Costa Rica - Day 6 - Swinging through the Canopy, Tarzan Style

Waking up early, we continued down the Intercoastal on the way toward Monteverde. We turned off the nice paved highway, onto the dirt road leading up into the cloud forests of Monteverde. The road to the famed cloud forest is said to be just as famous - a bumpy, dirt road that winds up and into the clouds through farmland. Judging by the amount of construction workers on the road, I'm going to guess it takes a lot of upkeep to keep the road drivable when it is likely washed out due to the frequent showers.

We arrived in the small sister towns of Monteverde and Santa Elena (I never could distinguish which one I was in at which times) and immediately set out to find The Original Canopy Tour. We followed signs up a steep road and arrived at a luxury hotel which had been the first to run the famed canopy tours many years ago. We walked in and they asked for our reservations which we definitely had not set up. Luckily, another group canceled and the three of us set off with 2 guides hiking into the rainforest.

This canopy tour was definitely the most "touristy" activity that we did on our CR trip, but it was a ton of fun and completely worth it! Our first stop was at the tarzan swing, and it did look kinda lame, but when you jumped off the platform you went swinging high up through the trees and it was actually pretty awesome.


After the tarzan swing and a bit more hiking we went from zipline to zipline to zipline, higher and higher into the canopy.

The cloud forest canopies are an amazing thing with an entire ecosystem living up in the treetops. It was amazing to see the diversity of plant and animal life that occupies the canopies.

One of my favorite plant species is called a Strangler Fig Tree. The seeds of a Strangler Fig is dropped on top of an existing tree by birds and it begins its life as an epiphyte, growing on top of the existing tree. Eventually the Fig's roots grow hundreds of feet down to the forest floor and complete envelope the host tree, eventually killing it. The interior tree, slowly decomposes and leaves a hollow interior to the Strangler Fig which we actually got to climb up inside of!


After the fun, albeit touristy canopy tour we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to one of the many ecological sanctuaries in the area for an afternoon hike. We had the sanctuary mostly to ourselves and hiked out to various viewpoints, overlooking the gorgeous rain forest.


Besides the gorgeous flowers around every corner of the trail, I managed to spot two Agoutis - a large guinea pig like animal that is orangish in color and WAY too fast for any picture snapping opportunities.



After leaving the park, we found a small museum called The Bat Jungle, and since I'm all about some caves and bats the three of us decided to go since it was still open. Again, we had luck on our side and a group had canceled and left us with the brilliant bat doctor, and owner of the museum as our guide. He was impressed with my little bit of knowledge of bats and of the white nose syndrome pandemic that is spreading to bats throughout the Northeast corner of the US, and by now has even spread as far south as Tennessee. The most interesting part of the museum for me was the room where he kept several different varieties of fruit bats. He had a device that converted the bats talking decibel range to one that we humans can hear, so we could hear the bats communicating with each other. There was one particularly pissed off momma bat that would NOT shut up, but it was fascinating to hear how much they communicated with one another.



That night when the three of us were walking to grab a beer, we had an amazing "The World is a small, small place" moment when we ran into a former Couchsurfer of mine, Pauline. She was checking out part of Central America before she head back to Paris and we just happened to run into her in the small cloud forest town of Monteverde!!!! Amazing!

Costa Rica - Day 4 - Aqua Agua

Another early morning and we were on the road heading north...attempting to find the elusive Rio Celeste. We didn't have an exact location, just a small town pointed out to us by a local tour guide from Fortuna. The drive took us through rolling hill country, resemblant of Dr. Seuss' cartoon movie "The Lorax".

Following the map and the few road signs that existed we wound our way to a small town where we stopped and ate breakfast and attempted to ask for directions. She pointed us in the direction we had just come from and a several miles down the road AK spotted an elusive sign for a tour agency that offered tours to the mysterious river. We made a turn onto the nasty, rocky road, crossed the sketchiest bridge yet and headed through pineapple plantations in hopes that we were on the right track.

I spotted the shack of a tour agency on the side of the road and three of us got out of the car and hesitently knocked at the door - which swung open, revealing an empty room with a couple of touristy posters pinned up on the walls and nobody in sight. Great, now what? A local farmer across the way must have seen us and walked over to help and pointed us further up the horrible road...back in the car and on we drove. I mean, we had wanted an adventure.

At the top of a particulary nasty hill we found there was a sign which pointed at a small path and said "Arbol de la Paz" or tree of peace. We decided to check it out and walked into the thick vegetation and found the BIGGEST tree yet. I have yet to see Redwood trees, so I don't have a comparison but this tree stretched up to the heavens above and would have taken at least 8 people linking arms to reach around because of the gigantic root system.

Several miles further up the road we found the park entrance (a small barely labeled gate) to Parque Nacional Tenorio - the park where the infamous Rio Celeste was located. We negotiated for a tour guide (who only spoke Spanish) and the three of us + 2 others set off on a hike into the rainforest.

We were barely into the forest when the guide pointed out a humongous leaf cutter ant hill that supposidly extended like a 100 feet underground. We somehow learned (all of our Spanish skills are pretty weak) that their are quality control ants that sit at the entrances of the hill and only allow in leafs that are up to their standards...cute little engineer ants. :)

We hiked underneath the amazing canopy, on balance beam bridges over trickling streams, and made our way down to part of the river. Rio Celeste is famous because its waters turn the prettiest light blue due to the combining of a sulfurous river and another river that is rich in calcium carbonate. Because of the chemical content in the water it is not safe to swim in all areas, but we were allowed to swim in some of the more diluted parts.

The first part of the river we arrived at had several mini rapids and my first hot spring! I hung out on the bubbly hot water, slowly cooking myself while the boys once again spent some time playing around in the cold, blue stream waters.

As the group hiked further upstream, the cool waters became continuly more aqua in color and were a gorgeous contrast against the deep green of the jungle. We eventually came opon the spot where the two brown rivers mixed to form the brillant blue shade...sometimes chemistry can be kinda cool.

Along the hike, the guide pointed out interesting plants, identified bird calls, pointed out signs of larger life (like tusks marks in trees from boars) and just chatted. It always surprised me how much I can pick up and the 2 other members of our group would occasionally attempt to translate some of the knowledge when we were confused.

Coming upon some stairs on the extremely well maintained path we hiked up, and up, and up until we reached the viewpoint looking down over the valley of Tenorio National Park below. In the distance we could see Tenorio Volcano, which consists of a total of 4 volcanic peaks. It was a gorgeous, misty cloud & rainforest view!

We continued down the path and heard the rushing of the famous waterfall below us. The waterfall is not too significant in height, but it drops down into a pool of the light blue water AND its a perfect place to go swimming...I finally decided to jump on in the chilly water! Sometimes settings are so picturesque that they just don't seem real, and this was one of those places. The three of us soaked in the beauty as we played around in the waters, not wanting to hike on out of the park.

By this time the 3 of us were pretty starving, but decided to continue on to Santa Rosa National Park and stop at a local soda along the way...unfortunately, this was the one strip of road that we drove on the whole trip where the sodas were nonexistent. We tried to appease our stomachs with the most delicious pineapple ever and we ate so much that our mouths literally hurt from all of the acid.

We head west along the northernmost highway and we could occasionally see across the border and catch glimpses of Lago de Nicaragua. The northern highway is primarily a dirt road and we were stopped and questioned at several military checkpoints which I assume was because we were so close to the border.

By the time we reached Santa Rosa National Park we still had not passed any restaurants or stores and were really starting to wonder what we would do about a meal that night. We talked to the awesome ranger and he called up the kitchen that is located at the park for both park employees and researchers that are based there and thankfully they had prepared enough food that we could eat with everyone! They were even nice enough to offer a vegetarian meal for me...even though I was hugnry enough at this point that I would have eaten most anything!

Before dinner, we set up our tent in the campground and ran into a girl wearing a batdana!!! Ok, I'm kinda a caving dork at a TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) caving festival they sell tie dyed bandanas with bats printed on them....and I know that they can't sell these just everywhere so I thought I had found a caver. The girl turned out not to be a caver, but a bat catcher which I suppose is almost as cool, and she was setting up a net to catch and identify bats in the area with. Of all the mammals in CR (and there are a ton of them!) over half of them are bats! So, this girl was down in Costa Rica working on a bat research project and as a caver I thought this was pretty cool!

By the time we were done eating dinner, the sun had already set and this meant both bugs and bats were out in force. We literally walked back to the tent not talking, squinting our eyes and swatting at what seemed to be a million bugs swarming around us. Rather than sit outside on the nice bench at our camping site, the 3 of us hopped in the tent, zipped it up as fast as possible, turned on our flashlights and started swatting at the bugs that had managed to make it in there. We stayed up for a while drinking in the tent, while listening to the night noises of the jungle and the hords of bats that kept ramming into our tent. It was pretty early when the three of us fell asleep in the muggy, but bug free tent all on top of our sleeping bags.

Puerto Rico - Day 2 - Day on Vieques - an island off THE island

Ahhh, what a refreshing night of sleep in our humid as hell tin tent! We woke up feeling particularly sticky and already ready for a shower when it would still be a couple days until we got a chance.

We headed back down the mountain in our tent, stopping at lookouts along the way to check out the gorgeous view which I actually have a picture of from Adam's camera!



Our plan was to head back into town to pick up the permits that are required to camp nearly anywhere in Puerto Rico. Once we made it back into San Juan we caught a quick breakfast (we made complete fools of ourselves trying to get in because you apparently have to ring a doorbell to get into fast food restaurants around there....crime rate maybe high?) well waiting for the park office to open. Hah! Apparently the park office is closed for a very extended holiday for all of December and January. Oh, well for legal camping...

Since the bioluminescent bays are best to see on nights when the moon is nearly gone from the sky, we planned on heading over to the small island of Vieques and spending the night there. Knowing that the island was on the east side of PR, Dana managed to find a small dotted line on our PR map that had a little ferry symbol - to Vieques! Sweet! We headed to our departure city - Fajardo on the east coast of Puerto Rico.

We spotted this HUGE iguana right downtown Fajardo!


The ride over on the ferry was gorgeous and we arrived at Isabel Segunda on the Northern coast of the island. We found a small surf shop where we got the scoop on the best company to use for seeing the biobays - the tour happened to set out from Esperanza which is located on the southern coast of the island. Now, Vieques being an island and all seems to distort the islanders reality of distance - they made Esperanza seem like it was a days drive away when in fact it was a short 5 mile walk across the island.

After a delicious lunch, we began our hike across the island and within a mile of hiking we were already picked up on the side of the road by local who just happened to work for the exact company that we had scheduled our biobay tour with!

We arrived in Esperanza, a beautiful touristy town with a row of tour shops and restaurants on the street opposite the beach. We walked around the small town, watched an amazing sunset, and caught a late dinner before we met up with our tour company. The three of us, plus a couple of families were driven out on a bumpy dirt road in a van where our kayaks were waiting for us. Dana and I were in the same kayak, well Adam got stuck with the tour guide - who bet that I couldn't get a good picture of the biobay because it was near impossible.

We kayaked out and started to notice the blueish glow that started to surround our paddles as we navigated through the water. If you scooped your hand through the water it looked like blue glitter would trickle over your hand and the fish that darted through the water looked like shooting stars! We got to an area that was deep enough to swim around in without touching the bays murky bottom and we spent about 20 minutes swimming around in the bay. It was a surreal experience! But, it turns out that my waterproof camera was not so appreciative of the biobays as it malfunctioned and would not take pictures for the rest of the trip! Grrrr the tour guide won the bet!

After the tour, the three of us wandered down the strip of sand away from the crowded tourist section to find a secluded section of sand to pitch our tent on. We found a perfect spot right in between two bays and set up camp. We passed around our bottle of Don Q Anejo (definitely not as good as silver!) with our newly discovered favorite mixer - Carrot Orange juice.

The temperature continued to drop as we drank our rum on the beach and we spent the night in our tent attempting to sleep through the chilly, chilly night WITHOUT our sleeping bags. We had neglected to bring them to Vieques so we wouldn't have to carry them around everywhere with us (oh, and Adam had neglected to bring one to Puerto Rico period!). We got a very sparse amount of sleep in one of the most amazing camp spots ever!

Puerto Rico - Day 1 - Midnight hikes, coquis, and our tin tent!

Dana and I, best friends from Georgia Tech, had been looking for an exciting adventure to fill part of our first christmas vacation post starting "real" jobs. I found airfare deals to Puerto Rico and emailed Dana, within a couple hours she had replied with a simple, "I'm in!" email and I booked our tickets. Dana made a call to our good friend Adam, and he was in for an adventure as well! December 29th - January 6th the three of us were going to have a helluva time!

Dana drove down to Atlanta from Nashville the night before, we spent our time making sure our "essential pack" was equipped with the tent, first aid kit, headlights, inflatable tubes (yes, 100% essential!), trail mix, and any other spare ends and odds that we deemed necessary. All packed, we caught a couple hours of sleep before our early flight out in the morning. Adam would be meeting us in Puerto Rico as he was flying out from LAX.

Dana and I got a LOT of funny looks walking through the Atlanta airport in our hiking boots (mine were actually still wet & smelly from a caving trip the previous weekend) and helmets on our head (if we attached them to our huge backpacking packs they managed to swing and hit people). Everyone wanted to know where we were flying off to and we more than amused security! Our flight to our connection in Miami went without a hitch, and I found it amusing that when purchasing lunch in Miami and trying to switch to better seats for our next flight we were already met with a language barrier. Miami is still technically in the US, right? Oh, well a good chance to try to practice my limited Spanish.

Adam met us at our gate in Puerto Rico and we went off to collect our luggage. We spent a good hour panicked, thinking that our "essential pack" had not made it to the island. No pack = no place to sleep! Thankfully, the pack arrived and we hopped into our small rental car that was ours for the week of exploring!

It was too late by this time to try to get permits for camping in El Yunque National Forest - a real Rainforest, so we headed down to Old San Juan to explore for the couple hours left of daylight. After finding a parking spot, we wandered away from the port area that was filled to the brink with tourists. We wandered along the city walls until we saw Castillo San Felipe on top of a lush green hill. The three of us kinda think alike, and before we knew it we were all on top of the hill and exploring what we could of the fort.

Seeing a creepy looking cemetery - Cementerio Maria Magdalena, we decide that a closer look at the creepiness is a reason to walk outside of the city walls. I mean, my opinion is that the closer to the water...the nicer the houses....apparently going outside the city walls in Old San Juan = sketchiness! After walking outside the walls and feeling like every man, women, child, and pet staring at us like we more than out of place and unwelcome...the whole time only walking further, and futher from the only entrance point back into the city walls (thinking we could find another way back into the walls if we walked just a little further....) we finally turned around & made it back inside.

Dinner was overpriced, but tasty at Mira Bueno in downtown Old San Juan.

We decided that we didn't want to waste money on a hotel and the word hostel is pretty much nonexistent in Puerto Rico...so we headed in our car to El Yunque Rainforest even though we knew you were suppose to have permits to camp...we couldn't think of a better option than a bunch of wilderness to make us feel right at home for sleeping. We picked up the necessary and amazing Don Q (most delicious rum ever!) at a gas station on our way to the rainforest.

Getting into the forest, we rolled down our windows even though it was raining to let the sounds of the forest surround us (primarily Coquis!) as we wound up and down the mountains. The sign at the entry to El Yunque clearly said that it was closed after dark, but then again the gate was wide open, so we drove right in! About halfway up, we were passed by a police officer who immediately stopped and had us roll down our window to talk to him. Trying in my very broken Spanish to explain that we were camping by literally charading a roof over my head (yes, I now know its acampar) and that el permitio officio esta cerrado (hah!), I think he finally got so frustrated he just waved us onwards.

Finally arriving where we deemed would be a good place to sleep (in our tin tent) we decided that we donned our head lamps and went for a midnight hike in the rain. Stepping out of the car, I nearly squished a gigantic snail....talking HUGE by American standards of snails! Adam went behind the locked bathrooms to pee, and immediately yelled at us to come there....questionly we went behind the bathrooms to see our first and only Coqui of the trip right in the corner where Adam was about to pee! Trust me, you will hear them the ENTIRE time you are in Puerto Rico, but rarely will you get the chance to see one!

The three of us slowly walked down the winding rainforest path with headlamps on, trying to avoid the many snails and we managed to spot a large rainforest crab in the process! After about an hour of wandering, and not wanting to use up our luck just yet by continuing to wander off into the darkness...we headed back to the car. A little Don Q and juice was a great nightcap before a very humid attempted night of sleep in the our tin tent! :)

All of the beautiful pictures from this part of the trip have vanished due to my camera malfunctioning in the bioluminescent bay (Day 2).