace to be among all these different leaves, green green green! 

 

The trail tunneled through bamboo, I had to duck to fit, and I was glad for my raincoat covering both me and my backpack because I was painted wet from the leaves.

And I came around a tight turn in the forest trail, all the epiphytes and hanging mosses and hello! here is a cow! The little farms and fields and forest were so tightly integrated, it was hard to know what I was next to, unless I heard reggaeton music or without fanfare encountered a bovine.

It was dense grey cloud the whole time, but I did not care because color could be found everywhere.

Half-shrouded mountain. I rested from the most inside that little guy for a while, contemplating the adventure and eating a banana.

Like Dr Seuss creatures, these epiphyte puffs are so delightful to me. Also there is a bromeliad in the background.

In odd contrast to the steep muddy scrabbly trail, there were sweet chairs posted variously throughout.

The little ones remind me of bleeding heart flowers.

One of my destinations was Casa del Arbol, a tree house in a park at a viewpoint, with a big swing. One could swing out over the edge and, allegedly, view the sweeping below. I furthered the fact I was in a cloud.

Once I climbed back down low enough however, I was out from inside the cloud and could see the town of Baños beneath.

Setting off in solitude, with my Wikiloc app (it helps you follow trails with a GPS, even offline and allowed me to go where otherwise I would have been impossibly lost), up into this volcanic mountainside, felt adventurous and good and I was so excited to be moving. Although it wasn't raining in town, up above it in these hills, it was like suspended rain, a thick mist of magic, so that as you walked your destinations appeared only as you approached them. By the end of the 5 hours of being out, my feet were so wet that with each step my shoes said, "slurp", "slurp". I acquired a bamboo walking stick for myself and loved it's lightness and how balanced it made me feel on the slidey parts. I climbed over 3000 feet of elevation gain and went just under 6 miles. I saw a black and white pudgy little hummingbird, heard frogs singing wetly, foraged some blackberries, said hi to the cows, and barely saw any humans. I watched shards of cloud soring upwards as if they were birds, I felt like I was in a dramatic chemistry experiment.