Mimi | Monteverde Ziplines & Canopy Hanging Bridges April 29, 2011

(and no, this is NOT me but approximates what I experienced today)

Can I start this entry with the observation that Costa Rican mosquitoes are louder than Minnesota ones? My first night in Costa Rica and I was awoken at 3:08am (yes, I looked!) by the incessant unrelenting high pitched whine close to my ear…. And through a pair of ear plugs no less!

Canopy ziplining was pretty cool – especially the ones where you are suspended a hundred feet over the canopy line. I do think the advertising is misleading – they always show a girl holding on and looking down over the canopy as though she’s slowing her speed, stopping to gaze at the vista out yonder. Reality?? – once you’re strapped in and you let go, ain’t no stopping… the idea of a “controlled speed” zipline experience is a complete myth – your speed is a function of the line’s incline, your takeoff push and your body weight – bigger people go faster and smaller people (like me) sometimes lose momentum and get stuck dangling a couple of feet away from the platform, particularly if you try to slow your speed. Then you get the privilege of amusing the rest of the group by having to go hand over hand across the line until you get to the platform. In all, we did 13 different lines – some of the shorter ones were 300 feet or so but there were about 4 spectacular ones where the line was suspended clear over the canopy - once you got started, you moved at a terrifying speed with the valley that you are crossing blurring by. One line was almost 1/3 of a mile and the final one we did was 1000 meters or a little over ½ a mile. Ok, I have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to swim a half mile but it’s terrifying when halfway in, the wind picks up and you start to sway side to side dangling hundreds of feet with nothing below your feet – and there’s not a thing you can do it except hope your speed is enough to get you to the platform (actually on this long one, they made people pair up to get enough weight to create the momentum)

After the zipline I opted for a 3 mile walk of the hanging bridges This is much more like a nature hike and is in the canopy itself although these bridges do traverse different sections of the cloud forest. The only thing I regretted was having missed the guided naturalist tour – they only go out about 3 times a day so I walked some other folks. We spotted a couple of cool birds and butterflies but it’s hard to know what you’re looking for.

As I’m walking for 90 minutes up and down these trails, I got to thinking about the 11 Quakers from Alabama who moved to this area in the 1950s and purchased 3000 acres due to their beliefs about the military as well as the fact that Costa Rica had abolished their army – what must they thought of this Valley a place to settle in and given the ordeal in the 21^st century to get here, what it must have been like to settle here. Evidently, they started dairy farming and it became one of the big businesses here – although given the state of the cows, I wonder how prolific their milk production could be.

Night walk later tonight – hopefully will spot some creatures of the night….