Monteverde

After returning from a whirlwind weekend and jumping straight back into classes, I finally have a moment to compose my thoughts. You will have to excuse any grammar mistakes, because it seems as I learn more Spanish, I forget how to speak proper English.

1/20/12

As soon as school got out, my three travel companions (Adam, Steven, and Megan) and I rushed to our various homes to pack for the weekend. An hour later we reunited in the park and began the adventure!

A short taxi ride and 4 hour bus ride later, we arrived at our destination: Monteverde. We found an amazing hostel (Montalena) to stay at, conveniently located right across from the bus station. We paid the equivalent to $7 per person to stay there, and we had a private room! Plus the hostel was clean and offered free breakfast and internet—we thought it couldn’t get better than that. The owners of the hostel hooked us up with some of the best adventure deals for Saturday: Hanging Bridges and Canopy Tour and Night Hike—all for less than $100. We slept soundly but woke in the morning with anticipation of what was to come.

1/21/12 Mañana

We enjoyed our free breakfast at the hostel, which was delicious with the exception that I accidentally put salt instead of sugar in my coffee. Bleh!

The Hanging Bridges (Puentes Colgantes) tour was very informative and a fun introduction to the forest surrounding us. Monteverde is situated between two cloud forests and so the fauna and wildlife are very diverse, not like you would see anywhere outside of Central America. Other people in our tour group were from Spain, Argentina, and another part of Costa Rica. The tour guide wanted to translate the information into English for us, but my travel companions and I decided that it would be good practice to hear it all in Spanish. Thankfully Adam and Steven spoke a lot of Spanish, and they could translate some words for me. New words to add to my vocab list: raíces (roots), rana (frog), y vid (vine).

As we were about to cross the first bridge, I heard a “rkk, rkk, rkk” sound. My first comments were, “Wow, listen to those interesting birds.” When I turned around to look for this unusual bird, I saw two men up the hill raking leaves. A very unusual type of bird indeed. :)

The zipline/canopy part of the tour was breath-taking, literally. Not only did we get to “fly” over beautiful views of the forested hills, but we had to hike up the mountain aways to get to each platform and were often out of breath once we reached the next station. It was so amazing to get to do the zipline again! It is an incredible sensation that is hard to describe unless you do it. This time, we opted with the English-only group (although they were from all over the world as well), because we figured it might be nice to have those life-saving directions given in our mother tongue.

On one part of the zipline, I arrived at the platform and waited for the common command “jump” (salto) in order to hook my caribiner onto the next wire. But instead the guy hooked me onto a different wire that went straight down. Wait a second.. I thought, but before I could wonder any longer. He said, “Lean back,” and I realized I was repelling down to the ground. I’m proud to say I only screamed half the distance down, but it was a surprising feeling nonetheless. I was also very thankful that the repel slowed down as I got near the bottom, so I didn’t crash into the ground. PTL.

The other very exciting and unusual aspect of this canopy tour was that they had a run called the “Superman,” which is exactly how it sounds. You climb a flight of stairs overlooking the canyon below (VERY high up), they hook your two harnesses (lower and upper back) to the wire, you lie down, spread your arms and glide across the open sky. Sounds easy, right?

My version actually goes like this:

1. Listen to the guide say “next” and take trembling steps up the see-through staircase.

2. Ask many questions when the guide is trying to hook your harnesses into the wire.

3. When the guide tells you to lie down, say “Que?! What?!” and give him a look like he’s crazy for asking that.

4. Lie down and put out my arms like Superman because that’s what people did in the promo video. (look closely below and you'll see me!)

5. Scream my lungs out as I shoot across the wire, about 300 feet above the canyon. 6. Realize half-way through that I can open my eyes.

7. Become fascinated with the view but not wanting to turn for fear that I will spin around and get stuck.

8. Realize, hey, I’m getting close to that platform. Realize, hmm..I have no way of stopping myself.

9. Eyes widen and body tenses in anticipation of what will be hard landing, slamming smack into the guide.

10. Feel the momentum start to slow, a quick jerk where I’m rocking back and forth and land feet first on the platform.

11. Say “Gracias a Dios” and cheer on the next person about to attempt the impossible.

12. Walk to the next station, cheerfully named: Tarzan Swing. Ready Set Go. Read about it HERE.

Tarde

We returned from the canopy/hanging bridges tour/madness, found lunch and all took a 2 hour nap. It was well deserved, folks.

Now feeling well-rested, although with heart still beating excitedly every time I recounted the morning’s adventures, I was ready to join my friends for the Night Hike. I had no idea what to expect but figured it couldn’t be as life-threatening as the Tarzan Swing or Superman run. When we arrived, the guide handed us all flashlights and began to ask where we were all from. It was amazing to hear the different places people traveled from: Israel, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, etc. The guide was hilarious and extremely knowledgable about the animals in the forest.

Thanks to the guide’s attention to detail, we saw:

-a 2-toed sloth and her baby

-a lizard

-an orange-kneed tarantula

-a white-nosed coati

-the tailfeathers of a toucan

-leafcutter ants (“the only army Costa Rica has”) J

-a tiny frog

-and 2 katydids

Highlights:

*Being able to see a myriad of stars; Megan and I saw a shooting star at the exact same time!

*Watching the guide lure a tarantula out of its hole with just a stick, a leaf and a bit of saliva

*Walking in complete darkness for a few meters and suddenly seeing a glowing log thrust in front of my face. The guide pointed out that there is a type of mushroom that glows in the dark there. As our eyes got adjusted to the dark, we were able to see patches of these glow-in-the-dark mushrooms all over the forest floor. Amazing!

After the night hike we went to a local restaurant and joined the tourists in learning to dance to Latin American music. Muy divertido!

1/22/12

We joined two other people we had met at our hostel (one from Berkeley, CA and one from Holland) to hike up in the Monteverde cloud forest (bosque nuboso). The hike was incredible, if not a little tiring, but well worth the extra stairs.

Highlights:

*Walking softly and listening hard to hear birds or other animals in the forest.

*Admiring the beauty of it all and taking in the stillness that contrasts with the city noise we experience in San Jose.

*Arriving at the top of the mountain and looking across at some gorgeous views of the opposite cloud forest.

*Arriving at a set of waterfalls tucked into the mountain. Wow!

*Also, we were able to see one of the rarest of birds here in Costa Rica: the quetzal. We searched all over the forest, but it wasn’t until we were taking a break near the parking lot of the reservation when we saw a bunch of people gathered and pointing up into the trees. We looked up, and sure enough, a real, live quetzal was sitting in the branches. Like it was no big deal. Such a privilege!

*When leaving Monteverde felt bittersweet because of the friendships made there and life-long memories shared.

*Photo credits go to: Adam McCormick and Megan Golden.