2-14-20 - Zip-lining Superman style
/We awake to our plan to start calling hospitals for Leanne’s mom. When Leanne calls her mom, she shares worse news from the farm. A beloved racehorse on the farm broke its leg in a race and probably will need to be “put down.” It’s devastating news to her octogenarian parents and brother who work so hard at their craft.
So Valentine’s Day isn’t starting off well. We head over to La Selvatura Adventure Park in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. We been to several rainforests so you might be wondering what the difference between a rainforest and cloud forest is. Yup, us too. Google reveals that a rainforest is a tropical forest with annual rainfall of 100 or more inches or rain with trees forming a canopy and that are found at lower elevators. A cloud forest is a type of rainforest but found in higher altitudes usually between 3K – 8K feet. While the cloud forest is cooler, it is just as humid.
The canopy zipline was invented in Costa Rica in 1979 by a US biologist Donald Perry to study the rainforest canopy. In 1997, the first commercial canopy zipline tour was opened to the public. In Monteverde. Thus we are now standing in the birthplace of the canopy zipline tour.
La Selvatura features ziplining as well as a bunch of different adventure and exploration opportunities for the crew such as walking across hanging suspension bridges, Superman zip line, Tarzan swing and close encounters with snakes, hummingbirds and butterflies. It’s just a day to remember.
Kyle, Justin, Corey, Ashlynn and Ashley head out for ziplining while Leanne and John for a guided tour of the cloud forest. The zipline crew is fitted with safety equipment, driven to near the top and hikes the rest of the way. There is a long line so it takes a while to get to our turn for the safety demonstration.
The first thing the guy does is starting about which gloved hand to use around the line as you zip. Wait a second! Kyle looks around at all the kids with their gloves and at his bare hands and realizes they didn’t give him any gloves. Crap! “Wait, wait, no-one gave me any gloves at the base,” Kyle tells the instructor. “Well, I guess your hands will just be a bloody mess by the end then won’t they,” he says with a snicker. Another guide comes over and tells me that he will radio down to have someone bring them up.
We are to be clipped onto the zipline hanging in a sitting position. The guide says we need to lean back and use one hand to gently grip the line. He tells us that this is to keep us from spinning around and that if we don’t do this, we will go into an uncontrollable spin and crash at the end of the line. Hmm. Also, he says, don’t grab the line or you will tear your shoulder muscles to pieces. Hmmmm. Also, don’t sit upright too close to the zipline pulley that you are clipped onto or when you hit the bottom, you will smash your face. Hmmmmmmmm. Also, don’t put your hand in front of the pulley or it will sever all your fingers off.
“Are you kidding me with this guy?” Kyle is thinking, he’s out of control. Ashley turns to Kyle and says, “dad, I don’t want to do this, I want to go back down to the bottom.” Kyle can totally understand where she is coming from. This guide must be working on a book titled 50 ways to die in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. After some soothing and cajoling, Kyle gets Ashley to agree to try the first zipline (there are 13 total) which is very short and not steep and if she still wants to go back down, he will take her.
Despite the “safety” instructor’s best effort to scare the bejesus out of us, the first zipline goes off without a hitch. At the bottom, Ashley flash a bit of a smile and Kyle exhales in relief knowing we will be able to continue. The clan has fun zipping from line to line and better yet, no one lost a limb or endure a life threatening maiming.
On the next to last one, there is a Tarzan swing where the person jumps off a platform 10 meters attached to the bottom of rope. They basically free fall until the rope reaches full extension and then it whip-snaps them forward and up about 15 meters in the air. They then swing back and forth about ten times.
Kyle is pretty excited for it as they approach the entrance. The guide points to sign that says the max weight is 90 kilograms and points to me, “how much do you weight?” “Well, I don’t weigh under that,” Kyle responds annoyed. “Well, then no Tarzan swing for you,” he concludes. “You should really put that on the website,” Kyle says, “if I had known that, I would have looked for a different zipline tour that had a Tarzan swing that has a swing that was, um, more big people friendly.” The kids do the swing and despite shrill screaming as they free-fall plummeted down into the arching swing, they all emerge with huge smiles on their face.
They save the best zipline for last which is a 1 kilometer zipline from one end of the cloud forest to the other. They were an optional upgrade to do the zipline Superman style face down which we opted for. We take out the superman outfit we’ve been carrying in a backpack and they help us in. In reality, we look more like giant red and blue burritos. We climb up to the top of the platform and the guides attach the zipline pulley to hooks on our back. There are 2 ziplines to so we go two at a time. The guides pull us back and run and launch us forward.
We go flying forward at a fast pace and enjoy the views of the cloud forest 100 meters below us. The zipline last about 60 seconds. “That was incredible,” was the group consensus. Even Ashley is beaming. “Top 5 day!” Corey exclaims.
Meanwhile, on John and Leanne’s morning hike, Leanne meets Ashleigh, a 30-ish American marketing manager living in North Carolina. She’s a solo traveler, bundle of fun and super positive. John and Leanne take her to lunch and to the hummingbird garden. In under an hour, Ashleigh restores all damage that the other American, such as Mr BS in Bogota and embarrassed to be Americans in the Galapagos Islands, had done. Ashleigh even offered to help our college niece and nephew with their job search. Ashleigh was super thankful for the company reminding Leanne how blessed she is for the chance to travel with this family of 7!
When the zip lining clan members return, they are beaming with adrenaline still flowing in their veins. Smiles abound which is always something to celebrate on any teenager. It’s now pouring rain but they still want to experience all this adventure park offers.
The zipline took a lot longer than expected to the group has to race through lunch and rush to get the remaining things in. We take a guided tour of the reptile exhibit which a room with a serious of tanks holding various deadly reptiles from the cloud forest. As the guide takes us from one to the other, the kids starts exclaiming, “we saw that one in the Amazon.” When he reveals the deadly Fer-de-lance viper snake telling us, “this one is so venomous, it kills the most people of all snakes down here.” Justin turns to him and says, “oh yeah, I found one in the wild in the Amazon.” Kyle tips the guide well as we think he was a little bummed out that our seeing them in the wild in the Amazon bested seeing them in his glass enclosures.
Next we visit the butterfly garden. Expectations are running high as the garden is a massive enclosure that could house a football field and the picture on the website shows it teaming with hundreds of butterflies. We enter with the guide and stand there looking up at an empty room. Well, there are a ton of plants and green life on the floor but not a single butterfly in the air.
“Where are all the butterflies?” Kyle asks. “I show you,” the guide responds. He leads the group over to a large corkboard where 50 different dead butterflies are pinned against it. He starts going through the different butterflies. “Um, where are the live butterflies?” Kyle rephrases the question. “Oh look, there, there, he says pointing up.” Two butterflies have emerged and are fluttering around to save the guide.
As we walk around and explore, some more butterflies emerge but there couldn’t have been more than 20 of them, a far cry from the pictures. The railings around the different paths contain numerous dead butterflies. Kyle notes that they might want to consider adding a tagline to their marketing materials saying “the only butterfly garden in the world where you will see more dead butterflies than live ones.”
Owing to a logistical snafu, we have to switch to a different hotel from last night. The new hotel,
Los Pinos, sounded really cool as it has rustic cabins situated on a private family mini-reserve with its own hiking trails and greenhouse garden. When we check in to our hotel, we are told that since the cabins have kitchens, there is no breakfast and no restaurant on the property.
This presents somewhat of a challenge as the place is off the beat and path and we have no car because Kyle could not find a car big enough to carry us and our luggage so we are taking transports from one city to the other and then the activities and tours provide pickups and drop-offs at the hotels. A kitchen doesn’t help feed 7 people if you have no food in the wilderness to cook.
We have booked two cabins, one for Leanne and Kyle and one for the kids. During check-in, the clerk tells us that there was an issue with the reservation system and our cabins got processed separately and are at opposite ends of the reserve which ends up being a 15 minute walk. Not ideal.
The clerk processed the kids cabin first and so they have taken their luggage and disappeared into the night. It’s downpouring buckets of rain now as we head out to find our cabin. After about 10 minutes of walking in the rain, we come to a path with a sign that says Cabins 12 – 18 this way. “Aren’t we cabin 10?” Kyle asks. “Yes,” Leanne replies. We turn around and head off in another direction.
Ten minutes of wandering around totally lost dragging 23 kg (50 lbs) bags around in the rain and howling rain does not do much to create a romantic mood on Valentine’s day. Eventually, we give up and Leanne goes back to the lodge while Kyle watches the bags. Leanne returns and we eventually find the cabin. Apparently we were supposed to know to take a turn into a path into the woods with no sign.
The wind is whipping as much as when Dorothy was trying to find Auntie Em (wizard of oz reference for you younger readers). Howl. Howl. Howl. It’s whipping so much that the door to our romantic cabin flies open and slams into wall. Kyle gets up and closes the door but as soon as he sits down, the wind blows it open again. It’s kind of killing the Valentine’s Day mood here. After 10 minutes, Kyle concludes that the door is broken.
“No problem, I’ll just call the front lodge to ask them to fix it,” Kyle says. Kyle scans the cabin and realizes with dismay that there is no phone. Ok, he’ll just call them on his cell. Oops, no cell reception. Kyle now realizes that he must trudge back 15 minutes in the rain to the lodge to report the door because the damn lodge couldn’t be bothered to buy a $10 phone at freakin Walmart.
When Kyle tells the clerk, he says, “oh yeah, the cleaning woman told me about it this afternoon. We’ll need to fix it tomorrow.” Seriously? You knew the door was broken and you couldn’t be bothered to fix it or even tell us about it? An hour in and Kyle’s TripAdvisor rating is sitting firmly at 1 star.
We were originally planning to go out for a romantic Valentine’s dinner but that option is looking pretty bleak after the what we’ve just endured. John FaceTime’s us offering to go into town, even in this windstorm, to buy pizza and bring it back for us. Really? Wow!? We couldn’t say yes fast enough.
The teens are noticing how spent Kyle and Leanne are being worn down by the week’s tough news and eight months of traveling. So they step up as always — offering to host breakfast at their cabana in the morning. We are so in.
