Day 26 Sharing an inspiring story

Day 26 Sharing an inspiring story

Laura and Andrew have been walking with us for a few years and just got back from their honeymoon ... thank you for this!

Hi Dave & Sue! 
We just came back from our honeymoon to Costa Rica (it was beyond fantastic!) and I wanted to pass on a quick story.

So on one of our vacation we decided to do a hike of an extinct volcano called “Cerro Chato” near the town of La Fortuna.  We read the synopsis and thought, great, it’s only 3 km and back, it should be fun!  The trip organizer did ask us twice if we really liked to hike though, We wondered why...of course we like to hike!
  
The next day Laura, Marko (a fellow traveller) myself met our enthusiatic guide Angelo at the base of the mountain...
 ...and started to climb ... and climb  ... and the “hike” turned out to be pretty much straight up a slope that was getting steeper and steeper!  At least there was a (very cold!) lake to swim in at the volcano’s mouth!


Note that the “fog” behind us is actually a cloud.

 Coming back down! Here’s a view of La Fortuna from about 1/3rd of the way up to the top.

So it turns out that although the horizontal distance was only 3000m, the height was 1100m!  That’s like climbing the CN tower twice.  From the ground to the tip.  The ground was like taking two steps at a time, with the stairs randomly broken and crooked.  It’s about 200 m higher than Vancouver’s Grouse Grind.

All the way back down I kept looking down the path and wondering how I managed to make it to the top.  It was gruelling, and humid, and sometimes I couldn’t hear anything over my hard breathing and the thumping of my heart, but somehow my legs propelled my out-of-shape, overweight body to the summit and back.  The only explanation I could think of was the workout we got from the weekly walking group – our most active period of the week in 2011 by far!  I think I can positively say that what you both taught us and had us do was what kept me going on farther and higher, and without that training I would have definitely turned back well short of the summit.

I’ve always wanted to see the top of a volcano, and thanks to your help now I’ve fulfilled that life dream.  Thank you so much, and walk on strong!
 Cheers
Andrew