Most importantly: New Pictures!
My apologies for the sudden radio silence. Wednesday night, I got a call from the school saying “Don’t come in on Thursday or Friday” which for me translated to “Surprise 4-day weekend!!” This started a couple mad hours of planning, packing, coordinating with friends, and literally having to run to the bus station. But once the initial chaos was over, it was a beautiful weekend. I hopped on a bus on Thursday morning, headed for Monteverde, Costa Rica: Map.
My first transfer found me contentedly munching away on a fresh mango from a local farmers’ market while waiting in Cañas and I managed to wedge myself into my bus seat, even full of fresh fruit. The woman who sat next to me on the following bus decided that I wanted her to talk to me for 40 consecutive minutes and, after ranting about education, conservation, and natural medicines, started pulling plants out of her bag and shoving them in my face saying “Smell! Smell!” while jabbing me in the arm to demonstrate different kinds of bug bites. Meanwhile, I tried to continue read my book, but kept getting pinched by the giant woman who was slowly swallowing up my entire [very tiny] seat the more demonstrative her actions became. I happily escaped from her clutches at the next terminal where I saw a fellow backpacker. Thinking I’d seen her somewhere before, I awkwardly asked her if we’d met, but she had no recollection of me and neither of us could figure out why we’d have crossed paths before. Her name was Tanya, she was from Germany and she’s on Month 2 of a 6-month backpacking trip through Cuba and Central America, ending in San Francisco. It took us the remainder of the day to figure out that we’d met last weekend in another hostel where one of the volunteers I was traveling with [hides face in shame] peed on her (long story). Fortunately, she didn’t hold that against me and we ended up spending the rest of our weekend together. Our next bus that took us to Monteverde traverses one of the 10 worst roads in the country. It took us about 2 ½ hours to cover the 20 miles of rutted mountain roads before finally arriving to the little twin towns of Santa Elena and Monteverde. Upon stepping off the bus, we were immediately accosted by people trying to drag us off to one hostel or another. We stood back silently and let them try to outdo each other until we had a room for $6/night with hot water and free breakfast. Not bad for not saying anything. When we got to our [very nice] hostel, we met an Englishman named Joe who was also staying there. The three of us stuck together until Saturday morning when he left. After “cooking” a simple dinner of nachos, Joe, Tanya, Earnest (another traveler), and myself sat around talking, sharing travel plans, swapping stories, and enjoying the cool night mountain air.
Friday morning, Joe, Tanya, and I woke up at 5:30 and headed out to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve. Being in the rainforest was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. The early morning sun barely filtered through the dense canopy cover and leaves bigger than my torso covered the trails. The whole place reverberated with a continuous buzz from all the insects, big and small, that crossed our paths. It didn’t smell “earthy” like I expected, but rather fresh, like the oxygen factory was on output overdrive. The air was damp, but cool- a welcome relief from the heat of Liberia. Strange birdcalls echoed through the trees, one in particular that sounded like a poorly-oiled machine, but was eerily beautiful. Vines dangled from every branch and everywhere were fallen trees, crushed by the weight of the moss they had once supported. The cloud forests lived up to their name and had a cloudy misty fog in all of the valleys. The treetop islands reminded me of the floating islands in Avatar, minus the eagle-dragons and the blue people. We spent six hours hiking the deserted national park, looking for monkeys and sloths (with no luck), spotting strange and colorful birds, centipedes, and frogs, and nearly stepping on a snake and a pretty nasty looking tarantula.
After six mammal-less hours of hiking, we headed back to the hostel for a nice afternoon nap in the grey drizzle that had set in. After sitting around outside for a bit and chatting, we FINALLY spotted our sloth…climbing on a power line of all places. We ooh’ed and ahh’ed and took lots of pictures. A good thing about the sloth’s lack of speed is lots and lots of time to take pictures. One of the volunteers, Poppy, finally made it to Monteverde that night and Joe, Tanya, Poppy, and I all went out for dinner together.
Saturday morning was, by far, the high point of the trip. The main attraction in Monteverde, besides just seeing the rainforests, is the canopy tour. Five separate companies run canopy tours of various excitement levels and qualities. Tanya, Poppy, and I picked “Extremo,” the most intense of all of them. After some delicious pineapple and banana pancakes prepared by the hostel owner, we were picked up and driven way out into the mountains and into the cloud forest. After getting strapped into a million harness straps, helmets, and gloves and listening to a quick safety briefing, we were out on the lines. I’d never been ziplining before and it was a tremendous experience. The 3-hour course was made up of 12 cables, a rappel, and a Tarzan swing. The cables stretched over tremendous valleys- the longest were 1968 ft, 2460 ft, and 3280 ft- and had an average height between 225-540 ft off the ground. All of the shorter cables, we did solo, and two of the 5 longest we did tandem. Flying across these valleys, I could see cows, little houses, fields, and lots and lots of trees out below. The crosswinds were strong and sometimes it was hard to keep going straight. I would have loved to spin around, but I was a good girl and followed the safety rules about holding on. The rides were really beautiful and you could see over the treetops or down into the trees in someplaces.
One of my two favorite things was the Tarzan swing. Looking down a hundred feet from the platform, attached only to a rope like a giant pendulum that swings you out over the valley. Falling a hundred feet is quite fun, especially when it’s instigated by a shove off the edge. Even those of us who wanted to jump were pushed (probably so we’d swing instead of just drop) off the edge of the platform. There’s a brief moment where you’re just in freefall before the rope catches your harness and swings you back on course another hundred feet in the air, looking out over the cloud forest valley. There’s something wonderful about the feeling of just dropping, a bit of fear, but mostly just adrenaline, waiting for the jerk, knowing that everything is going to be okay. Somewhere on my bucket list: bungee jumping.
My favorite part of the whole experience was the Superman cable. This was the longest and highest cable of all of them: half a mile long, 540 feet off the ground. Instead of being strapped in sitting, the harnesses were reversed so I was strapped in at my shoulders and waist and ankles, suspended stomach-down over nothing. On the other lines, we had the option to brake if we were uncomfortable, but not with the Superman. Once I left the platform, there was nothing between the ground and me flying overhead. The noise of the wind and the whistling cable left my ears ringing from the speed. Below, I saw more cows and a little farm and my tiny little shadow, arms out like a wannabe airplane. Speeding headfirst, facedown, suspended over a valley with no way of braking whatsoever ranks reaaally high on my list of exhilarating experiences.
The rest of the afternoon turned grey and we napped before hanging out with some new friends we met while ziplining for the remainder of the evening, swapping stories and lying around in hammocks. I took off the next morning to catch the only bus going north for the entire day and made it back in time for lunch with Yelba. This weekend gets all five stars from me.