When in Doubt, Travel: Costa Rica

August 31st - September 6th

On August 31, Hannah and I decided over the free French toast breakfast to go explore Costa Rica. Huge shout out to our parents for giving us the opportunities growing up that would eventually allow us to travel like we are currently - we think about this often!

Hannah and I hopped on over the border into Costa Rica, land of the"Pura Vida" mentality and lifestyle. We spent the evening in a town called Liberia, wandering the streets full of actual stores and slowly adjusting to the commercialism of this tourist-friendly country. The next day was a travel day (bus + car + ferry + bus = 10-plus hours) from Punta Arenas across Golfo de Nicoya to Montezuma, a very relaxed, hippie town on the beach where you are an obvious outsider if you don't have dreads. Decompressing from a travel day is much easier to do when you have a private room facing the ocean and a soundtrack of waves crashing against the rocks! Just sayin'. We wandered the "town" (town = two roads totaling about 300 meters) and, like moths to a lightbulb, found the grocery store in about 25 seconds flat. Trying our best to cope with the higher economy, we managed to make a somewhat gourmet dinner of mozzarella/tomato foccacia with a side of cucumber and avocado salad! Nom nom. Bananagrams and reading rounded out the evening quite well.

What is the most logical thing to do after roughly 14 hours of heavy rain? If you are thinking hike upstream to a set of waterfalls, then we welcome you to join us on our adventures! As per usual, Hannah and I set out for Montezuma Falls in flip-flops, only to realize the inappropriate footwear choice about 3 minutes into the journey. The current was quite strong at the intended river crossing area, so we headed upstream along the bank. Whether it was shuffling our feet along the rocky bottom of the river at a crossing or grasping for roots and low tree branches to keep from sliding off the steep, muddy trail, we looked...special. From a distance, one would probably have thought I dropped a contact and was frantically (and blindly) looking for it with the 'extended arms shuffle step' approach. After taking the steeper (and incorrect) trail option, we eventually became eye-level with the top of the main waterfall as it came into view. The thundering sound and sheer power of the water never ceases to amaze. With the help of the many trees and roots along the trail, we slowly made our way down to the base of the falls and sat to enjoy them for a bit. After taking the actual trail back, we decided to walk along the beach back to town and take in some different scenery. We could have sat and watched the huge waves crash up against the rock faces for hours, but the legitimate fear of a ninja crab staging a stealth attack kept us moving. There were SO many and they move alarmingly fast...but sideways and on the sides of vertical rocks? Though the walk from our hostel to the waterfalls trailhead was only about 10 minutes, we had walked a solid 90 minutes before realizing, "hey, do you think we passed the town?" The next person we passed informed us we were only 300 meters away from Playa Grande, which is about 5km north of Montezuma. Schwoops. When we finally did get back to town, we discovered the beach entrance to town was about 50 meters from where we decided to start our beach stroll. The rest of the evening consisted of watching the eight monkeys eat and play in the tree right outside our door...what? Where are we?!? After dark, we went to a restaurant with wi-fi and a free movie, ordered the cheapest drinks on the menu, and took turns smuggling food in from the neighboring supermarket once the lights had been turned down for "Inception." A sad site, but even our waiter appreciated our efforts and chuckled.

Looooong travel day on Saturday...or at least the 10 hour day seemed longer due to the fact the last 2 hours on the bus heading into Monteverde were done in first gear (lots of super steep roads). The day ended on a high note when, as soon as we stepped foot off the bus, we were offered a $7/night private room! Score! The next morning, Hannah and I had an adventure day full of adrenalin and vomit-inducing activities! First up was the canopy tour, which was a series zip lines of various lengths that included one 800-meter "Superman" style zip line and a "Tarzan Swing." After gearing up (side note: there is very little sexier than repelling gear), Hannah and I headed out on the course, soaring over Monteverde's lush mountainous landscapes. The zip lines themselves start short and get progressively longer the further you go. On the last zip line, your harness is flipped around so you are positioned belly down and parallel with the ground - not awkward or uncomfortable at all! Waiting to go, you feel like a pup that's being held in a mother's mouth, but once you get going, the position allows a completely different aerial perspective that one can't get any other way - very fun! The landing was a little rough...the only thing that come to mind is a crash test dummy with rag doll limbs flying all about (the fantastic picture below with Hannah in the foreground was taken solely to capture the landing of the person behind her).

...and then, the Tarzan Swing! Enough adrenaline to make you vomit. In short, you walk to end of a loose, swinging metal bridge to the "jump point," and as the name would indicate, you free fall until the swing mechanism decides to work. Hannah hesitantly strolled out on the bridge as the screams of the previous jumper echoed in the trees. Legs don't work so well when the adrenaline is pumping, so from a distance, I could only see Hannah shifting her weight from one bent, wobbly leg to the other. They started to get her all hooked up and then they beckoned me to start walking - I thought "yay, I can get a great aerial video of her..." blood-curdling SCREEEAAAMMMM accompanied Hannah's sudden absence from the end of the bridge! Ps...if you are ever hesitant about doing something crazy, volunteer to go first! Hearing other people (especially cool, calm, collected friends scream louder than you have ever heard anyone scream in your life) go before you will typically deter you from wanting to do your extreme activity, so just go first. So having heard that while feeling the bouncing and shaking of the suspension platform beneath me, I did my best to pull it together mentally. What doesn't help is getting to the end of the platform, where you can see how far up you are, and waiting...because a piece of harness broke!! All very reassuring things. Plus, your mind is focused on the task at hand...to have my limited Spanish knowledge tested with random phrases like "necesito una cable...este es rompio" really throws the psyche off...and allows nausea to build. Luckily, once they hooked me up to the new cables, they opened the little baby gate (the same "here we go" moment I would think a rider waiting atop his bull experiences as the gate swings open) and the weight of everything pulls you off the platform, leaving you minimal time to think about the situation at hand. According to Hannah, who was waiting at the bottom, my body made a whoooooshing sound as I silently fell through the air and swung back up. Good to know when faced with extreme challenges, I revert to silence. Afterwards, we gradually decompressed and our legs slowly got feeling back as we watched a few more people jump. We were entertained by the photos taken of us by a staff member for a half-hour before heading to off to our ATV adventure.

Believe it or not, this was taken AFTER we did it!

Bryan, our fearless and probably 17-year-old guide, led us through a series of terrain paths to test our driving and turning abilities. Hannah and I lucked out because we were the only two doing the ATVs...the smaller the group, the more you can do, always! So after 30-40 minutes of riding through mud puddles and around the terrain park, Bryan gave us the okay to move ahead. He took along gravel, dirt, and grass pathways that winded through the farmlands and along the hillsides of the surrounding eco-reserves running throughout Monteverde. The views were UNREAL...the position Bryan assumed for a good portion of the ride was stopped, looking over his left shoulder and waiting as we took tons of pictures! The clouds were thicker at the beginning of the ride, so when Bryan would take a turn, he would momentarily disappear into the white abyss, which just enhanced the already-enchanting morning we'd had! Plus, being in a could makes primary things more magical - the outlines of trees became so much sharper and resultantly, the tree appeared more expressive. Nearly every time we would stop to take in the views, we would turn to Bryan and exclaim, "you live here, that is CRAZY!" Definitely one of the most memorable experiences to date on this trip!

After the adventures, we headed to Casa Amistad in San Jose, a peace-based hostel that hosted various peace-minded meetings of local Costa Rican Quakers and had a library full of books highlighting revolutionaries, martyrs, and pro-civil rights movements. Basically, everyone that passed through that house knew more that I did about....well, everything. It's as though they built this house for my friend Ashley! We met Andre, a Canadian born in Arlington, VA who lived in Peru for 5 years during his youth, lived in Cuba for a year while studying, and arrived to Costa Rica two days prior in order to teach English for a year - he kinda knows something about everything, especially relating to Latin American history and state of current affairs. These are the types of people you meet at Casa Amistad. The next morning, we toured a little bit of San Jose before meeting up with Andre at the Teatro Nacional, where pigeons literally fly at your face, to explore some more. We ate our first real Costa Rican meal (not the usual peanut butter and crackers) and spent hours in two great bookstores once the rain started to become more steady. One of them was a used bookstore that just had PILES of books everywhere - on the floor, in the corners, on the chairs, on top of the ones stacked in the shelves, on the checkout counter...AMAZING! Nothing like the smell of older books! As the rain died down, we headed back to the hostel to pack and get ready for another long overnight bus ride.