Six of the GAP crew left for the “Lost Canyon” rappelling trip at 10am – Anthony, Melissa, Kevin, Autumn, me and Marcie, a teacher from Alberta. We were joined by a couple from Switzerland and a couple originally from South Carolina who directed a language school for Assembly of God missionaries in San Jose.
Our starting point was about ten minutes out of town. Our guide, Victor helped us with our harnesses, reassured us that we would remain totally safe, and immediately led us to rappel down a twenty-five foot waterfall just for practice. The location was beautiful. We were following a stream downhill. Sometimes we would have hundreds of feet of visibility through the forest as we looked over a huge drop and others we’d be in a narrow gap only a few feet wide between tall canyon walls.
Our second drop was forty meters. The company had set up a platform from. When it was your time to rappel, you would walk out to the guide and he would strap your harness to two separate ropes. One was the rope you (supposedly) controlled, and the other was the belay rope controlled by the other guide down on the ground. Once strapped in, you’d walk out to a horizontal bar at the exact edge of the platform, duck underneath the bar and turn around to face the platform such that your back was fully exposed, let go of the bar and grab you rope (this was the most harrowing part), and with knees locked and feet still on the platform, let your body drop until your butt was below your feet and you could no longer touch the platform. For the rest of the descent, you are suspended in mid air. You control your speed by feeding rope through your harness.
I suspected, however, that we weren’t in that much control of our speed. It seemed like I would be moving my rope through much faster than I was descending. I tried not to look down much. After the tourists made their way down, Victor would show off by rappelling upside down like Spiderman. Marcie and I took turns holding her waterproof camera so she could get pictures of herself rappelling too.
A lot of our time in the canyon was spent leaping from rock to rock or splashing through the creek. I thought bounding around in the canyon was almost just as fun as the rappelling parts. Our last major rappel was 65 meters. I was one of the first to go. The guides made every attempt to get people wet in the waterfall. Once done with rappelling we hiked straight up for about fifteen minutes to get out of the canyon.
They fed us lunch afterward, and we saw howler monkeys in the trees across from the restaurant. It amazes me that people can step outside their door and see exotic animals like monkeys, toucans, and sloths. I suppose it’s the few similarities between Mississippi and Costa Rica that I perceive that make me make me temporarily forget about the many and dramatic differences. Interestingly enough, there is a small population of deer in Central America, so what’s a common sight for me might amaze them.
Meredith had bought tickets to the Baldi Hot Springs for that evening. We got there and took a quick tour around before hitting the restaurant. The place was like Disneyland. There were water slides and some springs had bars in the middle. There was a slight night club vibe – one area that we never made it to had a disco ball and pulsating lights. It was by far the most commercialized thing we’d yet experienced in Costa Rica.
Our shared steak fajita dinner was as expensive as it would have been in the States, and it was hit-or-miss. They brought guacamole but not cheese or sour cream. The steak part was good and there was plenty even though we shared. During dinner, we watched paramedics load a lady onto a stretcher. We didn’t know if she’d overexposed herself in the heat or if she had some problem with her back. We steered clear of the waterslide because we’d been warned that it was pretty rough.
We ended up spending most of the evening sitting in one pool talking to Frank and Cindy. Coincidentally, we became acquainted with several groups of people from the U. S. who’d been in the country on mission trips. One woman we spoke to had gone to school in Meridian, MS and her daughter had attended USM for a while.
The hot springs were very relaxing, and we slept well that night.
|
