Day 15 – ZipLineeee……..

Since we had an off day yesterday, we thought since today was July 4^th, what better way to celebrate but with some pazzazz!!! It was 7:30am and I decided to get the kids up. Today was to be a day of adventure. We were to walk to Montezuma today. It would be a nice little 4 mile walk. The kids weren’t feeling the excitement I was, but then again they didn’t know what we had in store for them.

We finally got out the door right around 8:30am. While we were waiting for Anna and Olivia to hop out onto the driveway, Thomas and I thought we would do a project and take a picture of him next to some Bamboo to see how much it would grow by morning. I’m guessing a foot. When the girls finally came out of the house, we walked down the street to Hotel Caleja and grabbed a beer for the walk. Ran into the couple we met the other day out on Cemetary Island . Andre and Cicely are from Toronto and are down for a two week vacation down with the kids. They were heading in to Montezuma this morning as well. Instead of waiting for the 9:15am bus, they decided to join us on our walk in. Figured if the bus would come, we could jump on as it passed by. We conversed quite a bit on the walk and tried to get the kids engaged with one another. Maybe it was simply too early in the morning for that. At around 9:50am we heard the bus behind us. It stopped and we jumped on. It was to take us the last 1.5 miles in to Montezuma.

After getting off the bus, we made our way down to Sun Trails adventures. It was a small hole in the wall retail front selling adventure excursions of all types. Today, all we were interested in was ZipLining!! We just missed the 10am tour and the next one was not to be until 3pm later this afternoon. No problem. We had nothing better to do than wait. We’re in Costa Rica, baby!!

Five hours to kill and we jet setted off to do some window shopping first. Once we browsed through the three shops Montezuma had to offer, we ended up going to El Sano for some ice cream. Okay, let me rephrase that. Olivia, Anna and I had some delicious ice cream. Thomas decided to have a caterpillar sushi roll instead. He must have a different kind of definition of dessert. I like it.

The waiter brought out three ice cream (yogurt) glasses/plates and set them on the table. Mine was a blackberry bliss yogurt topped with granola. Unbelievable. It was probably the coldest thing I have had in Costa Rica, except for the have frozen Imperial. The blackberry bliss was definitely better. I could have easily devoured three to four of these things, but I’m trying to watch my girlish figure.

We left the dessert bar and headed down to the beach to do a 1 – 1.5 hour shell hunt. Anna stayed near shore while Thomas and I climbed the rocks. We ventured out amongst the rocks looking for all kinds of shells. (Before I leave Costa Rica my goal is to learn the names of some of these shells.) We collected several handfuls and before we knew it it was 1pm. We figured we would eat around that time and be energized for our ziplining excursion.

Monte Sol was the soda of choice today. Heard several good reviews about the place and figured we would give it a try. Glad we did, because the food was great. Olivia got a fabulous chicken soup. Thomas got some sort of smoothie (not as good as Panaderia Bakery though in Cabuya). Anna got an Avacoda Salad and I got a Casado with Beef Steak. I thought mine was the best out of all, but then again I was somewhat hungry.

It was around 2pm when we left the restaurant and had around 45 minutes to blow before we had to be back at the shop to take the shuttle. We went to the town square and met up with Andre and his wife, Cicely, and jaw jacked until we had to depart.

Land Rovered up the mountain to Sun Trail at 3pm and we were fitted with ziplining gear within 20 minutes. The excitement was starting to boil. After a short explanation of the ziplining “do’s” and “don’ts”, we stepped up to the first platform. Thomas was asked to be first, but decided to do his first ride tandem with one of the guides. It was to be his last and only tandem. Olivia went next and freaked us out a bit at first because of her hand placements. She seemed to be nervous in the beginning of the first launch. I think after several feet of zipping down, she found the confidence was took charge of the lines for the remainder of the day.

Anna was second to last to go. I would watch her launch and waved her good-bye. I was giddy with excitement to speed line. Anna did awesome. Better than I would have expected. I hit the deck of the first end zip and I was ready for some more. Everyone had “Rico”, means wonderful on their lips.

We zipped four more lines before hitting a platform and getting out of our gear. We were at the half way point near the Montezuma waterfall. We walked down some stairs about 150m and hit the edge of the river. There was a group of people at the waterfall. Some were sitting back and simply taking in the view, while others were jumping off of one of the edges down to one of the pools. The waterfall consisted of three falls. The first was about 10-15 feet tall. The next was around 45 feet tall and the last was around 90 feet tall. Each splashed into a large pool below. Almost everyone jumped off of the first waterfall. I only saw one person jump off of the second one. The guides said the second one was pretty dangerous even though it was only about 45 feet tall. The rocks below made it somewhat of a hazard. No one in their right mind would jump the third waterfall because of the rocks.

At the base of the first pool, there was a rope swing. The kids were all about the rope swing. We played in the water for about 30 minutes before heading back up to the zip line area and continuing our line drive. There were four more lines before the trip would end. The last line was fast. Way fast. No braking needed. We finished the zip tour and headed back to Sun Trails where we initially departed. Pedro, who was one of the guys who videoed and pictured the whole experience, had created some dvds for us on our return. They were ours for free with a courtesy $20 fee.

It was 5:30 and the driver from Sun Trails was taking us back to Montezuma. I asked when the next bus to Cabuya was to take off. He told us that there were no more buses running. We asked him if he might take us back to Cabuya for $10. He agreed. Thank goodness. The driver dropped us all off at Hotel Caleja and we stopped in and had a drink with and Cicely.