The route today gradually dropped from the mountains towards the coast.  It followed a gravel road, travelling through some spectacular scenery.  The vegetation alternated between unspoiled jungle and planted fields of coffee.  This is the coffee picking season and the berries are picked when they are red; but (like blackberries but with reverse colours) the berries start green and then develop their red colour gradually, with the time to reach the perfect redness varying on a plant. So a single bush has be picked 3 or 4 times across the picking season.

The bushes grow on slopes which are astonishingly steep, and the picking here is all done by hand.  Workers come up from Panama or down from Nicaragua to pick the berries – earning about $3 per full sack.  Costa Rican workers supervise but generally leave the actual picking to these migrant workers. They get paid on a piece work basis; a skilled and quick worker can fill up to 10 sacks a day, and so earn up to $30, depending on the state of the bushes. It looks back breaking work and yet, even at these low rates, gives migrant workers the chance to earn more in a day than they can earn at home in a week.   

We started the day in a small town of San Marcos, which is dominated by coffee roasting factories.  The smell was incredible, with the whole town being enveloped in a mist of roast coffee. We were told proudly that most of the coffee from here goes to Starbucks.  So next time you sip a coffee from Starbucks, give a thought to the Panamanian migrant workers who travelled to Costa Rica for the picking season, the Costa Ricans who tend the plants through the year and operate the coffee roasters, and then transport the product from Costa Rica to whereever Starbucks have their coffee shops.  Needless to say, Starbucks probably shifts its profits to pay tax somewhere else.

From the town we had about an hour’s journey to the starting point of our hiking. The initial bus was rejected by Jairo as he insisted on two four wheel drive jeeps.  We soon found out why when we turned off the tarmac road and as bumped along a dirt road, being thrown about like pebbles. We were driving along the Camino route with spectacular views. Although in one way it would have been incredible to hike the track, it would have been 2 extremely tough days. In any event the ride was an adventure in itself. We got our first views of the Pacific Ocean and stopped at a viewpoint looking down on our final distination tomorrow, the town of Quepos on the coast.

Eventually we tumbled out of the jeeps to start out hiking. Our brilliant guide, Jairo, has adjusted the length of the days to the capabilities of the group – which mainly means reducing the length of the walks for everyone to allow me to ope with the walking.  I (David) feel mightily guilty about this to be honest but the next slowest member of the group is not far ahead of me.  There is inevitably a range of abilities in any group and I was keen for Jairo not to reduce walks to accommodate me, but ultimately he has to make the call and I have to respect his judgement. I have been pretty tired after the walks and so I guess, at least for me, he has got these calls right.

The photos of the day tell their own story, but they do not show the constant and loud background noise of the cicardias, the anthem of the jungle here. The diversity of vegetation was immense.

We ended our walk at about lunchtime at a campsite in beautiful rain forest surroundings. We then ambled down to a river to eat our pack lunches, wrapped in banana leaves.  We swam in a tributary and had our shoulders pummelled by water under a waterfall (and it was not too, too cold).  Then back to the campsite where we decided to upgrade to a “tepee” for the night – a soft bed, spectacular view and importantly a fan. We have been surprised at the cold nights we have had, especially in the mountains but even on the Caribbean coast.  We are now in HOT country.  More acclimatisation to go and no doubt we will soon be craving the cold nights we were complaining about!