On our first day in SJDS, my travel buddy Aimee and I noticed the Jesus statue at the top of the hill on the northwest end of the beach and decided that we wanted to walk up there one day.
The short hike is meant to take about 45 minutes from town, so we left the hostel around 4:15pm in order to arrive before sunset and before they closed (official hours are 8am-5pm, but I think it’s more or less adjusted for the sunset time, we had heard from others that they close at 6pm) We were both wearing flip flops, but I had brought my Nikes in my backpack.
A local had told me a few days before that you can walk along the beach and once you pass the white hotel with the red roof, you need to exit the beach and then follow the streets all the way up. But for some reason, I forgot about this advice or just chose to ignore it. I guess I figured we could exit somewhere else. We kept walking all the way to the end of the beach where we were met with a rocky shore and what looked like a closed hotel or vacation property. There were two security guards at the gate to the hotel. “Pasamos por aqui?” I asked him, pointing at the hotel, wondering if we could pass through the grounds to get to the other side.
They asked if we were going to the statue, we said yes, and one of them pointed at the rocky shore leading around the hotel and said we could go around that way. We thanked them. Without looking back at them, knowing full well they were going to watch was about to unfold, we started making our way precariously across the slippery rocks. Still wearing flip flops by the way.
Luckily, we made it to the other side in one piece and found a road. Things were looking promising. We found some steps overgrowing with grass and a field we thought we had to cross, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go after that.
I finally decided that we must still be inside the property and that we should exit the gate to the main road.
Outside of the gate, we found a sign indicating the path, toward the upscale Pacific Marlin neighborhood.
We made our way up the steep hill. It felt good to get some exercise in. There were some nice views here already.
We arrived at the marked concrete steps at around 5:15pm and climbed them to the top. There are 96 steps, according to the numbers marked on them.
We gave the guard 60 cordobas each ($2 USD, the price is $1 USD for locals). It had started lightly raining but the views were still incredible, and the rain was a relief from the heat.
All around the grounds were brightly colored crabs that I had never seen before in my life. I followed one into the church which is located underneath the statue, where all I could hear was the scuttling of more crabs. The guard told me they were land crabs, I looked it up later and found out they are a specific type of land crab called moon crabs, or Halloween crabs, and that they are found on the Pacific coast between Mexico and Ecuador.
After spending about 20 minutes at the top, I changed into my Nikes for the trip down. The guard locked up the church and left when we did (around 5:40pm). Probably due to the rain or the fact that there are (sadly) hardly any tourists right now due to the political situation (it’s also the rainy season and tourism is low anyway). We made it back into town just as it was getting dark.
Tips for hiking to the Cristo de la Misericordia statue
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Go early in the morning or just before they close to avoid the heat and have better lighting for pictures
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Bring water as there is nowhere to purchase any on the path
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Bring comfortable shoes, $2 for the entrance fee, and a camera!
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