The day was finally here, the one that was to be the apex of this journey...(drumroll please)...ziplines! The zipline was actually invented in Costa Rica and for those of you not familiar with this adventure sport, it involves climbing into a harness, attaching said harness to a pulley that is then attached to a galvanized or stainless steel cable, and then falling from a height to a lower location while being zipped along the cable. Wheeee! Once the excitement of falling at 40 mph begins to wane, that's when you may want to introduce a trick or two. There is: swinging one's legs, letting go of the approved hand locations, leaning backward into a prone position, bending further back in an attempt to touch one's toes, spinning in circles, going two at a time to gain speed, flipping upside down, facing backwards, doing the splits while upside down, etc. etc. etc. For those interested in installing a zipline in their own backyard, please see http://www.outdoorfunstore.com/zipline.asp. Would it be too crazy to use a zipline as my means of egress from my 2nd story apartment down to the street?
The day began at 6:30am when the alarm went off. We had decided to attempt to deplete all of our stored adrenaline in one day and had booked a 7:20 canyoning trip and a 1:30 canopy tour. The first thing that I did was, of course, remind the person at the desk to look out for my camera. Then I was free to eat a quick breakfast and head off for a morning spent rappelling down waterfalls. Seriously, we rappelled down waterfalls. This excursion was second only to ziplining on my list of must-do things in Costa Rica. The van drove us a short way down the road to meet up with a jeep which drove us out to the canyoning site. DeLisa, Nicole and I got onto the last jeep in the line and thus were the group that turned back for two late arrivals, but they were nice guys, so we weren't too hard on them. Also, turning back gave us the opportunity to see 3 fabulous mental postcard moments: 1) a 3-4 year old boy trudging barefoot up a hill with a few long pieces of wood held over his shoulder. The tot just seemed to be feeling so terribly sorry for himself, and I can't say that I blame him; 2) a group of 3 cows, one laying on the ground, with the other two standing protectively over the cow on the ground - it was a poignant moment; 3) what had to be the world's fattest turkey - this thing was absolutely huge - HUGE, even I, a vegetarian for 15 years, wondered what it would taste like.
Finally, we were at the spot and were ready to go. The group of 20 or so were all kitted out with harnesses, identical blue jackets, and blue hard hats. Somehow, DeLisa ended up with a white hard hat which came in handy later on. Oh, by the by, I've never been a huge fan of the Meyer-Briggs personality test, which purports to classify people and assist them in forming career and life aspirations by determining if any individual is an: Extrovert/Introvert; Intuitive/Sensitive; Thinker/Feeler; Judge/Perceptive. I sincerely doubt the validity of this personality assessment but all the night before, during dinner, I kept finding myself thinking, "Goodness, I love how DeLisa thinks; this woman is just so clearheaded and rational." Well, as you might have guessed from the lead up, it turns out that we are both ENTJs. Interesting. It was very refreshing to talk to someone who sees the world in a very similar way to how I view it.
Well, all of us lined up at the first rappelling site and prepared to descend a cliff. The order of the tour was a little screwy and so the longest drop was the first one. I guess that it was good to practice on, but it would have been fun to try it after we had done a few other cliffs first. I hadn't rappelled since I was a teenager at Hume Lake summer camp and I worked up quite a case of nerves while waiting my turn to jump off of the cliff. Finally, I was over. Left hand above me, right hand below me, and JUMP! Hmm, this was a bit trickier on jutting rocks than I remember it being on concrete. I made it down in 4 jumps and landed feeling exhiliarated and shaky, always a good time. Next was the trip down a waterfall, right through the water. Unfortunately, the guides waited until we were already trying to rappell to tell us that we should just try to jump straight down. I tried in vain to find something to push off of and ended up ignonomously sliding down the rope. ¡Qué lastima! There were three more sites, all of which were fun, but I really wanted to go back and redo the first two now that I knew what to expect. Instead, we went off for a wonderful lunch and coffee and chance to purchase a CD of photos. Remember that I said that DeLisa's white hat would come in handy? You can pick her out of the photos, unlike the rest of us. There are about 10 photos that I think might be of me, but it's hard to be sure. Maybe when I see them on a bigger screen...
We were bused back to the hostel for a short period of downtime in which to shower, dry off and change clothes for the zipline trip. By 1:30pm, we were back on the road again, this time to hit the canopy with Aventura Mundo. We had to sit throught the obligatory demonstration, but were in a converted school bus being pulled by a tractor (seriously) in a very short time and then were hiking up to the top of the mountain to begin our descent. The first line was fabulous, fast and through a narrow break in the canopy over the rain forest. It was a good chance to get back in the groove for ziplining and I mostly held the recommended position with my knees drawn partly up and my feet crossed, with my left hand in a glove holding onto the rope and two safety ropes attaching my harness to the pulley and my right hand in a thick leather and wood glove-type device behind the pulley on the cable. This device is the brake and allows me to slow down or come to a stop, though some people apparently brake a bit to frequently and get stuck partway along the cable without reaching the next platform. When this happens, you get to pull yourself along the cable, hand over hand. The guide on the platform might come out to help you, but he might not. Oh, just as an aside, other than Noelia, our nature hike guide the first night, every guide I have seen in Costa Rica has been male.
The second line, I rode upside down with my legs split. This was so much fun that on the 3rd line I rode upside down trying to touch my toes in an arched position. This was a not-so great idea because when I came up out of the bend, I was disoriented and was facing backward. I almost put my hand on the cable in front of the pulley , which can be a bad idea when you are going that fast, and only barely turned myself around before reaching the next platform. Whew! That was actually a little scarier than I would like. Geoffrey, the lead guide with whom I had been speaking during the hike up (practicing my Spanish) told me not to do that again, and I had to own up that I deserved the scolding. For the next two lines, I was very sedate, and then, the adrenaline took over my body again. The 6th line is the longest and goes over La Fortuna waterfall. It was stunning, absolutely beautiful, and I'm afraid that it made me do the splits! The next line went back over the waterfall and right through the canopy and I rode that one with Geoffrey so that I could go backward and film the fall. It was awesome. Next, I went upside down with my feet on the pulley, then with my hands off and feet out. My foot actually touched a clump of leaves. Then, it was the 10th line and that was it. I rode it in sedately, but with Andy (one of the guides) shaking the line to add some pizzazz. At the bottom, I was just one of the happiest people in the world. I swear, it was a religious experience for me.
All over the world, tour guides are some of the most sexually active people on earth. First you take a tourist out of their native environment, you introduce him or her to some sort of quasi-dangerous activity, and as the Dutton and Aron bridge study in 1974 showed (http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Misattribution_of_Arousal_Paradigm), many of these tourists will believe themselves to be aroused rather than merely under the influence of adrenaline. That said, these guides are also typically young, fit, adventurous, English speaking, and guaranteed to have no strings attached. Therefore, I was not surprised when one of the guides, Andy, invited Nicole and me out for drinks that night. I was noncommittal and had no intention of meeting the guides. After all, I'm pretty sure that I know what they would be thinking and I had no desire to mislead anyone. However, Nicole thought that it might be fun and said yes, and then we were committed. After all, just because they would expect one thing, it doesn't follow that we are required to oblige.
After setting up our date, we continued on to a faux Maleku village, which has been built on the site to introduce visitors to Maleku culture, and to sell off their handicrafts. The Maleku actually live a few miles on the other side of town, but this is where they do business. We all said "kapi kapi" to each other and made knocking gestures (this means hello) then we sat on logs arranged around a very smoky firepit while the gentleman in the leather skirt spoke to us in Spanish, which is not his native language, and Geoffrey translated into English. It was pretty boring, mostly because it was painfully obviously that this was just a prelude to sell us the handicrafts which covered every available flat surface in the lodge. The crafts, especially the carved coconuts and balsa masks were actually really nice, but they were just covered in mites, spiders and assorted other bugs. This is not something that I really want to put in my pack.
After the shopping trip, we all mounted up to ride horses back to the main office. At first, this was a bit of a dud, since my horse didn't even seem to want to move, much less pick up the pace, but Geoffrey came through and slapped my horse on the butt with a switch and we were off. We galloped down the road in a 3 person race (one of the other tourists was also running with us), and I was just finding my seat and feeling comfortable when we arrived back at the barn. Qué lastima. Geoffrey then tried to incite me to dismount by grapping hold of a beam overhead and swinging off over my horse´s rump, but I resisted the temptation and dismounted like a sedate adult.
Nicole and I again gave in to the sales pitch and bought the CD of photos. We then jumped on the shuttle back to the hostel and prepared for dinner and our hot date. This is when the curse of the camera struck again. Nicole couldn't find her camera. She was certain that she'd left it either in the bathroom at the zipline office or in the shuttle. We asked the new guy behind the desk at the hostel to please call the office of El Mundo Aventura to ask after it. He called and no one answered. Since this guy seemed a little more together than either Yselia or Alonso, I decided to ask about my camera, too. Now, the story changed. This guy told me that there was a problem, that since I was not the last tourist off of the bus, the driver would claim that another tourist must have stolen the camera and I would not get it back. What he suggested was that Nicole come back down at 7:30am to try to recover her camera before too much time had passed. For me, through the incompetence and platitudes of Alonso and Yselia, he was fairly certain that my camera had already been given away as a Christmas gift to the driver's family, but he did say that I should come down closer to 10am and that he would then call the Gray Line owner and we'd try one last time.
With only my underwater camera left to tell the tale of our adventures, Nicole and I headed out for a subdued dinner with Pietr. We visited a new ATM for cash and then stopped at a Soda Shop/24 hour pizza place that was excellent and very cheap. Then, it was time to go back to Chela's to meet our dates. We did convince Pietr to come with us as our bodyguard by offering to buy him piña coladas. Like a true gentleman, he agreed to come and to protect our virtue. When we had gone to Chela's on Saturday night, the place was about half-filled, with nice music and a chill vibe. We were expecting more of the same. Instead...we got...karaoke night! I regret to inform you that I am no longer a karaoke virgin. I gave in to Nicole's intense peer pressure and belted out I Will Survive. We tried to convince Pietr to join us, but apparently, this song is well known in Holland as a drag queen anthem, and he was worried about his masculinity. Instead, he winced and watched in fascinated horror while we mangled the song.
After we had been at the bar for half an hour, it became apparent that we had been stood up! Can you believe it?? Sure, the evening would have ended in disappointment for Geoffrey and Andy, but they didn't know that! I can' t believe that they stood us up. We stayed for about 2 hours and the highlight of the night was watching an elderly American couple jitterbugging on the dancefloor. Everyone had lots of fun, and since it was Pietr's last night in La Fortuna, we were happy to stay out a little late and chat with him.
We went off to bed with visions of lost cameras and defecting guides dancing in our heads.
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