Costa Rica - Day Six

I was woken early in the morning on day six to the sound of pouring rain drumming off our rooftop and running down the gutters onto the ground, and wind whistling through the trees. I drifted back to sleep only to be woken again at 5:30AM to the sound of howler monkeys in the trees outside. This wasn't as bad as it could have been, given that we were planning to get up at 6AM anyway. I was deeply amused though - every time the rain gained in intensity, the howlers would set off enthusiastically and loudly roaring away, and then the rain would die down and the howlers would subsist. Then the rain would fall harder and they'd start howling again. It was almost like they were either objecting loudly to getting wet, or letting each other know it was raining. "Hey guys, it's raining! Dude! Check it out! It's raining! I'm getting wet, this sucks, man!"

Luckily for us, the absolute drenching downpour seemed to have subsided into more of a periodic drizzle by the time we went out at 7AM to meet our transportation to SkyTrek. A van pulled up to the hotel's reception area, the driver introduced himself, and off we went. SkyTrek was located on the other side of the volcano from the hotel, on the more active side, and also on the side where Arenal Lake was located. It was approximately a 30-35 minute drive that started on the gravel road from our hotel, went on paved roads for a while, and then went approximately 7km on another unpaved road that was utterly pitted with potholes to get to SkyTrek. That was an interesting drive - our driver would drive practically in the drainage ditch at times to avoid them, cross over to the other side of the street at other times, and sometimes, when it was unavoidable, drive right over the series of potholes. We were circling the volcano the whole time, but the whole time, it was shrouded in fog.

Upon arrival at the SkyTrek departure point, we spent some time staring at a poster they had up illustrating all their ziplines and their lengths. Somehow, in that short amount of time, my bf memorized all the numbers - he says "I know numbers. I also know fear of death." There were eight lines total. The first two were training lines, fairly short, but after that the remaining lines (except the last, which was mainly to get back to ground level) were all 1500 ft or more long. The highest one off the ground (which was also the third longest) was 660 ft high. The longest one was 2460 ft, or about 1/2 a mile. Actually, looking at the poster now, the exact lengths were 65ft, 82ft, 1525ft, 1476ft, 1344ft, 2000ft, 2460ft, and 164ft. Right around this time, looking at the specs (and then going to look off the back of the building at the view below), my bf and sister were both reiterating my insanity (if I'm insane, why are *they* going?) and apprehensive. They took us into a side room, where we were each fitted out with harnesses, helmets and gloves (which all went on over our shells/raincoats, which we definitely needed since it kept raining). Our group turned out to be 10 people plus two guides - two Costa Rican couples who mostly spoke Spanish but did understand enough English to be very amused by us, a mother and her teenage son, and the four of us. The two guides, Leo and Jaz (sp??) were great - Leo in particular was very funny and personable, but also very responsible. Both guides made sure we understood everything thoroughly, and both were very careful about safety.

We started off with a tram ride up into hills/mountainside. The SkyTram only had 3 cars, each of which held 6 people (I think), which meant that they could take a maximum of 16 people up (with two guides). This was nice, because it meant less waiting. The other group of people from our tour group who went to the other place said they had a group of like 20+ which meant they had to do a lot of waiting at each intermediate platform. The tram ride itself wasn't particularly interesting - we passed through/over a lot of trees, and eventually got a pretty decent view of Arenal Lake, but like the rainforest aerial tram, we couldn't see animals b/c they stayed away from the tram. Once on top, Leo and Jaz carefully explained to us the position we needed to get into (basically, they hook the harness to the line with two lines, the harness is attached to your midsection, so you're supposed to lay back, hold onto the bar attached to the pulley on the line, and keep your legs bent and up). They told us what to do if we ended up stopping before the end of the line (but only if you're near the end. They didn't tell us what to do if you stop in the middle but that didn't end up being an issue). You're supposed to grab the line with both hands, front and back of the pulley, turn yourself around, and then walk yourself hand over hand up the line until you reach the platform. They explained the braking system to us - how there was a 3 pulley system on each platform that they would operate so we wouldn't have to worry about braking ourselves. All we really had to do was get in the right position and hold it, and the rest of the work would be done for us by gravity and the guides.

The first two lines were training runs - the first one just went from the SkyTram platform to a small platform not far off, and not far down. The second one went from that platform to another one below the SkyTram platform (Jaz walked from the SkyTram platform to the second platform, which tells you how close it was). The first run was to "practice best position." The second was to "practice better position." My little sister surprised me - despite her fear she stepped up to be one of the first to go, and after going on that first line, had completely changed her mind about ziplining - she was having the time of her life and her fear seems to have evaporated. My bf took longer - he was ok on those first two lines because they weren't high up, but when we got to the second platform, looking at that line disappearing into the mist (this was the highest line - 660 ft at its highest point over a canyon - and the third longest line), he was not a happy camper. However, there was another woman in our party - the mother of the teenage son - who was even more terrified. She went because her son wanted to go and her husband really didn't, but it was clear the whole thing just freaked her out. She was very funny about it, though - both terrified and funny at the same time - and said that she and my bf were kindred spirits every time Scott said something negative or fearful about the experience. On that first long line, she said she needed to hear someone yell "It's all right!" but apparently when my bf went (after me), he led off by yelling "FUUUUCCCCKKK!!!!" (and not just to freak her out) which didn't make her feel any better. When she arrived at the next platform she was all "you didn't yell that it was all right!!".

I have to admit to a tiny bit of apprehension with that first non-training line - just how would it be to go that far for that long? - but mostly just excited anticipation. It was a bit eerie how the line just disappeared into the mist so you couldn't see where it went (though at one point the mist did clear long enough for us to squint at the platform on the other side before it came back). The way the whole guide thing went was that one stayed behind to attach each of us to the line, coordinate via walkie talkie with the other guy, and then send us on our way, while the other guy would go on ahead to get to the platform first so he could brake us. That first line was a bit of a learning experience. I learned that ziplining is both fun and also somewhat uncomfortable, since all your weight is resting on the harness straps. I learned you can't really see anything unless you look around, because the riding position is facing upwards, so you don't actually get a sense for how high you are. And if you look around, you need to be careful how you do it, because you may end up twisting, which slows you down. I learned that if you zipline in the rain, the force of the rain hitting your face is kind of painful, and that you get splattered with mud/dirty stuff coming off the rope via the pulley (though you don't always realize it until someone else tells you you're filthy and you notice they are too). And I learned that ziplining is really fun and exhilarating, that the speeds are awesome (at least if you go with SkyTrek), and that you get a great view of Arenal Lake with absolutely nothing (except maybe your own arm) obstructing your view as you cross the canyon on the zipline. My bf later said that the height and the fog lent to a kind of sense of detachment and unreality so your brain didn't fully comprehend just how high you really were, and therefore made it easier to deal with it.

On that first non-training line, I was a little paranoid I wouldn't know when I reached the end, since we were supposed to uncross our legs and keep them in a kind of outstretched V-shape so if we braked suddenly, we wouldn't swing up and hit our feet on the line. As a result, I tried too hard to look around my legs and see what was going on, therefore not riding in the "best position" and ended up slowing down too much and not making it all the way to the braking zone. I therefore had to use the technique they had taught us (with much prompting from the guide) and pull myself hand over hand back up to the platform. I was apparently not the only one in this position. The freaked out mom, though, had no such problems. I guess she was so scared she just stayed in the best position possible, basically curled up in a little ball with her legs firmly up as far as she could get them, determined not to get stuck anywhere in the middle. As a consequence, she tended to come speeding into the braking area like a bullet, shooting all the way to the end at top speed. The guides were quite amused by her and rather impressed by just how good of a position she managed to achieve in her terror. After the fifth or sixth line, Leo was like "you are the fastest person I've seen! Oh my God!" In fact, when we got to the fastest line (the seventh one - also the longest one), he told all of us to relax our positions and told her in particular not to do "better" or even "best" form - she was to ride along with her legs *down* and apart to keep herself from going too fast.

My sister and I were having the time of our lives, just enjoying the hell out of the ziplining and looking around to take in the view (I remember the first time I saw her doing it - you could see her helmeted head turning from side to side as she went). My bf was having more of a "ahhh! oh fuck oh fuck..i hate you!... wheeeeee!!! ah!!! oh fuck oh fuck!" experience - fear at the beginning and end of each run but fun in the middle. When we got to the sixth line, the second longest, and slowest line (it dipped down but then went back up again to get to the platform), Leo volunteered to take our cameras with him, and take photos of each of us as we arrived (with a prearranged order of camera use). I think this was because we'd be going slow enough we wouldn't need him to brake us so he could use his hands to operate the cameras. We gave him our camera first, and he ended up asking us if it was ok if he took a video with it. We didn't mind having a video, though we weren't sure we had disk space, so we ended up saying yes, and got a great souvenir. The video shows the lake, he dips it down to show the trees below, swings it around to show himself, and then shows the trajectory of the line as it goes past a bunch of trees (I didn't actually realize how close those trees were until I saw his video) until he reaches the landing. Only one of the guides could have taken this since the rest of us firmly had both hands on the handle. My bf did some math based on knowing how long the line is, and how long the video is, and estimated that he averaged about 34mph. Keep in mind this was the slowest of the real lines (not counting the first two or the last one), and you'll get an idea of the speeds at which we were going. So much fun. On the minus side, I'd forgotten about the photo at the other end, so didn't remember to put my legs down (which he was yelling at me to do but I didn't comprehend), so the photo he got of me is basically of my butt and my legs, way up in the air, which is rather amusing. Oh well.

Actually, did I say I had my hands firmly on the handle the whole time? There was one line where for some reason I thought it felt like my helmet might be blowing off (it was firmly strapped to my chin so I didn't expect to lose it, just thought it was slipping back) so I forgot myself and let go with one hand to try to check where it was. Apparently holding on with one hand makes you twist a bit. Putting my hand back on the handle fixed it, though, and since this was the fastest line, it didn't end up slowing me down unduly either. But..oops =).

On that second to last line - the 1/2 mile long line - I got a nice, prolonged view of the lake below, which was really quite pretty. Unfortunately, because I was going so fast, and because the skies chose to rain on me (it'd been raining on and off intermittently all morning), the raindrops hitting my face got quite painful so I was struggling to keep my eyes open to look around, while at the same time squinting in pain. Ow ow ow! That particular line also went through a stand of trees, which I wanted to look around at, but again, rain. It'd be interesting to try the ziplining thing again when it wasn't raining, because it must be quite exhilarating without being quite so painful ;).

The second to last line took us to a raised platform that kind of looked like a suspension bridge, except it was a bridge that connected open air to a spiral staircase, so not so much. This actually was the part of the whole experience my bf had the most problem with, since being able to see the ground and the tops of the trees far below him when he's not on solid ground is unnerving to him. The spiral staircase, in particular, where you could see through the grating of the stairs to the ground below while going around and around... In fact, I think if the trip hadn't more or less ended with this bridge and staircase (the last line was a short one from the bottom of the stairs to the parking lot), my bf's overall impression of ziplining might have been better. What can you do? In the meantime, the freaked out mom was telling her son that after this, she'd fulfilled her obligations of doing anything like this again - more ziplining, rollercoasters, whatever. I think they might actually have gone ziplining again later in the trip, though, because we heard them say something about having another trip planned. I wonder if she blew those guides away with her speed of landing as well?

After we'd gotten back on the ground, gotten our equipment off, thanked (and tipped) our guides, and wiped off our faces with the towels they provided, we ventured into the gift shop where we discovered much better prices on the wood stuff than we'd seen so far. My bf and I ended up buying a wooden turtle that's really quite pretty (but we have nowhere to put it), a set of coasters (not quite as pretty, but the coasters were each made from the wood of a different tree, which was interesting), and I got a SkyTrek t-shirt since it was the neatest thing we'd done on the trip thus far. Unfortunately, it turned out that their "adult medium" (which was the largest size they had) seemed to be more like a child's size - it's way too tight and way too small, but I couldn't try it on there so I didn't know. C'est la vie. We then realized that the shuttle driver had been waiting for us, so we quickly piled back into the van, and back to Lomas del Volcan we went.

With all the babbling I just did, you would think that our ziplining took us all day, but we were back at the hotel by 10:30 or 11 or so. We were all hungry since we'd missed breakfast (they started serving at 7am) and lunch wasn't until 12 or 12:30. My sister realized she was locked out of her room since my parents had gone on the Cano Negro trip and taken the only room key with them. We ended up bumming around the gift shop for a while (where I bought another shirt - a cute blue tie-died tank with "The happiest monkey in the rainforest" in front - apparently once I opened the floodgates on buying souvenirs, I charged right through). They had a computer with free internet there, so we took turns checking our mail. As far as the official schedule went, they weren't supposed to return from Cano Negro until 2pm, though Caravan had arranged with the hotel to provide lunch for those of us that didn't go. At 2pm, the rest of the group would be taken directly to downtown Fortuna to explore the town, and then around 4pm, it was time to go to the Baldi Hot Springs. We were kind of curious to try eating in Fortuna at an actual restaurant or cafe, instead of a pre-arranged buffet meal, but none of us really wanted to explore downtown Fortuna for 4 hours. On the other hand, we were too hungry to wait until 2pm or whenever to eat. We decided to try to eat a light meal at the hotel and then take a taxi into town, where we'd try to find something more unique to eat.

At lunch, they had a number of dishes, including a rice dish that seemed kind of like fried rice - kind of stir-fried rice with chicken and some other stuff. We fed ourselves, trying not to overindulge, and I took advantage of the opportunity to write my postcards. I figured, halfway through the trip I had enough to write about, plus this was a rare extended period of downtime. While I was doing this, my bf was poking through my Lonely Planet book, trying to figure out where we could try eating. He sketched out a rough map of downtown Fortuna (which essentially consisted of two long parallel streets on either side of the central square, and then some side streets connecting them). We called a cab, and then went up to our rooms to get our stuff together (we needed our bathing suits from the hot springs since we were going directly there from Fortuna). When we came back down to the front desk, the cab was already there, but I got distracted when I realized that the clouds were blowing away and, for the first time, we actually could see the hazy outline of Arenal Volcano. As we watched, the clouds kept blowing away and suddenly, we could see the entire volcano. We started hurriedly snapping photos, and the poor cab driver ended up having to wait even longer while we tried to capture this rare sight. Finally, we felt bad and climbed in the cab, but then halfway down the unpaved driveway, I got all excited because the volcano was even more visible, and was trying to take photos out of the cab window. The cab driver was very sweet - without saying anything, he patiently stopped the cab long enough for me to get a stable shot or two out the window, and then started up again. As we drove, the clouds blew back and soon, it was as if there was no volcano there at all. It turned out that would be our only glimpse of the actual volcano for our entire stay in the Arenal area. Those who went to Cano Negro never saw it at all, and anyone who wasn't looking outside for that 5 minute period also never saw it. We just got *really* lucky in our timing for catching that cab.

Whereas in Tortuguero, it seemed like our luck was totally in our favor, with it almost always raining when we stepped indoors, and stopping when we came out, in Arenal/Fortuna, it was entirely the opposite. It seemed to stop raining whenever we went indoors and start when we stepped out. Case in point - as we stepped out the cab at the central square in Fortuna, the rain started up. We decided to go to the post office first and get my postcard mailing out of the way before we wandered, and I think the rain abated a bit while we were in the post office. The whole post office trip took longer than expected - there was some guy there shipping off an odd-shaped package and they were busily taping it up, so we had to wait for quite a while...and that seems to be symbolic of their postal service in general since it's been like 19 days since I sent out those postcards and no one has received them yet. At any rate, afterwards, we stepped into the rain again after debating what to do. We swung by the church in the central square, which was quite a pretty building. We thought maybe we'd walk by a number of our earmarked restaurants to see what looked interesting, but after stopping by one and not being particularly inspired, and getting rained on, we ended up just eating at the second one we went to. This one, the Soda el Rio, was off the main drag but "recommended" by the Lonely Planet. It seemed to be favored by locals - lots of Costa Rican families and such eating here. The menu was largely set plates (I think they're referred to as casados), and the prices went from maybe $1 to appetizer/dessert/drinks to about $3-$5 for entrees. After much consultation, my bf and I decided to split an "arroz con pollo" (ie rice with chicken) because that was a dish I'd liked a lot in San Diego - the dish that had turned me onto Mexican food, in fact. Turned out to be a bit of a foolish mistake - arroz con pollo ended up being exactly the rice dish we'd eaten at our hotel buffet only a couple hours earlier. As my bf said, this one was good - better than the one at the hotel - but almost identical. Our new friend and my sister both got arroz con leche - a dessert of rice with milk that was quite yummy, and which they got because they were too full from lunch to eat more. My bf managed to order us four fried plantains, which were really yummy, and we also got fruit drinks.

After finishing our "authentic Costa Rican" meal (and learning we'd been eating authentic Costa Rican food all along), we went in search of pastries, still dreaming of the apple pies we'd eaten in Tortuguero. The Lonely Planet book (which I should note was from 2004 - I borrowed it from my other sister) had listed a Cafeteria Lo Nuestro thta had "homemade pastries" so we went in search of the place. What didn't help was that there were no street signs, and apparently street names were only recently added (well, as of the 2004 book's writing). When we tried to ask directions of someone, he 1) didn't understand English, and 2) had no idea what we were talking about when we asked for the street. He was very friendly about it though. Eventually we found a local who spoke great English (we discovered this after trying to convey in very limited Spanish what we wanted and he responded in English) who didn't know the restaurant we were looking for but directed us to a cafe in the approximate location. That cafe didn't have anything that looked interesting to us, but we noticed across the street there was what appeared to be a very popular bakery. I saw what looked like cases of baked goods and a long line of people. I've forgotten the name of the place now, but it turns out this was actually a bakery chain (I later saw one in the streets of a different town) and it looked like a lot of different fresh-baked breads and pastries (with accompanying flies buzzing around the cases) and a lot of local customers. We ended up buying an apple pie, a pineapple pie, a big flat piece of pastry with sugar crystals on it, and what looked like another fruit pie that was labeled "flauta." These we saved to have as dessert with our dinner that night. By the time we had located this place and bought our pastries, it was getting near the time we were supposed to meet up with our bus to go to the hot springs, so we headed back to the square at the center of the town. Here, we snapped a few photos and met up with my parents again. They told us they'd seen a lot of rare birds and that the trip was quite nice, but no, they didn't see anything particularly excitingly new or different, so we felt better for having missed the trip.

Next was Baldi Hot Springs. According to Lonely Planet, the Tabacon Hot Springs are better, but Baldi was quite satisfying. It's comprised of a series of pools, man-made but supposedly fed by natural hot springs heated by the volcano. Each pool is a different temperature, and the temperature is marked on a sign by the entrance of the pool. Some pools fed to others, some were deeper and you could really soak or even swim a bit in those, some were quite shallow, some had lounging "chairs" built right into the pool floor. Interspersed there were occasional "cold" pools where you could jump back and forth between the cold water and hot water. Supposedly the pools went up in temperature as you went up the mountain, but that didn't turn out to be true. One of the hottest pools we encountered was right by the third pool we visited - it was marked as 45 celsius, but comparing it to the other pools we later encountered and what they were marked as, that can't have been right - it was far hotter. In fact, the signs often seemed to either be off, or only be talking about the temperature of the source of the water, which often got diffused in the rest of the pool. The pools at the very top were not much warmer than some of the ones further down, but they were a fun series of linked pools with water from the top falling as a waterfall onto the level below, etc. Our favorite pools had such hot showers - hot water pouring down that was of barely bearable temperatures. Kind of felt like some kind of funky massage. Our poor parents - they wanted to just soak somewhere in comfort, but we kept leading a charge to find a yet hotter pool to see if we could stand it. They didn't have to follow us, but of course they did. The path up to the last series of 3 pools was actually quite painful on our bare feet - I'd advise anyone who visits these pools to wear either flip flops or water shoes. Something you don't mind getting wet but something that feels better than asphalt and rough stone. I seem to remember that the "right" temperature for me was just about 43 or 44 celsius. I could be remembering wrong. But that was right at the level of hot, almost too hot, but for the most part quite comfortable. BTW, hot springs on a rainy day is nice, except the part where you get out and run through the cold air to the next pool. In two of the cooler pools, there were swim-up bars, while in another large cool pool, there were three waterslides into the pool. One was under construction, one was very twisty and looked quite insane, and the last was supposed to be the lowest key - more of a straight one which I didn't *think* was too steep. Turned out the last part of it was quite steep indeed, and a little scary. Fun, but I declined to go on it again or to try the other slide. Waterslides make me a bit nervous b/c there's nothing tying you down or making sure you don't slosh out the side of the slide, and because it's quite easy to bang limbs as you go down. See, I'll zipline over a 660 ft canyon because it's smooth and comfortable and I trust the equipment. Watersliding, I stand a much larger chance of getting a bruise and it wouldn't feel too good if I hit the water wrong or got turned around in the slide, all of which can happen! Excuses, excuses.

We had about 2 hours at the hot springs, and then it was time to head back to the hotel for dinner. The hot springs were a *great* way to unwind and finish off the day, especially after the cold and rainy and exhilarating ziplining start we got. We'd already laughed because, by ordering the arroz con pollo, we'd just gotten food we'd had at the hotel. We laughed even harder when we saw what was for dessert at dinner that night - arroz con leche. And IIRC, there were fried plantains either that night or the next day for breakfast. Which just about covered all our "unique" culinary experimentation at the Soda el Rio. Though, as my bf kept insisting, the food was done better at the Soda el Rio, even if it wasn't different. Our various pastries that night were a bit disappointing - the fresh apple pies we'd gotten in Tortuguero were way better. Ah well, it's all about trying stuff. At dinner, we had the opportunity to talk to a few other people who'd gone to the other ziplining tour, which only reaffirmed that we made the right choice. They said the ziplining itself was fun but overall they seemed quite disappointed by the experience. Too much rain, too many people, too many lines... people were apparently bailing out after 3 or 4 lines (which is not possible on the SkyTrek tour), plus it sounded like the platforms in between were all high off the ground, which would have freaked my bf out more than the side of the mountain platforms we got at SkyTrek.

Sad - I started this post 6 days ago and finally am finishing it now. On the somewhat positive side, the remaining days on tour weren't quite as full, so there should be less to write about...