Hiking Tripui Canyon

After a cocktail hour reunion with Jan and Jim from Penticton last night, as well as their friends Doug and Jill from home, we spent the evening reading in the Chalet and retired a bit early. This morning we got up about the usual time (6:30-ish), had coffee, compared notes with all the neighbors on activities for the day, and declined the offer to go sailing with Carl again. At 10:00 we took off in two cars with Jan and Jim, Doug and Jill to hike the Tripui Canyon. The “trailhead” is a mile or two down the road from our beach, however to call it a trailhead is a bit of a misnomer, as there’s really no trail. Instead, we spent the next 2+ hours climbing up the most phenomenal canyon, filled with giant boulders, pools of water, some palm and other scrub trees, and loads of butterflies. The boulders are enormous, the canyon is steep and very high, and it was a bit intimidating to imagine how all those boulders came to rest in their current spot. This is not a place you’d want to be in a heavy rainstorm. Or an earthquake. We were scrambling (hand over hand over feet) almost the entire time. Several times we would not have found the proper path through the boulders and smallish cliffs were it not for someone else happening along who knew the way and could point us in the right direction. At several points we had to climb through “key holes” that required us to remove our backpacks and squirm up through a narrow chimney for 20-30 feet, essentially in the dark. At another point we had to remove our shoes and socks and wade through a shallow pool (knee deep) to get back on the proper path upwards. The water in the pools was clear and cool – too cool to swim in, but it felt nice on hot feet coming down. We stopped for lunch after a while, then turned back down, re-tracing our steps. It was a really lovely hike. If we come back another year, we might start earlier and plan to go further up where we hear there are fabulous waterfalls to be seen. Those of you who are hikers and mountain climbers would absolutely adore this hike. Now we’ll take showers, head into Puerto Escondido to post the blog and check email, come back for happy hour with the neighbors, prepare our chorizo with veggie wraps for dinner, and tomorrow we plan to head (once again) to LaPaz. Playa Juncalito is definitely a place we plan to return to on our way back north. Lovely spot!