Monkey see, monkey do..

Friday, August 11th

This morning we woke up relatively early and found that our shared bathroom was busy for a long time. Greg and I had to use the bathroom attached to another hotel room since no one was staying there last night. However, everything got cleared and we just waited for the tour minivan that would take us to our canopy and bridges tour.

Of course, yesterday I hit my head against this steel beam that served as the structure holding the roof of the garage where Rosinante was sleeping. Today, just wanting to remember how it felt like, I banged my head in the same beam once again.. ouch! The French couple who had stayed at the same place saw how I graciously picked up the pieces of my dignity and insulted the beam. We met them and found they were going to the same exact tour as we were.

After the short ride to the Aventura headquarters where we stopped to dropped some other passangers, it was just the 3 of us and the 2 French people in the minivan. We were all going to go to the bridges tour first. It was great to see a slug in the wilderness, colorful butterflies, hallow trees, squirrels, spiders, etc.. during our hike. The bridges were cool too! I must say though, we were dissapointed to see the bright green snake on a plant right outside the Aventura hut at the beginning of the hike. As soon as our van pulled up and we settled in our couches to wait for the guide, I saw this guy trying to drop something out of a plastic water bottle into a plant. He tryied repeatedly until whatever was inside the bottle fell. I did not think much about it.

At the beginning of the hike, the same guide walked with us next to such plant explaining a few of the ground rules. Next, he proceeded to pull some of his best acting moves and pretend that he had just encountered such snake in the plant.. Everyone including the young Spanish couple we had just picked up went OHHHHH!!!. I was disgusted to say the least. However, I must say that aside from this flop, the trip was awesome and we got to see lots of vegetation and other cool stuff.

It was the end of the hike and while our guide was desperately trying to find his snake by the plant (which he never did in the end) we were boarding the van to get back to Aventura headquarters to do our canopy (zip line) tour. We got our safety harnesses, helmets and gloves ready and went for the wire. It was incredible flying in the air with the wires. The guides were pretty cool and seemed to be having fun. We went through all 16 lines. The last one was really nice and was about 600 meters long (1800ft) and 100 meters high!! (300ft). However, this last one we had to do in pairs so Greg and I went together and Alexey went with one of the guides. See, this is one of those sports where people with a few extra pounds actually do better than athletic types ;) Greg and Alexey had trouble avoiding getting stuck in the middle of the lines because their skinny bodies did not carry much momentum. My sizeable mass allowed me to fly in the sky like a pro. This is why Greg recruited me first as his partner for the last line! :)

Ok so after this enjoyable experience we came back to Santa Elena and had lunch with Olivier and Charlotte, our new found French comrades. We went to a falafel place. You could see the discomfort of our friends eating in a place for less than 4 bucks and full of flies but they managed and had fun, I think! We certainly did and their company was really cool. After this, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and car and got ready to drive to San Jose. This went without problems after I banged my head 3 more times in a row in the same beam described earlier.. Our French friends were amused.

The drive to San Jose went without a hitch. The city looked awesome! Really a city full of lights and lots of life. We tried to get a place to sleep at the Tranquilo and Pungea Hostels but were not able to in the first one and the latter refuse to let us keep the car there unless we paid $20US for the extra day tomorrow. We said.. forget it and found a happy place with garage at Kap´s Place. However, we did manage to reserve 3 slots in tomorrow´s White Water Rafting expedition with Exploradores Outdoors. It wasw $95 each.. ouch!

We happen to get 2 rooms. A single one (read 1 bed) and a double one (read bunks). After a very complex method (read rock, paper, sizzers) of determining the winner of the single bed room, Greg came out the winner. The two rooms were soooo incredibly small that we could barely fit two people in the double room standing at the same time. It was, however, very cozy. Really, it felt like we were in Guliver land.

We went for dinner at this mexican place in San Jose. It was adequate and we went back to simply crash in our miniature sized accomodations. We will go rafting tomorrow!!!!! Awesome!.