…or a feat of determination that still amazes me.
Our tour of Tortuguero (see part one) over, we flew back into San Jose on Sansa Airlines, picked up a rental car (after receiving a long lecture on everything that might go wrong on Costa Rican highways and byways and making all of us nervous as butterflies), we hopped in the car and made the interesting drive up to Monteverde. Why interesting? Because the last 20km or so of winding road up the mountain isn’t paved. It’s gravel, and we saw evidence of several small landslides (very small—not blocking the road…okay maybe half the road in one place only) because of the rainstorms in the area.
We had rented a rustic (very rustic) cottage a couple of kilometers outside of Monteverde proper, settled in after the long drive (see paved road above plus a stop at a local sustainability and conservation center from which we were renting the cottage) and enjoyed another torrential downpour. But coming from New Mexico, we love the rain. It was downright chilly, but felt so cozy.
The next morning, sunshine. We hopped into our rental car (four-wheel drive Nissan Pathfinder), and then promptly jumped out again as Robot Guy had a little trouble navigating the steep, steep driveway, and, frankly, I was terrified (We’ll get back to terrified later). The three sprouts also abandoned the vehicle, but we were able to find a better path for the wheels and successfully left the cottage.
We drove to the entrance of the national park, and joined an early morning tour. Monteverde has become a major tourist destination in Costa Rica (yet they haven’t paved the roads), and the early morning tour allowed us to enjoy the park with fewer tourists. But that wasn’t the highlight. We hadn’t hiked more than a couple dozen steps into the park, when our guide stopped, set up his scope and said, “Quetzal.” That’s right. The pinnacle of any birdwatcher’s list is the quetzal, and I’ve seen one in the wild. It doesn’t look real. Bright red and green, with white, it’s part of the reason Monteverde has become a tourist mecca. We hiked several of the trails in this beautiful cloud forest. And the number and variety of hummingbirds we saw was breathtaking.
Back to the terrifying part. Youngest daughter was a trooper and never complained once, but we knew she wanted a different kind of experience. We found Sky Adventures, a local, well, not amusement park, but extreme activity center. Zip lining. But this wasn’t your glide over the canopy at a decent height zipping. Oh, no. These were eight zip lines, the longest of which was over half a mile long and the highest was 328 ft. (http://skyadventures.travel/skytrek/ ; Apparently they have an even longer and higher one at Arenal, but we didn’t go there, thank God. If you want to watch someone else’s video of the zip lines here you go. Yes, it was that loud, and it was a lot windier when we went. At 5:35 is where you really get a sense of the height. My daughter filmed her rides, but I don’t have that footage yet.) I closed my eyes for the first two lines that crisscrossed the canyon we flew over. I did peek for the third. When I finished the hour and a quarter session, I distinctly felt that I had accomplished something and was downright proud of myself. Youngest patted me on the back and said, “You conquered your fears. Good job.” She, by the way, had a blast.
Day six started with the drive down the mountain and onto our next adventure, which is the next blog.
–Gabi
Books I’m reading now:
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Words, Books, and Other Magic 