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We woke up on Sunday; it felt great to sleep in a firm bed after sleeping in my own bed for only 2 hours, on 2 different airplanes separated by a quick nap in the Atlanta airport the day before. My nephew Aidan asked for a train from Nicaragua (he’s a Thomas The Tank Engine freak). I haven’t found one (writing this a week after Selva Negra) but I did take photos of the train toy kids play on at the resort!

The hike in La Selva Negra was surprisingly grueling. Kevin told me that I wouldn’t need hiking boots but he lied. We started out about 11 AM and followed a pretty terrible map. The area is a dry forest, apparently compared to a rainforest. There were some extremely tall trees with enormous trunks. Hanging off these trees were Tarzan-style vines, some hanging upwards of 100 feet. Closer to the ground were medium-sized trees that you could find anywhere. With the exception of the very well-maintained trails, the ground was completely covered with small shrubs and moss. This was some seriously fertile ground.

La Selva Negra is a hotel and eco reserve but also is home to an impressively kept coffee farm as well. They sell roasted beans for $4/lb. At a crossing, we continued on the flatter of two trails and ended up walking through the coffee farm a bit. Back-tracking to the intersection, we headed uphill. For a while. The main trail split and we followed the “Romantico” trail. Encountering 3 Nicaraguan girls wearing flip-flops who told us that, “no hay nada (there’s nothing up ahead),” we kept ascending.

Things were growing everywhere. Occasionally we’d come upon a wooden bench (who knows how old?) which would be soft from decay with fungus resembling a cross between a mushroom and a potato chip growing on it.

In one spot we stopped for only a moment and were accosted by an army of red ants (those commies!). All over. Up our legs. It was good to wear shorts, as Kevin and Kelly literally got “schpilkus” (a.k.a. “ants in your pants,” for you non-Yiddish speakers). From that point forward we looked down before deciding where to rest.

Trail Romantico seemed to stop and we kept going on the Fuente de Juventud (Fountain of Youth) trail. It grew steeper and more slippery as we began moving more or less straight uphill. Vans were definitely a poor choice. In some spots there were wooden steps cut into the hillside, but mainly you had to scramble up steep sections.

All in all we climbed for about 90 minutes, all the while hearing a deep, loud and unfamiliar grunting noise. This was the noise of the howler monkey (?). Echoing off all the trees, it was very unclear where the elusive beasts where. Climbing higher, the sounds became more distant, eventually fading altogether.

It was difficult to tell how high up we were going, but every once in a while we’d come upon a breathtaking view of the valley down below. At the top we got the best view. The poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Matagalpa, from 20 kilometers away, were clearly differentiated: bad, worse, and terrible. But the view was fantastic. The mountains across were the same height as we were and gave a sense of what we had just completed.

We took in the sights and continued down a longer, more roundabout trail. Easier? Hardly. Descending is more treacherous. Bad on the knees. Going down the wooden steps is bad. When I say “steps,” it is in the loosest possible sense. I’m paraphrasing myself when I say it, butnVans were a bad choice. Just so you know where I’m coming from.

I fell a few times on the aforementioned steps, once hitting my already sore back really hard on the 2×4 that made up the front of the step. Just after that, I forged a little bit ahead of Kevin and Kelly. Out of nowhere I heard a rustling noise, like if you spooked a deer in the woods of Colorado. Fucking loud, too! Kevin and Kelly caught up and I explained to them what I had heard. About 10 steps more and Kelly spotted them.

Monkeys. Big monkeys. Big black monkeys. High up in the trees. Us looking at them. Them looking at us. It’s tough to see them at first but there are more than one and less than ten. At the top of the trees (30-40 feet, perhaps). As we watched (too dark in the forest paired with too bright of a sky made photographs impossible), monkeys would jump from tree to tree.

We discussed the beauty of binocular vision.

After maybe 10 minutes we became boring to them and the monkeys took off. “I’ll never look at zoos the same way again,” remarked Kevin.

After 60 more minutes we arrived back at the hotel to find that other monkeys were high in the trees above. Photos were taken. But it was great to see the monos in the trees whilst on the hike as well; we ended up being gone all day.