There are tons of wild creatures including pumas and havallinas. We only saw lots of birds and pesotes (small possum/racoon looking guys) and heard a wild pig forraging around the bend. He squealed when he caught wind of us and ran off in the other direction. I headed out at 8am with my guide Miguel. Miguel was no slouch with the machette either as you can see here.
I was the only one on this trek which suited me fine, so we decided to do the hike where we went along the ridgeline instead of going down in the canyons. Miguel told me that this trek was longer and more difficult than the canyon trek because we went for an extra 2 hours and the ridges were quite strenuous. I hope he was telling me the truth because I can't imagine a much more difficult hike. The paths were tiny, if there at all and i'm pretty sure Miguel got lost a couple of times even though he didn't let on, cuz I saw no trail at all at times!
Along the way we stopped at different vistas and Miguel told me that off in the distance was Volcanoes Pacaya, Agua, Feugo and other ones where I had started my journey over a month ago. Although the skies were clear with a touch of haze, it seemed crazy that I had gone so far and only ended up less than 40 miles from my starting point. Of course it's a 4 hour ride to get to the starting point due to the mountainous terrain and impassible canyons, but close nonetheless.
Here you can see a few of said volcanoes in the background. We stopped at a wild orange tree and ate fresh oranges, Miguel cut open a small tree and gave me some plantanillos. He said that plantanillos are great with a little salt and lime and a bunch of beers over a football match. I said we called them sunflower seeds back home but the joke missed its mark. The plantanillo was the core of the stalk that was peeled back exposing the center. The only thing I can describe the look would be a very large scallion where only the center was edible. You had to peel back a few layers to get to the good stuff. They had a nice vegetable taste similar to some greens that I can't really pinpoint. I loved 'em. We also found some wild berries that looked like blueberries but were quite tart and had a big seed that was about half of the berry itself.
We took some strange detours that I could only gather were shortcuts, but by Miguels body language
I felt we were dodging the workers on the coffee finca we were cutting through. The finca was part on National Park land. He said 75% of the park was national land and 25% was private land and grandfather claused in where property owners would retain rights and still be able grow their crops, only they could not cut down any more trees. My feeling about the body language came to be true when another guy with a machette yelled at us to stop and I saw Miguel cower just slightly. It turned out that this guy was a park ranger of sorts and he had been behind us on the trail some ways back. When Miguel popped open the plantanillos he left the leaves and remnants on the trail. The ranger only wanted him to throw the remnants off the trail so that others (who didn't know the rules of the national park) wouldn't come along, see some plantanillo scraps on the ground and chop down entire groves of wild plantanillos. Miguel apologized and we were on our way.
Later we saw the Pacific and some mountains of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
I only fell once but it was an epic fall on the saddle of two small peaks where each side dropped over 100 feet with only a small path to walk on. Luckily there were tons of brush and shrubs to keep me from tumbling.
I think I scared poor Miguel half to death as I did my best impression of a turtle on its back not able to get up. He had to put down his machette to help me up. Besides a few scrapes the only thing I hurt was my pride.
