The Days of Stereotypical Costa Rican Activities

On Tuesday, Emilie, Ally, Jason and I went zip lining. We were picked up at our resort and driven to the zip line company, which was a major operation. Buses of people seemed to be arriving constantly, and we were shuttled through to get helmets and harnesses. One of the employees even helped me strap our borrowed GoPro to my helmet.

After we waited in line for a while to get our safety talk, we climbed into open gondola lifts and flew through the air to the top of the mountain, where we disembarked and tried out a tiny baby zip line before moving onto the 400+ meter large ones. Emilie and I were rather nervous, but we all managed to step up on the platform and set off.

Emilie waits her turn (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Ready to set off (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

My general impression of zip lining is that, similar to water parks and very popular bars, it’s fun but not worth all of the waiting around that you have to do. I will say, however, that the view from the five big zip lines was pretty amazing, and I’m very glad we went. You could see the Arenal Volcano itself, which was very clear that day. You could also see the lake that was created after the last time arenal erupted - there was a town there, but they had enough warning to fully evacuate, and after the eruption they created a lake over the area. La Fortuna, on the other side of the volcano, is so named because it was mostly unaffected by the eruption.

There were many pictures of people checking whether the GoPro was on (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

More GoPro checking (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Lake Arenal (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Arenal Volcano (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

The rest of the view was of the vast, green, layered forest that carpeted the mountainous area. One of the zip lines actually went through the canopy, which was also very cool.

Zipping through the canopy (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

After our ziplining adventure, we headed into the town of La Fortuna to get some coffee and lunch. It’s a small town, but there was some very good food.

A beautiful iced latte (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Graffiti on our way to lunch (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Wednesday, we took a bus transfer to Manuel Antonio. An hour into the ride, we joined up with a rafting company to take a two-hour raft trip down the Balsa river. Every day, the dams at the head of the river are opened for a couple of hours, and that’s when all the rafting companies take tours - there were three or four rafting companies altogether.

It very quickly became evident that river rat culture is the same everywhere. The guides teased each other and splashed us as the rafts passed each other. Our guide, a La Fortuna native, told us that he had done this for 15 years (after telling Anne that it was his second time out to scare her). The guide told us that it would be class two and three rapids, so we weren’t expecting too much excitement.

Rafting the Balsa River (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some gentler rapids (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some less gentle rapids (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we hit a bumpy patch and our guide fell out of the boat about 15 minutes in, we realized we may have been wrong. He fell out in the first third of a rapid stretch, then pulled himself up and had enough time to shout “get down!”, our signal for huddling into the bottom of the boat, before he almost fell out again. Getting down was very necessary because no one was steering for a good chunk of time, but we made it out of that stretch without additional incident.

A few minutes later there was more excitement. We were not oriented correctly through another rapid stretch and found ourselves pushed into a large rock in the middle of the rapids by the strong current. Our guide immediately started trying to push us off of the rock, and climbed out onto the rock for more leverage when that didn’t work, but another raft slid into us and under the front of our raft, pinning us. Suddenly, flipping the raft and pinning Jason against a large rock while we did so seemed like a legitimate possibility. Noting the situation, the rescue guides, who were in one-person inflatable kayaks, came over to help our guide, and eventually they were able to slowly wedge the boats apart to free us.

Some slight concern at getting stuck (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Waiting to get free (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our guide took us to the side of the river and, taking a deep breath, remarked that we were having an exciting trip today. He also showed us his river tattoo - his scraped and slightly bloody arm from falling out of the boat.

The rest of the trip was a bit less eventful, as the big rapids were mostly in the beginning of the trip. When we got to a very calm part of the river, our guide invited us to get out and float down for a while. It was beautiful and very peaceful, even with other boats around.

After we got back in, we saw a variety of wildlife, including iguanas, lizards, cormorants, blue and white egrets, a few other species of birds, a sloth, and some long-nosed bats.

The smaller rescue kayaks were loaded up with some fresh pineapple and watermelons, and we paddled to a rocky river shore and ate the fresh fruit while watching and occasionally feeding the family of cows that was there.

The guides cut up fruit on the bottom of a raft (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Feeding the resident cows (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we finished rafting, we changed and climbed back into the bus for an hour-long ride to lunch through hills of farmland. The food was what’s called typical in Costa Rica: black beans, rice, salad, French fries, meat, and plantains. We were starving, but I’m fairly sure it was also delicious.

We also got to see and order professional pictures from rafting. We all started laughing immediately because everyone looked like they were having fun except Anne, who actually looked very angry…in almost every picture.

The rapids started immediately (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Anne was less than amused (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Reassurance after some rapids (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Water everywhere (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Our guide jumped during many photos (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

After lunch, we skirted San Jose and headed to the coast for the last four hours of driving. We were able to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean as we started driving down the coast toward Manuel Antonio.