I got a reasonably early start and a good breakfast, which I was happy to discover was included in the low price of the hostel. I got the chance to chat with the other inhabitant of the big dorm room, a British Airways worker who had been hiking in the area for several days. After eating and buying a few provisions at the little Chinese-run general store next door, I headed off in search of a taxi to take me the 7 km up to Respingo, where the trail that leads to the Quetzal trail begins.
I found a taxi who was on his way to run some errands, so I decided to go along for the ride anyway, and became part of the morning ritual of dropping off supplies to this gardening shop and then picking up a fruit vendor and all her wares to drop her off a few hundred metres away to set up her stall. After that, we were off, and I was glad of the taxi ride, since Respingo seemed a bit out of the way, uphill most of the way through winding roads strewn on either side by vegetable fields.
At the end of the line, before the road turned to mud, the taxi stopped and surprisingly charged me only $2 for what the BA worker had paid $12. Feeling lucky, I headed on up the hill with vigour, trying to pass an excursion of two busloads of hikers who arrived from Boquete at the same time as myself. Fearing a school outing, I wanted to gain some distance, so I paid my pass to the ranger, who smirked and said “Did you see the Quetzal?” as if I had been standing there all morning where he was. Sometimes park rangers are annoying like that, since they don’t understand that not everyone has microscopic eyes to see a rare breed of butterfly 30 m high in a tree canopy. They can see it, why can’t eveyone else. Anyway, after a bit of pointing and straining I actually DID see the Quetzal, high high up in the tree, with its back to me. Thank goodness for my 10x camera zoom, because I actually got a good glimpse of it with that. It was the female Quetzal, which is slightly smaller than the male and has a much shorter tail, but the resplendent colouration is similar. Although I heard a good many more on the trail throughout the day, this was the only one I got to see, as they are somewhat elusive.
After 20 minutes or so of trying to outpace the teenagers, I gave up. They caught up to me and some passed me and I was ready to have a lung explode, so I slowed down a bit. If you can’t beat them, join them. So I got talking to them, and it turned out they were not a school trip at all, but a delegation of hikers and activists from Boquete who wanted to stop corporations from building a road on top of the trail, linking the two towns. The current land link goes the long way around, through David, but a road along the highland trail would destroy a lot of prime natural cloud and rain forest habitat, including a section of ancient “ash forest” which is more than 800 years old, having sprouted after the last recorded eruption of the volcano Barú, which the trail skirts around.
So in a way, I was happy to join them, and when we reached the trail head, with its amazing view out over Guadalupe and the farmland valley (now bright and sunny, in contrast to the previous evening), I stayed on with them for a speech about their cause. There was also a small religious ceremony by this odd woman called Sheila Lugacz who lives up there and is this super-Catholic woman who has apparently had 12 brain surgeries, has still 7 tumors in her head, and has had visions of Our Lady of Fatima. In the past, she put up a shrine to Our Lady on the mountainside below her house, and on this day she did the groundbreaking for a chapel she wants to put there. So she did this, then handed out medallions and rosary beads to everyone, and a small statue of St. Francis of Assissi to a little girl who seemed to be sort of a disciple or something of her (she said St. Francis himself appeared to her in the Holy Land and gave her the statue) and then we were on our way.
The Quetzal trail itself was a much less strenuous hike than the one leading up to it, and I was also in a large group of people, so we kept a steady pace. Parts were quite wet and slippery, and the terrain was varied, but there was always verdant forest all around, in a few places interspersed by small brooks and streams. The whole hike took about 4-5 hours and is somewhere between 10 and 12 kilometres; reports vary. But it is an amazing walk, charged with natural energy, and dotted with a few incredible lookout points that take in sweeping panoramas of the beauty of the forested hills.
On the far side, leaving the forest, there is another 2-3km of trail down to the road, then several kilometres more to head down into Boquete, passing along the way some small settlements of Guaymí in places like Alto Quiel and Bajo Mono.
On the hike I met an interesting cast of characters, including some foreigners like myself, but a majority of locals ranging from the very young to the very old. Because of the noise of the group, I didn’t get to see too many animals, but the company and the stories I heard made up for it.
The Quetzal trail is definitely in the top 3 day trails I’ve ever hiked, if not my favourite.
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