1/13: adventures in the rain forest canopy

We bought groceries at a supermarcedo the night before so we could eat breakfast in the airbnb. The girls had eggs. I had pre-packaged nut butter that I bought at Wegmans on pan negro.

Before we left, we said hello/goodbye to all the livestock.

These were guard-geese. We had geese in Taipei and they are not only loud, but quite aggressive toward strangers.

We got in the car and drove about 3-4 hours. We didn't actually go that far in part because we were just circumnavigating a lake (Arenal) and also because much of the drive was on dirt roads. The road surfaces were so bad, that Annie was often downshifting to first.

Here's the lake we were going around.

I was intrigued by the red sand. I walked down to check it out and it more like hard-packed soil.

Here's what it looked like up close. The black stuff was also some kind of dirt.

Here are the girls just as weather was blowing in.

I would describe Costa Rica as having micro-climates. Just like lake-effect snow that could be white-out and 10 miles away, the sun could be shining, all we had to do was to keep driving and weather would change. As we climbed around the lake, the weather would clear up and up by the ridge where there were windmills, we could barely see them, even up close.

We'd keep driving and it would clear up again. This is the view from tonight's airbnb.

Costa Rica is not flat!

Annie and Lara planned a stop in a town called Perro Negro that was just a few minutes away from our afternoon activity.

In the midst of all this bucolic ruralism, we would often find immaculately manicured soccer fields. Here was another one on the main street of Perro Negro.

We had a quick lunch at the Sabor Tico. We had a table on their porch.

Then it was off to the Original Canopy Tours (http://www.theoriginalcanopy.com/ingles/index.php). Honora booked the tour the night before and when I was awake in bed, I was, as Bruce Shefrin likes to say, "awfulizing" (thinking about the worst thing that could happen). I imagined the zip cord breaking and swinging to my death, or worse, to get maimed for life. Strangely, I felt fine the next morning.

We got to the facility and there was a couple from Italy in our group and a single woman from France. Sadly, the French woman turned around after she got to the top of the first platform.

Here we are gearing up.

We walked through the woods to the first stop where the first event was the Tarzan Swing. We climbed a steel staircase to the top of the platform. We always had two guides: one to send us one to receive us.  The receiving guide had a camera and took some nice pictures that they sold at the end of the tour. The girls went first so they took some video of me screaming.

At the next stop we got a demonstration of the zipline techniques. We were interrupted by a toucan. It's hard to see in this picture taken by my phone but it has a bright yellow bill and a black body.

This picture is a side view.

In this picture, the toucan is looking in our direction so you are looking at its chest.

I went last so I took pictures of the girls getting ready to go. Always the adventurous one, Annie went first.

After this, I stopped taking pictures when we were on platforms because anything you drop is gone forever.

About halfway through the tour, we climbed a Strangling Fiscus tree. Since we were still on the ground, I took some more pictures. Here's the guide giving some explanation. We liked this guide better than the other one.

I took some pictures about halfway up the tree because I figured I could retrieve the camera if I dropped it. Unfortunately, the device the prevents me from falling all the way down the safety line would have also prevented me from retracing my steps.

This is the view up from the base.

This is the view down from about halfway. You can see the rope steps that they built.

On the outside of the tree the steel cables ran through holes in the steel steps and they were held in place by clamps. They must have a weight limit, hopefully not 125 pounds.

Honora and I agreed that this was the most scary part of the tour. We were essentially on our own with only the a carabiner clipped to a safety rope.

Actually, we were always clipped to the safety rope and it occurred to me that if you slipped and fell off one of the platforms, you'd be dangling there and have to be pulled up. Or maybe it would be like a climbing accident and you would pull everyone else on the safety rope along with you? Funny, and probably inaccurate.

On one of the last zip lines, the guide reversed the order and since I was usually last, I went first. Since I was on the ground again, I shot the girls when they came in. Each of them ran out of momentum so they had to pull themselves hand-over-hand to the receiving platform. 

Obviously still having fun. This was the grumpy guide.

There were 10 zip lines altogether and we were out on the property for over an hour. It was a terrific activity and really not that terrifying. In fact that Tarzan Swing was more terrifying which may be why they put it first.

We drove back into town and got groceries at the supermercado which was obviously a destination of all the American tourists. This is what yucca looks like.

When we got back to the airbnb, it was sunset (about 6) and this was the view from the bedroom window.