The land of the weed-whacker: Costa Rica Days 3, 4, 5

Posted by holly on May 14, 2010 in Blog, BlogSherpa

Because of the terrain here being so vertical and rocky, conventional lawn mowers aren’t even sold in stores. But everywhere you turn there’s a guy with a giant weed-whacker showing all that rapid-growing grass who’s boss. With that little hand mower, if you will, the Ticos will tackle any area, no matter how big. We were 2km from pretty much anything on the way to La Fortuna and there were two guys on the side of the road just weed-whacking away. They were doing the entire shoulder of the whole road by hand. Damn, that’s a long job.

So today we ziplined. One of my favorite things to do, the incredible feeling of flying without the fear of falling, as your harness really holds you securely up there. Costa Rica is probably the best place on the planet to do this, and the company I recommend more than any other I’ve experienced is Sky Adventures. Conveniently they have a great setup in La Fortuna, with incredible views of the (still clear and erupting) Arenal Volcano and Arenal Lake. We were picked up early and driven up into the hills at the base of the Volcano, where they harnessed us up (there is nothing more glamourous than a climbing harness and a helmet, really) and loaded us onto the Sky Tram. They have such a beautiful set up here, so clean, so professional and the platforms, guides and equipment are all top notch. You never feel like you’re in danger or could fall off the flimsy platforms like some other operators, so if anyone’s at all nervous, this is a good place to start.

The tram takes you 20 minutes up above the dense forests (monkey-eye level) and deposits you at the first platform. There’s always a great rush of adrenaline looking out at that first line, 200ft up in the air, and from the platform all you can see is the cable going off into infinity. All the while you’re thinking, “I’m going there?!!!” Love it. There are eight lines total here, with the longest being 3/4 of a mile long, and they are high. I don’t particularly like heights (I know, I know, but I love ziplining, get over it) so I focused on looking out over the unparalleled views of Costa Rica and Arenal more than looking down as I flew past at a top speed of 75kph. There were a handful of very scared people in our group, with one girl getting off one line in tears, but once you cross that first line, there actually is no other way back to the entrance except to keep zipping. The guides were really good with them, crossing with them if they needed the support, but we all tried not to get too over-excited to freak them out more.

Back at the hotel after the zipping we discovered I was sun burned. Like, crispy critter burned. I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because all the platforms are completely in the shade, so the only time you’re exposed to the sun is while you’re zipping across, for a grand total of about 4 minutes in the whole 2 hours, but it was all it took. I don’t get it, I go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore where it’s equally (if not more) hot and humid, never were sunscreen once and I don’t even get a tan. But here, all it takes is 4 minutes and I’m stick-a-fork-in-me-done. Couldn’t wear my purse on my shoulder for the next three days. All boils down to the positioning of the sun I guess. Needless to say, I didn’t step out of the shade without a thick coating for the rest of the trip.

After a relaxing afternoon and night in La Fortuna, Interbus came the next morning and collected us to head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest. This is where you really notice the biodiversity of Costa Rica, as you leave the tropical, semi-arid farming plains to enter the dense, steamy and dramatically cooler jungle. The roads to get up here are mainly paved for the first half, and, despite being incredibly winding, don’t have you gripping the edge of your seat. This changes after the mandatory bathroom and souvenirs break in Tillaran. From there you’re essentially on what we would here call cattle paths, insanely bumpy, unpaved dirt tracks scaling nearly vertical hills with blind turns that leave you practically hanging over 400-foot cliffs. They call it a Costa Rican massage, going over the bumps like that for two hours. By the time you get out you’re vibrating. And thankful you’re not dead.

Santa Elena is dramatically larger than last time I was here three years ago. The downtown (if you can call it that) is still the same size, with like ten shops, restaurants, a grocery store, a church, a giant cement armadillo and a good ice cream parlour, but this time it’s paved, which was a pleasant surprise. The biggest difference though is the number of hotels, which has at least tripled. For such a small, remote place, Monteverde has a wealth of activities, from hiking, rappelling, sky bridges, butterfly gardens, bat forests, bird watching, to ATVs, horseback riding and whitewater rafting. Our hotel was one of the new ones, the El Sapo Dorado (Golden Toad), and each room was it’s own private cabin set back amongst it’s own personal patch of garden that glows with thousands of fireflies at night. I had never seen real fireflies before, only the fake ones in Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, so that was super cool. The rooms are really nice, though they don’t have a lot of the amenities you normally expect from a hotel, like any electronic devices and heat. Yep, I said heat. You get a fireplace and a box full of wood and the rest is up to you.

We spent the day exploring Santa Elena (we saw it all and had to go back to some places twice to fill the time) and had a cool dinner in the treehouse restaurant, which, as the name implies, has a giant tree growing through it. You eat on the second level amongst the branches, and your tables and chairs are all random-shaped logs fashioned into dining furniture. I’m a sucker for cheesy ambiance, so naturally I loved this. Took lots of pictures.

About now I was freezing. I’m a really cold person on a regular day, and it rains every afternoon here, so after the tropics of La Fortuna, my system was not liking this. You can see the weather coming in here, it moves in fast and just takes over, the clouds literally rolling down the main streets and in minutes you’re lost in the fog. On the upside, I love fireplaces, though, and can sit and poke at one for hours, so you can guess how I spent my evening. Had a slight problem with the smoke and kinda filled the room – my clothes are going to smell like fireplace for the rest of the trip – but the warmth was totally worth it. Actually, all night it wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be and I woke up with warm toes.

Day 5 brought us more ziplining. Skytrek has a course that I missed out on doing last time I was here, and, as the lines are supposed to be some of the highest out there, straddling the continental divide, it was actually the whole reason for trekking up here at all. The setup is even more impressive then La Fortuna’s, and although the tram system is much the same, the view is dramatically different up here. You’re very exposed, up on the spine of the mountain that, on a clear day, would allow us to see both the Caribbean and Pacific oceans at the same time. We weren’t so lucky, as the grey clouds blocked out the water, but stayed high enough for us to still have an insane view of the jungle as we flew over it. This was the only time I felt the altitude, as there were a lot of tall towers to climb to reach the ziplines, and by the time I reached the top my heart was hammering in my chest. The zipping itself was great, although because of really high winds we had to go across in tandem for all the longer cables, just to have enough combined weight to make it to the other side. This was a new experience for me, but it did allow me to get some pretty sweet video as my co-zipper did the breaking while I played videographer.

We could see the ominous clouds bearing down on us as we finished up, but miraculously we made it back into the van before the skies opened up. And did they ever. As soon as the rain started, it became pretty obvious that this was not a small passing shower and that our plans to visit a local orchid garden were going down the drain. So instead we picked up dinner fixings at the supermercado and tucked into our cabin for the day, where we could at least stay dry. Normally spending nine hours in a small room with no TV and radio in the middle of nowhere would be my definition of hell, but here it isn’t so bad. I’m enjoying a couple of Spanish magazines, and have discovered that poking at a fireplace really can keep me occupied for hours on end.

Tomorrow it’s onwards to the sea again, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot!