time is zipping by

(written regarding wednesday, march 31st, 2010)

today is the day that we're making our way to the coast (after enjoying some fresh fruit outside our room of course).  it'll be a five hour ride by van through mountainous terrain to arrive at the pacific beaches of costa rica.

before we left for the coast today though, we planned an early morning excursion to go zip lining just above the rain forest canopy!  this is one of the most well-known activities that people indulge in while in costa rica.  and after finishing our morning, we can now understand exactly why.

what appeared to be an unfortunate morning of rain, ended up being pretty cool for our experience of flying through the jungle.  when we arrived at the zip lining head quarters, we were outfitted in rain gear, and then soon taken by gondola to our first platform.  the thick fog/clouds and light rain created an almost surreal vista as one looked deep into the jungle canyon.....  and every now and then, you could see further than minutes before and catch glimpses of the impressive, eighteen mile arenal lake.



if you've never zip lined before, its hard to explain what it feels like, but perhaps the video below can at least help give you an idea of what it consists of.  you're literally hanging by a thread as you travel at speeds up to 54 miles per hour, while burning the tops of rain forest flora and fauna.  some of our lines traveled over valleys that were more than 1000 feet below us!!  it was simply amazing.....



when we were finished with our zip lining experience, we got back with enough time to catch lunch before hopping in the van to travel to the coast.

the van ride was filled with sights in itself, but ultimately we couldn't wait to see the beach.....  and soon enough we arrived on the coast just an hour before sunset.  we had some trouble finding the hotel (El Pequeno Gecko Verde), but eventually got on the correct dirt road and found our way to the gate.

we absolutely loved what we saw, and were excited for our next three days in our very quaint, private, jungle-situated bungalo.  as you can see in the picture above, they had our room in perfect shape, and nothing says "WELCOME!" like flower pedals and towel art on the bed....   :)

before heading downtown for a bite to eat, we took a night hike to our hotel's private beach which ended up being quite the fiasco, but an adventure nonetheless!  :)  (thanks for bearing with me Kel)  we didn't know until the next day what all the noises were that we heard, but its probably better we didn't understand that we were surrounded by literally thousands (i'm not kidding) of hermit crabs that were crawling everywhere around our feet. (below is a picture we took of one of them the next day)

for dinner we had one of our favorite meals of the trip as we dove into large bowls of seafood soup!  yummmm!  we both had been waiting all week for a big ol' bowl of sopa de mariscos!!  and if that wasn't enough, we were serenaded by a saxophone player in striped pajamas of some kind....  did i forget to mention that this was a street side, open air restaurant?  well it was.....