As we had just crossed over into Costa Rica (by foot!) we drove past a number of make-shift camps, full of people who looking tired and desperate. We all started checking the news headlines to see who they were, and why they were camped there. Turns out that we had just passed a refugee camp. A number of people had come into Costa Rica by boat, they had been heading up towards America, but had been denied entry into Nicaragua. They were stuck, they couldn’t go forward. I am not sure what has happened to these people.
Our first stop was Monte Verde, an adventure town near the top of a mountain. The first night we had went out to a typical Costa Rican restaurant and I had, what I was later to discover, the staple of this region – rice and beans, meat, and salad. I was to have this often, sometimes not by choice. Our first stop the next morning was to the Butterfly Gardens. We took a tour around the gardens with an extremely knowledgeable local – if you are ever in the area, we highly recommend it.
We then raced back to the hotel to complete the zip-lining. We were told that it was 10 lines, two of which you could ‘superman’, both crossing over a valley. We started together, and I soon discovered that it was not as easy as I would have liked. We were our own braking system, which would have been fine except for the fact that I also had to keep myself facing a particular direction. Whenever I tried to keep myself in that direction, my braking system kicked in. On the second line I got stuck halfway. I knew that we had the option of pulling ourselves across or to have one of the guides come out to get us. Being me, I pulled myself across before the guide could even ready himself to come get me. I also did not make that mistake again.
The first big run was breath-taking (I don’t mean stunning, I mean that I could not breathe – what had Laurence gotten me into!!). I continued on, not wanting to be defeated. It was not so bad once you were going, I just didn’t like the starting and stopping. Somewhere along the line Laurence got ahead of me, I had just climbed a big hill up to the longest line (approx. 1.6kn long across a valley – the first ‘superman’). I was catching my breath, working myself up to climbing the platform to go when I heard over the guides walkie talkie/radio thing that “Lorenzo was waiting for Maria, is Maria there?” I try to avoid eye contact, I am not ready, but somehow it is the guide that helped me get my harnesses on. He knows who I am and he is insistent that I climb up to meet up with ‘Lorenzo’. I am hooked on, face down with no control, and he pushes me out over the valley. Most of the time I am thinking about killing “Lorenzo” but eventually (as it took quite a long time to get across the valley), I am enjoying not having to worry about body position and just looking at the scenery. Maybe ‘Lorenzo’ can live.
Laurence does the 22m drop swing at the end of the course, I choose to watch instead of jumping. The swing itself goes quite high (almost as if they were going to flip over into a full circle). I am glad that it is over, that I am safely and firmly on the ground, but I am also glad that I completed the course. That afternoon we took a walk through the cloud forest on the hanging bridges. During the tour a guide pointed out some birds that we saw, found a tarantula in its hole, and generally told us about some of the flora and fauna of the area.
On the morning before leaving Monte Verde we took a Coffee, Sugar, and Chocolate tour. Laurence was selected to process (?) the sugar cane – he and another ‘cranked’ it through the press. I must say that the liquid was surprisingly good – it was very sweet though. Laurence sampled the coffee as I rested in the shade. It is not my kind of tour, but was interesting to see how things are done. I am very glad that I am not one of the poor immigrants who hand pick the coffee beans for about $3USD a basket.
The last stop in our tour was La Fortuna. We were tired (and trying to be thrifty), so we took a taxi out to the waterfall and explored. We explored down 500-odd stairs, swam, and then explored up 500-odd stairs. All in all it was a lovely waterfall, extremely strong currents from it hitting the water – I think we both got knocked over by it.
In San Jose we took it easy, slept in, ate something other than rice and beans, read, surfed the net, and just generally had a holiday from being a traveller. It was wonderful.