Monteverde

Hola. Another post from the land of Pura Vida...

We went to Monteverde over the weekend (rainforest reserve).

Went on a canopy tour, hiked in the reserve, tried to take the night tour at the reserve were you can see vipers and tarantulas but were rained out, and hiked to La Cascada de San Louis.

The canopy tour was awesome. It is sort of like a flying fox kicked up a notch. You hang from a pulley on a cable sitting in a climbing harness and zip through the rainforest canopy. You hold on to the webbing connecting you to the cable with one hand and let the other slide behind you on the actual cable (you wear gloves with thick leather palms) you are running down to keep facing forward and to brake. To get back down out of the canopy you repel sliding straight down first 50 ft than 100 ft.

The most awesome thing about the repelling was that you could choose to either go slow and control your decent with the guy at the bottom who can control it as well or just let the guy basically drop you to the floor slowing you down at the very end. I dont know why but I chose the latter.

I think the best part of the trip though was not the repelling and flying through the rainforest canopy but the animals we saw there. We saw tons of howler monkeys all around us apparently perturbed by our presence as they were making quite the ruckus and a Quetzal (a very rare and amazingly beautiful bird). It was a very lucky find as bird watchers come to Monteverde just to get the chance to see it.

We did not see nearly as many animals hiking in the reserve as we did in Arenal but the plants were awesome (especially the trees) and we did see a Morphos butterfly (they are quite large and a vibrant blue color), humming birds, and a pretty cool centipede.

Hiking to the waterfall was by far the highlight of the trip but that day we ended up walking 20 kilometers. We woke up at 5:00 started walking around 6:20 and did not stop until we had lunch around 12:00 save for a couple breaks and 45 minutes at the waterfall. The hiking was awesome and the waterfall was incredible. It was a welcome relief to relax in the cool waters of the river. Definitely worth the hike even if we did go several kilometers pass the turnoff for the waterfall before getting directions from a friendly old Tico (slang for Costarican) who was milking his cow.

Overall, with all the exotic travel and all, it has been reeel hard here. ;) In reality things are great here but I sure do miss my family, friends, and University.

Pura Vida
[R]