Monteverde

So, guess what, family and friends? I am now posting about this most recent weekend's trip, and after that I will be officially CAUGHT UP! Maybe after this I can actually write a little bit about my daily life in San Jose like I keep saying I'm going to do.

This weekend was a bit of a change of pace. Instead of heading to the beach (which we all know is where I really wanted to go), we instead headed to the mountains, to visit the cloud forest of Monteverde. During the month of October, ISA (International Studies Abroad, the program I came here with), has big excursions to a bunch of different places that was included in the price of the program for all of the people who are students for the semester. I am doing something a little bit different; now that my intensive month is done, I am doing a volunteer internship. This means that I didn't pay for any of the ISA excursions, which I was a little bummed about at first, since that meant I would have to pay separately, but now I am starting to see the advantages. Now that the fall semester has officially begun, there are 60+ ISA students, which means that each excursion involves giant buses full of American students, which to me is a bit much. Very touristy, all sorts of English being spoken, and not as much of a chance to get the true feel/experience of a place. So instead of paying for the full ISA excursion to Monteverde, I did things my own way.

What I did was pay for two of the activities through ISA (thus getting the discount), but found my own transportation (a public bus for only $8 round trip) and my own lodging (a hostel, $12 for the whole weekend). Altogether, I think I spent about $100 less than all of the ISA students - who stayed at a fairly nice hotel and had all inclusive meals - which I would say is a pretty good deal. I went with my friend Walker (who I mentioned in the last post; he's the guy loving the surfboard), and my friends Bryan and Cole, who I also mentioned in the last post - they had come to San Jose for a couple of days and were trying to figure out their next move, so when Wendy and I hung out with them (at Hooters, of all places; I've never even been to one in the United States), we suggested they go to Monteverde with us. We got a four person room, and set up camp. Here are a few pictures from the beginning of the weekend:

Waiting at the bus stop

Fog, fog, and more fog, up in the mountains

A shot of our room in the hostel, complete with Cole and Bryan's surf boards, of which they had a total of three; obviously not very useful in Monteverde =]

Walker, being his artsy self, drawing away

Cole (left) and Bryan (right), being...themselves.

The only downfall to the weekend was having to find and pay for our own meals, but that wasn't really much of a downfall, because it was fun going to different local restaurants. The hostel was a pretty cool place, too. Here's a picture of the lobby, and a couple shots of Walker and Bryan cooking our delicious and very healthy macaroni-and-cheese-with-hot-dogs dinner on Saturday night:

The hostel lobby

Me lounging in the hammock hanging outside of the hostel, watching the clouds come in

Walker, being a goon as usual, cooking dinner (mmm, hot dogs)

Bryan doing the dishes

The bus ride was a pretty long one, not because Monteverde is far away from San Jose, but because about halfway through the bus has to start climbing the mountain, and the road is a curvy dirt road, and the bus has to move slowly, all the while stopping every five minutes or so to drop people off (remember, this is a public bus, so it makes lots of stops along the way, and it's pretty crowded and cramped - worth the $8 round trip, though). Eventually we got high up, and could smell how fresh the air was, and see the fog everywhere (see the picture above). The view was fantastic, too, with foggy patches and some clear patches showing all sorts of gorgeous valleys spotted with farms. You could even see the ocean at a distance. It was spectacular, and it amazed me once again how many landscapes Costa Rica has. It was a bit scary looking out the window and not being able to see the side of the road, though. I had quite a few visions of the bus driver making one wrong move and flinging us off the side of the cliff, followed by a fiery explosion in the middle of a green field down below. Lucky us, none of that happened =]

We got to the hostel after dark (which comes at about 6:00, remember), and when we got of the bus we were practically assaulted by all sorts of people wanting us to stay at their hostel or eat at their restaurant, and even after we told them we already had plans, they tried to convince us that their establishment was better. Once we elbowed our way out of that crowd, we made our way to the hostel, which was only a block away from the bus stop. The name of the hostel was Hostel Pension Santa Elena (Santa Elena is the main town up on the mountain; there is also a town named Monteverde, but I am pretty sure they are basically the same thing). We settled into our room, got some dinner, and made ourselves a few drinks before going out to one of the only local bars, named Amigos. Not gonna lie...Monteverde doesn't really have much of a party scene. The bar was a very nice, new one, but it was full of a lot of middle-aged people doing the salsa and some American students who were actually spending a semester studying in Monteverde, which is a very pretty place, but I could NEVER live there for four months.

Saturday morning, we all had to get up pretty early because we had our various activities to do. Bryan and Cole were going on their own canopy tour, and Walker and I were catching the bus with the rest of the ISA students to do the same (I was also signed up to do an ATV tour, which I was starting to regret...). We got to the place, got into our equipment, and got a little tutorial of how to zipline (which is basically what the canopy tour consisted of). Here are a couple of photos from the experience (I don't have many, because I brought my large camera, which I shouldn't have done, because we couldn't take pictures while doing actual ziplining, and it was a hassle to take the camera out, take a picture, and then put it away while waiting in line):

Posing with our equipment (left to right: me, Wendy, Becca, Alyssa) - note the giant gloves for handling the cable!

Excited!

The beginning of one of the shorter ziplines, stretching through the trees

Walker took this picture; this is me on the Tarzan swing, which I'll describe below

Ziplining was a pretty unique and amazing experience. It was also kind of scary, because it's pretty easy for a small breeze to come alone and turn you around so you're going backwards on the track, which happened to me a couple of times, and in order to brake, you have to be facing forwards. What you do to go straight forward is cross your legs and pull them up in front of you, lean back as much as possible, and put your left hand back to form a loose loop with your fingers around the wire, which keeps you stable and serves as your brake when you need to slow down. We were given giant gloves (see above) because our hands would obviously be torn to shreds by the wire cables if we had to use them to brake (one of the fingers of my friend Alyssa's gloves got worn out and her finger got a really bad burn on it). There were 11 ziplines in all, starting with some shorter ones straight through the trees, and ending with some absolutely fantastic ones that went across the giant valley, literally hundreds of feet up in the air. It was super surreal soaring through the air like that. It was hard to comprehend how high up I was and that I was actually hanging from a wire cable draped over pure space, with only a metal loop keeping me secure. I was also kind of distracted from trying to keep myself going straight forward; the last zipline was definitely an ab workout. Regardless of all of that, though, it was absolutely amazing.

Two other parts of the canopy tour were repelling and the Tarzan swing. There was only one repelling opportunity, which involved us standing on a really tall platform attached to a tree, and being attached to a rope (like when you go rock climbing), and then being dropped down really fast to the ground, being caught just before you hit the ground. This part happens so fast that they don't really give you time to think about it, even though I think if I hadn't done a lot of rock climbing this past semester, I might have freaked out a little bit more.

The Tarzan swing (see the picture above), again starts on a really tall platform. They attach you to a really long rope, and then basically push you off the platform. It was really funny watching the reactions of all of the people being pushed. There were many variations of different screams, and lots of swearing going on. The workers were really funny too, trying to scare everyone by yelling "DON'T DO IT!" as they pushed people off the platform, while the workers standing on the ground below tried to take of the shoes and socks of the people as they swung by, or tried to make them spin in circles. Once you are pushed off the platform, it's basically what you would imagine it being after hearing the name: a giant swing that goes really high up in the air, past the tops of the trees, and then swings you back towards the platform again. They let you swing back and forth about three times, and then they take out this giant rubber band type thing and catch you in it. They managed to get off both of my shoes and one of my socks.

So after this experience, which took a pretty long time since there were so many of us students, and the lines were kind of long at spots, almost everyone went back to the hotel except for the people who had signed up for horseback riding and ATV. I had signed up for the ATV experience, mostly because I had never done it before and this trip has inspired me to do all sorts of things I probably never would in the States. There were only three students signed up to do it, and a couple from Spain. They brought us to the ATVs, taught us how to start and run them, and then had us to a test run around a track to see which ones of us might need extra help. Guess who needed that extra help? If you guessed me, you are very, very correct. The people who were good at it got to drive around the whole area and go into all of the difficult parts, and the two of us that needed help were at first restricted to the "easy" area, which I was totally fine with, because I was kind of freaked out about being in control of this seemingly uncontrollable vehicle. It was super hard to turn, and I had a lead thumb on the throttle, which made me jerk around a lot instead of smoothly increasing and decreasing the speed. After about a half an hour of practicing, the two instructors (Joe and Jodi, both guys) hopped on the ATVs with us and had us drive around the areas of medium difficulty. We were then free to drive around those areas by ourselves for awhile, and next we were shown the hardest areas, and allowed to drive around those alone too. I think I definitely got better, once I got the whole throttle and shifting gears thing down, and once I got a little bit more confident about going faster and knowing the turning radius.

After this, the instructors had us sit behind them on the ATVs and put our arms around their waists, and they proceeded to drive us around the tracks themselves, super fast, popping wheelies, doing donuts, spinning around everywhere, going over jumps, everything. You have to keep in mind that this track was not just a smooth dirt road; there were hills and trees and branches and dips in the ground everywhere, which made the terrain super rough and bumpy. There were many times I felt like I was going to be bounced off the ATV, or that the ATV was going to tip over backwards, like when they were doing a wheelie. ATVing is really all about the balance, knowing how far you can push it before you tip over. I was convinced I was going to die the whole time, but Joe and Jodi definitely knew what they were doing, so I guess I shouldn't have felt like I was in THAT much danger....

So after that fun, we took off on a jungle tour (I opted to sit behind the very handsome Jodi with my arms around his waist instead of driving myself), driving up and down hills, through paths that looked like they had never been touched, through rivers, down ravines, etc. It was really fun to be so far in the rainforest on ATVs, especially since I could just enjoy the scenery and some of the tricks Jodi did instead of being stressed about having to traverse the terrain myself. It's too bad I don't have any pictures of this ATV experience, but it really wasn't the kind of thing you carry your camera around for.

Moral of the story: like I could have predicted, ATVing will not become one of my hobbies anytime in the near future.

Finally, I got to go back to town, went out to lunch with Bryan and Cole, and then took a looooong nap, followed by dinner and another long nap (all of us were exhausted from the night before). We stayed in bed until about 10:00pm, when we finally decided we had to get up and get ready, because Wendy, Alyssa, and Becca were expecting us to meet them at Amigos. Instead, they ended up showing up at our room, and we hung out there for awhile, listening to music on Bryan and Cole's speakers, and then going out to the bar later.

Sunday consisted of lots of sleeping, as well as a somewhat pointless hike to find a tree to clim. We ended up not being able to climb it, but at least we got a good workout out of the deal, despite how tired we were. Monteverde is quite a hilly place. Here are some photos from the hike:

The tree we weren't able to climb

A beautiful view of the valley from one of the breaks in the trees

After the hike we were extra tired, so we all lounged around for a couple of hours until Bryan and Cole's shuttle came to take them to Arenal Volcano, and soon after the bus came to bring Walker and me back to San Jose. The bus ride back was especially long for some reason, I think partially because of the rain and partially because of the traffic once we got back into the city. We got back pretty late, and I zonked out.

This was a long entry, but now I'm caught up! More about life in San Jose and my internship in the next couple of days, I promise. Much love, miss you all! Peace.