ATMs, Canopy Tour, Driving, Beautiful Guides

Our first morning in Costa Rica was sunny and warm. We took showers, put on fresh clothes and got a recommendation for a breakfast place down the road. Before long I am eating rice and beans, eggs and toast and a cup of delicious coffee. Things are turning around. After breakfast, we wander through a market where many beautiful crafts are fashioned out of a rainbow of woods; different shades of red, brown and purple woods are carved and polished into cutting boards, wine bottle holders, trivets and other household items. Very beautiful.

We walk further down the road and search for an ATM. I stick in my debit card, enter my pin and enter 50,000 colones, the equivalent to $100. Account invalid, the ATM informs me. Eh? No worries, I am sure the next one will work. We walk through the hustle and bustle of the pedestrian streets and soak in the scenery. We check out a beautiful cathedral, some other structures and buildings and try several more ATMs. Every single one says my account is invalid. In total, I probably tried seven or eight ATMs, but it felt like fifty. I am reverting to my poor mood of yesterday the more times my card doesn’t produce cash and I’m envisioning it bursting into flames from trying too many times. Ashley and Adam promise to pay me in cash in exchange for putting the car rental on my card, so that will buy me enough time to call the bank on Monday and figure out the problem. We have a pleasant dinner and head towards a mall to catch a movie. We decide on Mamma Mia in Spanish and those happy Abba songs lift my spirits again. We tromp back to the hostel and crash for the night.

We wake up, eat another hearty breakfast (Ashley and I had bagels with a side of rice and beans, Adam had the world’s largest cinnamon roll) and head back to our hostel where our compact SUV is being delivered. We fill out the paperwork, I promise my first born child for any damage and we pack up. Turns out there is a nail in one of the tires, so after a quick visit back to the rental shop, we have a new tire and we’re off! We cruise along highway 1 and soak in the scenery. The music selection on the radio is an interesting mix of Spanish and random American tunes ranging from Duffy to Madonna. When we reach our marker of a certain gas station, we turn off the highway and the road instantly gets worse, but not too bad. We cruise along more, and the radio is really funny. The higher we get in the mountains, the more suddenly the radio will come in and out. The singer will be mid word, I’ll go around a corner and the radio will go dead. Sometimes the scan will go round and around the stations with not a single station to pick up. The scenery is stunning. It is hard to describe the intensity of the green of the mountains. There are several hues of greens that look like crushed velvet draped across the elegant mountains. This is like color therapy after the dirt and grime of Mexico City.

The road gets much worse; gravel and dirt road punctuated with millions of pot holes and craters make my driving slow down to a crawl at times. Neither the buses nor the locals feel burdened by going slowly and blow past us going both directions. We stop a few times to take pictures of the mountains, the clouds and the breath taking vistas. At one point we come to a huge puddle of dirty water that we have no clue how deep it is. Since another SUV is coming in the opposite direction, I wait for them to pass so we can avoid the small lake. The driver, obviously a local, pulls up alongside me smiling and asks why we don’t drive though. He promises it isn’t deep and I say that he can be the leader. He declines, so we stick with the original plan and skirt the puddle. Along the way, we blow kisses to the young boys riding bikes and they look super happy to be getting air kisses from pretty American girls.

Pretty close to on schedule, we arrive in Monteverde and after driving through the teeny town, pull over to consult with out guide book. We pick out a place that looks good and start driving again. Just down the road, we are motioned over my Anali, the smiling owner of a cute hostel nearby. The rooms are $30 for a triple, complete with free internet so we agree to take a tour. The place is super cute so we sign up for two lovely nights in Monteverde. We look over the tour options and decide to do a canopy tour and a cheese tour. We spent a peaceful evening playing cards on the porch as the rain hit the tin roof. Ashley won gin rummy even though Adam got 195 points in a single round.

The morning comes soon and we gear up with comfy clothes and lots of DEET bugspray. We are picked up at the hostel and trek up the gravel roads to the base camp of the tour company. The mini van takes the pot holes at warp speed and as we bounce around like pop corn, we wonder what the average life span of a car is here. We decide not long.

At the camp, we pay our fees, sign the waivers (that did mention something about animals attacking) and are shuttled into the next room. The very cute guides don’t bother with instructions and simply put on our harnesses for us. Good thing they’re cute, because they’re awfully close to my butt. I seriously wonder if they have a helmet big enough for my huge head, but when I ask, the guide thinks it is a joke…until the helmet rests of the very top of my head like a crown. He laughs, adjusts the helmet to the XXXXL setting and I am relieved that it fits. Safety first. Adam, Ashley and I are joined by three beautiful guides; Danny, Dennis and Don and four travelers from Israel. We’re off.

We walk into the woods for a quick safety demonstration and then quickly climb the metal stairs to the first slide. Ashley is the brave leader and slides down the metal cable like a champ. It is a short cable, but I still get an adrenaline rush. We had officially cut our teeth. The next cable was a stunning 600 feet across a cannon and through a cloud. We couldn’t even see the far platform. The first two guides throw their equipment on the line with ease and wiz down the line, taking picture of each other and laughing. We’re next. When it is my turn, I ease of the platform and don’t even have time to be nervous because it is so beautiful. The canyon quickly drops below me and I see the same beautiful scenery that I was desperately trying to capture on my camera the day before. Cows dot the field and a few small shacks wiz by below me. When I land on the platform, I am exhilarated; I have so much adrenaline surging though me, I am shaking. This is great! We wiz back an forth across ten more cables and then we get to our surprise; a repelling station and Tarzan swing.

The first guide barely pops on his safety gear before plummeting towards the ground very far below. I was somehow first, and I was really regretting this location in line. He straps me to the rope with my heart in my mouth and tries to push me off the platform I’M NOT READY! I dig my heals in but it doesn’t really matter. A quick shove from the guide and I’m off the platform and they drop me quickly. I say that it isn’t funny, in Spanish, just to make sure they understand, but they laugh anyway. Somehow avoiding death, I am on the ground and the rope is off. Yikes. The rest of the group hurtles towards the ground one by one and before long we’re trekking up a million stairs to the Tarzan swing. No wonder the beautiful guides are in such great shape; I hope they can’t hear my panting. We climb more metal stairs into the trees and we have reached the swing. Suddenly I realize just how high up we are. I’m third in line here and watch at they strap in the first guy. Again, this is a quick operation with no second checks. The guy sits back in the harness and the guide shoves him off the platform. He falls for eight or ten feet before the rope catches; he swings in a huge arc of 200 feet. When he was farthest away, he was a teeny man on the end of the rope. Getting off the line was a two-guide operation; a giant rubber band of sorts was attached to the lower platform and two guides threw it around your waist as you swung up and you were promptly “punched” in the belly as you swung back down into it. Created some very funny sound effects. Some ropes were quickly loosed by the experienced guides and you were dropped onto your rubbery knees. Ashley went next and I struggled to find her swinging speck in the viewfinder of the video camera.

I was next after Ashley and got the same shove off here that I received on the repelling platform. Judging by the laughter of the guides, my screams were pretty awesome. What a rush. This took the joy of playing on a swing set when I was little to exponential new heights. It was over much too soon. After being captured by the rubber U, I went over to the bench to regain the ability to walk. Two more short slides followed by the final, longest, slide. Adam and I were first and were informed that we went down on this slide in pairs. I went in front and Adam wrapped his legs around me. Shove! We glided through the wisps of clouds, over the lush mountains and then it was over. Much too soon. Towards the other platform, I realized why we do two people at once; to make sure that you’re heavy enough to reach the platform. Adam is a pretty skinny guy, and even though I had done my part to eat a snickers and several packages of gummy snacks, we weren’t heavy enough to reach the platform. No worries; the guide simply marched across the dewy grass, grabbed my ankle and marched back. I was hugely jealous that I saw Ashley’s legs wrapped around one of the hot guides and from my evil eyes I threw her way, she understood. She was smug, and rightly so. Soon the whole group had collected and we were out of our harness. Walking sure was easier. We walked into the station and literally, LITERALLY 10 seconds later the rain cloud released a torrent of rain. We look at each other in amazement and joked that our guides also controlled the weather. They agreed.