Hikers - We Cut a New Trail!

Yesterday, Armando proudly announced that he had completed the new trail. He’d finally done it! He’d finally managed to cut a new trail through the old secondary forest, which connected our famous Ceiba pentandra Tree to Los Alvarados Charral. We have been talking about doing this for the last two years.

We already have a network of nice trails connecting all the pastures and upper woodlands to the hardwoods at Tigre Hill. We call this our easy trail, although you work up quite a sweat hiking it, because it doesn’t require hard climbing or agility. We also have trails going down into the old growth forest, including my favorite Waterfall hike. This spectacular hike takes about 5 hours to complete, but visitors rarely get that chance because we usually have to cut it short and bail out because of an injury.

What we needed was a shorter trail, which allowed visitors to experience old secondary growth forest without committing to more than 2-3 hours of hiking or risking mishaps. So after much machete work with the guys, Armando told me it was ready for me to hike.

But was it really ready? Armando’s idea of a trail is not something most humans would even recognize. One time, after getting lost on one of his ‘trails’, he realized that the guys would have to clean it up enough so that I could at least see where it went. Sometimes I think these guys navigate their way through that forest by scent! It’s amazing enough that he created a trail through jungle without using GPS. But he assured me that I could perfectly handle the new trail.

So off we went: me, Armando and Armando’s grandson, Little Armando – a cheerful 12 year old kid, with freckles, red hair and a wiry body equipped to climb all over the place like a monkey, just like his grandfather. Some of our dogs also came along, as usual. We started from the Charral and began hiking down into the forest. Armando designed the trail to take us past interesting trees and it zigzagged down the mountain. After the first heart-stopping, precipitous drop, I discovered that Armando had not cut the easy way down – it was certainly the most interesting way for botanists, but not easy. And yes, if they could manage it, visitors too would marvel at the magnificent Guayabon (Terminalia oblonga), Guanacaste (Enterolobium cyclocarpum), Nispero (Manilkara sp.), Mora (Maclura sp.), Ficus species, Brosimum colorado, Cedrela species, Guarea glabra, Guachipelin (Diphysa Americana), Cenizaro (Samanea saman), Yuco (Bernoullia flammea) and many others - plus some we could not yet identify.

In fact, Armando made a point of cutting the trail to reach not yet identified trees so we could take botanists there in the future for an ID. On several occasions, rather than follow the natural terrain along flat or gently sloping areas, he would swoop us down a steep incline in order not to miss, say, an unknown tree in the coffee family. Maybe a Genipa - but quien sabe? There are some genuine puzzles down there that we need help in figuring out. I just hope we can find dendrologists who are willing to give it a go.

We did see some interesting details related to natural succession. The fast growing trees, such as Guazuma and Achiotillo (Vismea baccifera), were already in decline as the slower growing hardwoods began shading them out. We saw a beautiful Chaperno (Lonchocarpus sp.), in full bloom, completely enclosed by a massive strangler fig. It only has a few more years yet of life but it still mesmerized us in its captivity with a canopy full of gorgeous violet flowers. Nature is cruel sometimes but, as Armando says, the dying all served their purpose in life.

When we got back, I was filthy from climbing and falling (neither Armando had a hair out of place of course) and Little Armando observed that perhaps they could cut stairs into the trail to facilitate future hikes. His grandfather gave me an alarmed look as if to say: “Say it ain’t so! Say you won’t turn a pristine forest into a tourist’s Disneyworld. What could I say? The only possible compromise. We would need to hike it several times to tamp it down enough to gain decent footing and perhaps the deer would lend us a hand by discovering it and using it as their highway.

But with inventory work yet to be done, I could never insist on the easy way.