Waterfall Hike

Its been a while since I’ve had time to blog—scroll down for an update of the highlights of this week.

As for today. After a lovely breakfast, I asked Rob what he wanted to do today and he said, “Let’s hike the waterfall.” The waterfall is in San Ramon, where I lived both previous times I was in Nicaragua. Now that we’re in Mérida, hiking the waterfall involves considerable more effort because we’ve first got to go the 5 km to San Ramon. Alvaro found me a perfect little mountain bike to use, and Rob and I took off. I’ve got some pretty substantial bike anxiety about these roads, but I knew I just needed power through. Its only really bad for about a kilometer around Mérida—so many jagged rocks and steep, slippery hills. When we got to San Ramon, I actually wanted to keep going for a while and ride past all the places I used to visit when I was here before. So we rode past Chico’s pulperia, Rodolfo’s house, the entrance to the Volcano Forest (where I did my pilot study), etc. Then we went back to the Biological Field Station to begin the waterfall hike. Both previous times that I’ve been to Nicaragua, this is where I’ve stayed. It was so strange and familiar to see my old room, the Rancho where Pablo taught classes, the kitchen where we had dinner. One of the cooks working today was Isabel, and she recognized me and came out to say Hola.

Rob and I began the hike to the waterfall. The trail has changed a bit since the last time I was here because apparently there was some kind of earthquake or landslide within the last 2 years that destroyed sections of the previous path. I was actually pleased to see that it was more rugged. There were more rocks to climb over and more scrambling through the stream. This is the fourth time I’ve done the waterfall hike, and each time the path has always been made of a bit more concrete, and there’s always been more tourists’ candy wrappers littering the trail. So this time I was glad that it was as rugged as ever. When we got to the waterfall it was no less magnificent than the previous 3 times I’ve seen it. In fact, I think it was more magnificent. I can’t come up with words to describe it, so I’ll just include some of the pictures we took.






When we descended back to the field station, the head cook, Don Alberto, was waiting at the doorway of the kitchen. He called my name and came running out to hug me and kiss my cheek. It was good to be remembered. I certainly haven’t forgotten the little treats he gave me when I was lonely during my pilot study: fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (my favorite), a precious rare scoop of rum raisin ice-cream, and the occasional hummus for my sandwich (though it was green, so I’m not sure what they made it out of). He beckoned us to come into the kitchen and made us the sweetest lemonade I have ever tasted. We chatted a bit; everyone wants to know how Pablo and his daughters are doing and if Pablo really got married again.

When we finished our lemonade and chatting, we biked back home to Mérida. My legs are pretty tired after all of that, so hopefully they will get enough rest on Sunday and be ready to head out to the forest again on Monday. Until later then.