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Beer and Clothing in Costa Rica (Part III)
So it's Thursday, and it's early, like 7:00am. I don't even know
if 7:00am exists on vacation, but I guess it does. Sean and I head down to the
restaurant for breakfast, filling up on their cornucopia of food, eggs, bacon,
sausages, eggs, steak, cereal, more eggs, some steak, bread, way too much fruit,
some odd fruit juices, steak and eggs. Did I mention eggs? Ok, why was I so
happy? Simple, I was headed to the forest of Costa Rica to do a canopy tour.
What is a canopy tour? It's canopies 100 feet above the ground, in a forest,
connected by over 800 meters of steel wire. You strap yourself in with climbing
gear, and slide down these wires way too fast, thinking "I'm gonna
die!", which being eternally grateful no one is under you, because you're
peeing in your pants. Or at least that's what I thought. We got to the bus,
which took us to another bus. For the next two hours, we drove through rural
Costa Rica, which is redundant, I guess. Calling Costa Rica rural is like
calling Toronto urban. They are synonymous. All of the small towns in Costa Rica
have these little schools and the students wear black pants (or skirts, if they
are girls or gay, or Scottish) and wear white shirts, for elementary school or
blue shirts if they are in high school. I tell you this, I'm glad I didn't live
in Costa Rica as school kid, because I couldn't live with a dress code in
school. I needed to wear the same jeans and t-shirts for 3 weeks straight, while
cutting school to go home, watching Sports Desk and eating Kraft Dinner. They
don't have Sports Desk in Costa Rica and no Kraft Dinner. A shame I tell you, a
shame. Our tour guide was named Pablo. He was highly educated and told us the
story of Costa Rica. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus. He brought over
the Pilgrims. They killed the Indians. They built really large buildings. But
because of construction envy, two were bombed within the past 10 years. No wait,
that's the story of the United States. My mistake. Costa Rica was created from
lava. Big deal. He said that any fossils in Costa Rica were brought in from
curators from museums or historians, there are no dinosaur bones in Costa Rica.
By this time, I was begging to be shot (or at least heavily sedated). What else
did I learn about Costa Rica? Nationalized health care. Free education. Hmm,
sounds like Canada, except warmer, and crappier houses (except for Scarborough
tract housing). The roads in Costa Rica suck ass. This is an "ass" and
this is the roads in Costa Rica sucking it. There were a few paved roads, but
the roads leading to the lodge near the forest were dirt and rock. More rock
than dirt. It sucked. We were shaken back and forth, like a James Bond martini.
Of course, if I had one, I would have puked it up. We finally got to the lodge
where we were equipped with our climbing gear. Of course with my freakish size,
Jake (the surfer dude Costa Rican guide, who hung out in California for a couple
years) had to use an extension on my gear, which made me feel even more unsafe.
Everyone else got to attach their chest harness to their waist harness. Me? I
had to attach my chest harness to this flimsy florescent green (think tennis
ball) strap and then to my waist harness. Scary stuff, I tell you. We got back
in the bus, after the whole lot of us (about 15 or so), looking way to geeky,
with our collective sun burns or pasty white faces, and headed to the forest. We
had to hike in to the forest for about 15 minutes. On the way, Jake told about
certain trees we passed. I guess Costa Ricans have some sort of gene which
forces them to tell us about things we really don't care about. I guess Jake
wanted us to know what the tree was called when we hit to at 30 km/h. Most of
our group were completely out of shape, so I didn't feel really bad, when I was
wheezing like a asthmatic with a crushed larynx. We got to huge tree and were
told to climb to the canopy at the top. If you check out the gallery, you'll see
this massive forest growth. I was impressed with the Costa Rican trees. I mean,
how many trees can actually grow an 80 foot metal ladder. The climb was a super
bitch (and I'm not talking Roseanne or Madonna). I'm talking having Sean
grabbing your foot at 30 feet (bastard!) or at about 60 feet, having some old
bat with a big ass, stopping. It's not like the fastest climber, but I gave her
a fair head start and I still caught her. I'm sure Sean could have climbed over
me, but that's another story. Once on the canopy, we were instructed in the
finer points of the zip lines. How to brake. How to dismount. How to fall. How
to scream. How to leave a bloody corpse. How to break your fall by grabbing on
to the guide. When asked who wanted to go first, I put my hand up, but some
woman was chosen. Even in Central America, having breasts is an advantage. I
guess the guides have never seen me in a G-string. I went second. Strapped
myself in. Sat back, and I was off. Pretty fucking wicked. What happens is that
you think you're going way too fast, so you start to break, but in fact, the
guide at the other end, is telling you to speed up. So you ease off the break
and you're flying. Once you land on the second canopy, they send you to another
one and another one. So it's 4 or 5 consecutively. Pretty awesome. The
adrenaline was pumping like crazy. It's weird watching people my parents' age
zipping through the Costa Rican forest, screaming, yelping, cheering. But it was
cool. Sean was a rock. He was so cool the whole time. I think this was too tame
for him. He needed flying bullets and sniper fire coming at him and then he
would have had a better time. "Duck! Incoming Serbian fire!" Every few
canopies we would have to climb another ladder, which was probably the scariest
thing, because I was afraid the people would fall on me when they climbed. They
looked so unstable. We had to talk across this 50 foot rope bridge which looked
at steady as Maggie Simpson during an earthquake. That was pretty cool. After
the last zip line, the guide told me get off the last canopy. With no one
around, I started heading back down the path. I got back to the bus and noticed
that no one was there. The bus driver, fluent in Spanish, but pretty useless in
English couldn't help. I hiked back to the last canopy, where the last few
people were careening into the guides. With the group this time, I hiked back to
the bus, and headed back to the lodge. At the lodge we had lunch, which
consisted of, can you guess? Steak and some weird juice concoction which Sean
and I never really figured out what it was. After making fun of Americans, we
headed back into the bus, for another painful 2 hour trip. We stopped at this
souvenir stand just before we got back to our resort. I guess this was Costa
Rica's attempt at crappy souvenirs. They'll soon learn that high quality low
price souvenirs don't sell. They need to follow Mexico's example and sell
crappy, expensive, useless junk. I did get this cool leather face for my
girlfriend. Sean was racking his brains on what to get his "wife" but
in the end, his indecision got the best of him. He got nothing, except some
weird stares from the patrons and a full body cavity search from the security
for not buying anything. Back at the resort, Sean and I did what we had done
best in Costa Rica, split up and not talk. He stayed in the room (on the balcony
to be exact) and read. I headed to the pool for some food, folks and fun. I got
to the pool, knocked down a couple "guaro saguaros" (rum and lemonade
with sugar, think of acid on your teeth, that's how much this drink rots your
teeth), jumped in the pool and soaked up some vicious rays. That night, another
crappy disco show. But the buffet at marvelous. Another feast. I think this was
the night that I got extremely drunk on vodka and amaretto. Sean thought I was
acting funny. I told him that seeing a brush fire less than 500 meters away from
the resort was not exactly run of the mill type stuff. Either way, I had a good
sleep that night.
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