Canopy Flight

Dec. 20, 2009

Miramar, Costa Rica

We woke in the morning with the anticipation of soaring through the jungle over 11 waterfalls. At 9:ooam we met with our group in the jungle canopy. There were 17 of us and 5 guides. As we were lead to the horse corral the question was asked, "is there anyone who has never been on a horse before?" My hand shot up. They lead me over to a small white horse named Brad. They told me Brad was a nice, calm horse and that he knew the way. With fear in my eyes, I mounted Brad and held on tight. It was approximately an hour up into the mountains to where we began the canopy tour. We traveled through rivers and up steep inclines. It was ok until Brad felt left out and began to RUN up the gravel mountain road! I bounced around in the saddle whilst yelling at the top of my lungs. Eventually I remembered to pull back on the reigns and Brad slowed down and was nice again. I have never been more scared in my whole life!

We finally made it to our destination and I thanked Brad for the ride up the mountain. Once we were all set up in our harnesses and the safetly lesson given, we began the decent through the jungle canopy. It was exhilerating. We rappelled over waterfalls. We saw beautiful butterflies and the biggest ants I've ever seen. At the bottom of the biggest waterfall we stopped for a water break. The pool beneath the waterfall was deep and cold, and we jumped right in!

What an amazing experience in the jungle.

After lunch we took off in the direction of San Jose. Greg wanted to get a new rear tire, he was worried he wouldn't be able to find a tire in South America when he needed one. We were traveling with our friend Trevor who had a contact in San Jose and a free place for us to stay. Navigating the twisty mountain highway was a challenge, weaving around transport trucks as the traffic became heavier as we got closer to the city. We made it to our destination just before dark and settled in for the night.

In the morning Greg and Trevor took off in search of a motorcycle shop that sold the much needed 17inch rear tires. They pulled into a gas station and saw a guy riding a BMW GS650. He was excited to show them where the dealership was and whipped through traffic with Greg doing his best to keep up. At one point laying on the horn to let the motorcycle cop know to get out of the way.

Some how Greg came home with not one rear tire, but two. Which has made our already loaded and cramped bike even more cramped. None the less we said see ya later to Trevor as we rolled out of San Jose towards the coast over volcanic mountains that were over 3333 meters in elevation. We drove through jungle and rain forest to above tree line at which point we began shivering on the bike. Greg's hands froze to the handle bars and the bike began to run poorly, bogging out and losing power. We drove though such dense cloud cover on our decent that visiblity was reduced to 3 meters. It took about 3 hours to drive a 100km distance. It was some the most beautiful scenery of our trip thus far.

We decended the mountains and found the coastal surfer town of Dominical. We will stay here and find a nice palm tree to sit under.