San Gerardo de Dota and the Mountain of Death

Today we did an 8 mile hike that covered 4000 feet of descent from a 12000 foot summit.  The Mountain is called the Mountain of death—what can I say?

We hiked through three layers of cloud forest, starting at subalpine level, then descending into Black Oak Forest, and then ultimately into White Oak Forest.

The subalpine is called the Paramo, and is what our guide called the wet desert.  The summit straddles

the Pacific and the Caribbean sides and you can see two sets of vegetation:  the dark bushy blueberry shrubs on the left and the lighter bamboo on the right.

The plants go through tremendous adjustments to suit themselves to this environment.  Leaves will be shinier because of wax used to protect the sunlight.  Mosses, bromeliads and even new leaves trees tend to be red in colour, since the chlorophyll cannot tolerate the intense sunlight.  They will turn green in the rainy season.

The black oak trees got larger as we descended, and they were covered in mosses, ferns, lichens, etc.  There is a symbiotic relationship where the tree provided support while the occupants help provide water and nutrients back to the oak.  Rains leach all of the nutrients out of the soil, so the soils here are considered very poor.

Cloud was coming in as the morning progressed.

Generally the trail was steep, rocky and tricky.  Occasionally, you would into really big round rocks that had been hurled out of a volcano some distance.

By the end of the trail, the trees were huge in diameter and in age.  This one is estimated to be at least 500 years old.  By that time, our knees were dead, we were whacked and it time to go to the bar.

I keeping seeing things here that boggle my mind.  We came upon research stations used to help establish sighting of the 6 kinds of mountain cats.  The research sets up cameras along with brushes soaked with a certain cent that the cats like.  The cats will rub against the brushes providing hair samples for the researchers to analyze.  There was a wildlife camera across the arrangement to take picture.

Now, here is the best part.  After trying to create various effective scent baits, the researchers discovered that the Calvin Klein perfume “Obsession” works very well.  Go figure.

Time to toddle...we will be at the Pacific Ocean by the end of the day.