Alpha 2: An amazing trek with amazing people

Sam Bryant takes us on Alpha 2's epic trek across a continent:

So after 240 kilometres, 10 river crossings, about 300,000 steps taken, countless blisters, one horse-back jungle evacuation, one Dragon (almost) conquered and 2852 metres ascended and descended we made it. We walked from the Caribbean to the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica in just 17 days.

We started fresh faced and clean clothed on 13 July about 2km from our intended starting point as our bus managed to sink in the sand, so we dealt with our first Raleigh trek challenge by leaving it there and started walking.

The first leg of our journey took us along the old banana railway line through settlements and plantations. After crossing an old railway bridge we made our way to our first camping site, which turned out to be in some nice person’s garden. 

During the next few days we started to find our walking feet and managed to cover 20km in one day with some spectacular views over massive fields of banana crop. The following day was spent tackling the seemingly endless hills to the Barbilla Rangers’ Station where we prepared for the next phase of our journey... The Jungle. 

The jungle was an incredible challenge through knee deep mud, slippy and steep terrain and even the odd snake. A highlight was staying a night in a mud hut, sharing our floor with a pig and dealing with a curious horse. After the jungle we had a smiley Fieldbase crew waiting for us with an awesome bread and butter pudding. 

The next couple of days were fairly uneventful until we gained two new team members in the shape of Big Dog and Little Dog, aka The Alpha Dogs. Day 9 was our first proper ascent day and we pulled together as a team and managed to complete what was potentially our hardest day in super quick time, arriving three hours earlier than we had been managing on previous days. 

The following day we made it up to our highest point, 2852m above sea level, and from there we started to descend down into the Pacific side of the country, an incredible feeling. After that we intended to climb up Cerro Dragon but were thwarted by overgrown paths, but it was still fun as we managed to get our first view of our ultimate goal, the Pacific Coast. 

The last few days flew past and before we knew it we were on day 17, our final day. We practically ran the 17km that day and the team all stepped on to the beach at the Pacific Ocean. The sense of pride, relief and happiness when we finished made all the previous tough days become a distant memory. 

We would all like to send our thanks to our incredible Project Managers, Louise, Andy and Johnny, they were with us every step of the way and we honestly couldn’t have done it without them. It was an amazing trek with amazing people and we all saw Costa Rica in a way that only a handful of people ever will. 

Brilliant.