15.10.2012 – 15.10.2012  27 °C

I’m starting to question whether I’m actually on a holiday here in CR????? Today is another case in point….

Today we got up at a reasonable time and headed straight up into the mountains to do some zip lining. Zip lining is the activity where you are strapped into a harness, hooked onto a metal rope and you slide through the air above the treetops.. Looks like so much fun huh??????

Ok so we arrived at the zip lining place, got strapped into two very uncomfy harnesses, taken outside and given a pep talk on how to zip line. Basically, the harness and the metal rope does the work. You just sit down in the harness, hold onto the rope with your RH and pull yourself up when you get close to the end of each line to brake.. Sounds easy huh? Actually, it is pretty easy but also pretty damn scary!

They start you off nice and easy, short slowish lines. The further we got along the course the longer and higher the lines got. Half way thru we actually had to stop lining and repel down to the ground to walk to the start of the next line. I think the repelling was the worse because you looked straight down onto the ground from this tiny platform. Aaah! Fortunately, the zip lining team took pity on me (the big fat ‘fraidy cat) and let me down gently to the ground.. No zipping thru the air just a nice easy repel!

I actually started to enjoy the whole experience towards the end of the course. This was mainly because I was used to the action of braking and also because we started to zip above the treetops so I could get a really good glance around at the jungle. I was enjoying the zipping so much that I didn’t brake hard enough on one of the lines and ended up hitting the padding on one of the courses! Luckily not too hard!!!!

The final zip line is easily the scariest I’ve ever been on. It’s called the Superman Zip line and you are strapped in with the zip line riding above your back with your face and chest facing the ground.. Superman style! Holy Dooley.. talk about freaky.. So freaky that for the first few moments I really couldn’t enjoy the experience it was just one big yell fest.. Before long I got used to the experience and the adrenaline started to kick in. The last little bit you are going flat out and you hit the auto brake pretty hard, so hard, that I ended up going from Superman to foetal position in approx. 0.05 sec… Such a ‘fraidy cat!!!

The rest of the team then headed from the Superman over to the Mega Tarzan Swing. There was not a hope in hell of me getting on it so I watched from the sidelines as the rest of the team jumped off a 80m high bungee platform and swung out over the canopy Tarzan style… Totally crazy! Allan our tour director actually took some video of the team flying over the canopy. None of me but plenty of video of the craziness of the rest of my team!

We headed into town after our adrenalin rush looking for some lunch. We went into this very little but really local Soda restaurant (Soda is a Spanish word for little milk bar style restaurant) where we all had very local food…. Hamburgers! Yep, we’ve come all the way to CR to have a hamburger.. After using up so much energy pretending to be Tarzan and Jane we all needed a real fatty fest!

I spent my afternoon sleeping and blogging before we all gathered at 5pm to go for a walk thru the Cloud Forest at night! Many of the CR animals are nocturnal so we were heading into the Cloud Forest to try and find some of these elusive creatures.. Everyone was keen to see a Jaguar.. but sadly, no luck!

We hadn’t even walked 20m before we found a heap of mammals feasting out on a big fig tree! We started off by seeing a Coati. The Coati (pronounced Ko-ah-ti) reminded me a bit of a badger, but with a long tail. Right next to the Coati was a Raccoon!!!! I spent six months travelling around Nth America and couldn’t find one, but here I am in CR and I see one of the cute little critters. Yeah! Not too far away from the Coati and the Raccoon was an Opossum… Double yeah! Actually, we saw nearly all of the mammals we saw for the evening in this one location. Just awesome!

I really wanted to hang around in this area and just watch the mammals but our guide decided that we needed to continue our walk with us all hoping we could see some Sloths moving and a Jaguar.. The remainder of our walk saw us gawking at insects and spiders.. Not my fav! The best part of looking for insects was when we were watching a tarantula move into its cave I saw a raccoon cross the hiking trail! Gosh they are cute little guys.. Only problem with this guy is the fact that he moved quicker than I could get my camera out of its pouch so no good shots of the little cutie L

We arrived back at the hotel before 8pm so all trooped up the hill from our hotel to a Tapas bar for some dinner.  My calamari tapas was really good but my steak one was pretty average.. Nice atmosphere though! By the time 10pm rolled around we were all yawning into our cups so we headed for our comfy beds early.