We woke up at 6:30 to the sound of rain. Chelsea had a canyoning tour planned for 7:00, but since the only thing we really knew about canyoning was that it involved walking in a river and repelling down waterfalls, she decided to cancel. She left a note for the guide and our friends, since no one was at reception. I fell back asleep.
At 7:30, there was a knock on our door. The tour guide, a totally charming man named Emel who had checked us in the night before, was outside. And angry. I was in and out of sleep, but the gist of the conversation was that Emel had gone way out of his way to get ready for the tour (he told me later that he typically only gives one tour a week) and that he would be giving one to Chelsea and that she needed to get dressed right then. So she did, but the Texans were nowhere to be found, which meant the tour would be Chelsea and the guide team and a father/son group who lived in the hostel. Emel wanted more people to come. Chelsea told me all this after getting mean-mugged by everyone in the establishment. She looked like she was going to cry.
Everyone hates me now, Amalia.
So fifteen minutes later, a very grumpy Amalia was shoving eggs into her mouth and resigning herself to an activity that sounded like her least favorite day of Appalachian hiking.
But how wrong she was.
We drove out to Santa Rosa, which is a teensy hamlet outside Santa Elena (the main town connected to the Monteverde Cloud Forest). Emel, who was now in high spirits, told us that tourism wasn't an industry in Santa Rosa. The people were mostly farmers, raising fruit and livestock.
This was my first time in a vehicle with an uncensored Tico driver. The regular tours usually crawl around curves and potholes. Eduardo, less so. Pretty much just blasted across the mountains.
We pulled into a little cottage. Emel picked manzanas de agua, or water apples, from a tree. It tastes like a pear/mango hybrid.
Our companions on the trip were Jesse and Connor. Connor is 9. They're Americans who've been traveling for a few months. I adore them. Jesse is a very low-key guy and he and Connor are obviously best buddies.
We got geared up and were deposited on a dirt road. Me, Chelsea, Connor, Jesse, Emel, and Emel's friend who only spoke Spanish.
It was a gorgeous day already. On the walk down the hill, Emel and his friend found some ripe guava. There's such an immediate taste difference between hothouse and wild fruit.
Costa Rica is very hilly, maybe even mountainous, but this doesn't seen to phase livestock. Cows and horses graze precariously on the 70 degree slopes. We saw a horse on a neighboring hill. Emel put his hands to his mouth and made a perfect imitation of a horse's whinny. The horse answered. We died.
We reached the creek which was to be our path and started out. It was amazing. We hopped from rock to rock and splashed through the water. Emel pointed out morpho butterflies and glass frogs and blue shrimp and peeling indian trees and strangler figs. He told me about the politics of Costa Rica - that the government is very corrupt, that there is a lot of unaddressed poverty. It felt like a cool new friend showing us his favorite local spots.
And we repelled down waterfalls! I never really got the hang of it, but I loved jumping into the pools at the end. Chelsea, less so. She was eventually threatening to start a travel show called Bewilderness that features herself, a non-outdoorsy academic from Evanston, doing high adventure activities. If only she would...
We were pretty worn out after canyoning, so we hung out in the hostel that night. We had intended to go to La Fortuna for a few days to hike up the volcano, but neither of us wanted to be stuck on a bus for that long, so we revised our plans and decided to stay in Monteverde for a few more days. Which is ultimately how I got my new tattoo. Stay tuned.
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