Well Team...
My birthday night was a great meal with some fun folks from the Hostel. We ate at the awesome Soda Alejandro accross the street, and everyone but Hedvig got burritos (she got desert...twice). Super awesome burritos. Amazingly good for 5 bucks. Maybe it was 4 bucks. When you're in Costa Rica, and most places, you're best not to eat at the tourist places that are 3 times as much, just eat at the local spots... the food is usually better, more authentic, and a heck of a lot cheaper. The crew got me an awesome fried banana desert with ice cream that we all shared. It also had only 3 candles on it... that feels about right. :)
We finished up by playing some card games. Burro, or Donkey, or Jackass was the most fun. I can't remember the dutch name.
Monday was all about traveling... and a cold. Turns out I'm going to finish my trip with a bit of a cold, but I don't think I'll let that stop me. 11 hours to get from Quepos to Monteverde. 8 on buses. 3 sitting in Puntarenas waiting for the bus. Puntarenas is a strange place. It feels like a beach town after the apocalypse has cleared out most of the people. There are a lot of empty buildings. The beach is covered in tons of deadfall trees. The souvenier shacks are mostly empty. There are a few people around... but not a lot. And the bus station has a lot of burned out bus carcasses sitting next to it. I wonder if this is the other side of Costa Rica... or if it's just still off season and the people will come in hordes soon enough.
The ride to Monteverde is not paved. The folks in this cloud forest region don't want all the development to come, so they have decidedly NOT paved the road up the mountains to the place. It makes it take probably 2 hours longer than it would with paved roads. The scenery is incredible. naturally it rained for part of the drive up there, but at times the sunset came through the clouds and you could see all the way to the gulf of Nicoya and the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty spectacular with the sun parting the clouds, the green green GREEN mountains, and "Halcyon + on + on" playing on the Ipod.
In the rain in Santa Elena (the town you actually stay at when you goto Monteverde), it was raining, and my new umbrella treated me well. I checked into Pension Santa Elena,... aka Mondo Taito lite. It wasn't the raginig party, but it was loud., lots of people, and music playing. I wanted to sleep cause I was sick, and ended up in 3 different rooms before I had one I could just crash out in.
Tuesday, the last real day o fun, was ZIPLINE time!
They call these Canopy Tours, because you cruise over the trees and valleys on Ziplines. The ads act like you'll really experience the nature, see the trees up close, and see the canopy animals... um, yeah right. This is about FLYING! Flying fast and free (ish) over valleys and trees on ziplines and pulleys. This is one of the things YOU DO, when you goto Costa rica. Other places have it, but this is the place it was invented over a hundred years ago when it was actually used for study, and has turned into this crazy fun adventure. They call it some sort of extreme sport: It isn't. It's super safe and controlled, and lots of fun.
Our group consisted of 3 austrian girls (who had been on the bus on the way up...OH! On the bus ride up a pickup truck hit the side of our bus on the narrow dirt road. It wasn't a big deal, we were stopped about 20 minutes as they sorted it out, but I just sorta shrugged at the austrian gal next to me and said "welcome to Costa rica" with a smile). Anyway, they were on the tour, along with a couple from... you guessed it... Holland! And a big group of solo travelers who were all cruising together for a few weeks. We suited up with harnesses, helmets, and gloves. They give you a quick demo and you are off.
First line is like 150 feet long. You hook on, and slide away. Supposedly stopping yourself with your leather gloves....um...sorta. Never really figured out how to make that work, so we were sliding into the end pretty fast. But there were brake systems on the fast one... that consisted of a guide and a rope and a rubber stopper that you slam into and swing to a stop. It was fun. Well, it wasn't long till we hit the long ones: 450 meters...that's 1600 feet for us Americans. Woooooooo! Flying out over a valley that was 400 feet deep. It does feel like flying.
It was windy and a bit misty, but you could still see a long distance. Dirt splatters on the face. It's good. There was 14 lines in all, and the last and longest is 1200 meters long... that's almost a mile. Yep, flying, superman style, face down over a valley for a mile... pretty darn cool. yahooo! There's also a Tarzan swing, which is a long long rope attached to a tree limb, and you jump off a ledge and swing waaaayyyyyy out over the trees. Awesome.
The couple from Holland, Babette and Tomek, were super cool. We took pics of each other and they invited me to goto the cloud forest preserve with them, so after switching to a quieter hotel for tonight, which only cost 8 bucks, I ate at the "typical food" kiosk, and we headed out. They'd rented a little Suzuki 4wd, so we rolled on the roads and paid our 17 USD to go to the preserve. It earned it's name of cloud forest. Rainy a bit, windy, misty and cool. Beautiful thick trees and dense forest. There's a viewpoint that looked out at misty and windy slopes, but didn't see far. On a clear day you could almost see across the country from here. The suspension bridge is awesome. This is also a typical Costa Rican thing. They put up these bridges so you can walk at the top of the trees and see them for real. It was great to hang out there and look at all the different types of trees, some of which support 70 different kinds of plants that grow on them. Cool.
I had to take a nap, as my cold was kicking in. But at least I had my bright orange umbrella to stay mostly dry in the cloud forest!
A last "typical" meal was had with Babette, Tomek and a french couple they'd randomly run into in town (whom they had givn a ride to Tortugero 2 weeks before and just happen to see again here... ahhh traveling!). We spoke of our next trips... India perhaps? Maybe the legendary Argentina / Antarctica adventure? Who can say? The french couple had been to India for 3 months. They say it is CRAZY... I think I'm ready for CRAZY. Costa Rica and Panama have been awesome, but there was definitly very little, if any, culture shock. I feel Argentina will be similar... so I might hit India or Egypt next. I'm ready to get off the bus and say "holy crap! What's going on????".
But that is the future...
for now I say goodnight, goto bed early. Wake up at 5:45am... suns up, and ready to go. Only took me 2 1/2 weeks to get on the Costa Rican time clock... and now I'm leaving. :(
5 hours on a bus, with beautiful views and music rocking on the iPod...
... and time for the final Costa Rican adventure... getting the bag back... will I find it? Did they really have it in the station?
Stay tuned,
Craig O
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