We Were Tourists

About noon today we got new of the earthquake in Concepcion, Chile. Our thoughts and prayers are with our friends there. We are in Costa Rica on this trip but the original plan was to be in Chile, and if we were there we would very likely have been in Concepcion today....

Yesterday we did some real touristy things, and I was skeptical, but the canopy tour with zip-lines in the cloud forest was a real rush! There were 14 lines and the longest one was a kilometer long. We had a guy in our group who runs a challenge course in the US and he assured us that the safety procedures here were not near as stringent as they are in Oregon, but no one fell that we saw. Take a look at this video to get an idea what it was like:



AND, if you really want to hear Kathy scream, play this one:



In the afternoon, the girls toured a coffee plantation, and had a great time with Don Juan, the founder/flirt of the plantation. They found out all about coffee production, and heard a really convincing story about why Don Juan is not a fair trade plantation (apparently there is a rather high fee for certification and is too expensive for such a small plantation -- they actually pay higher wages than required to be considered fair trade).

Today we went on a hike to a great little water fall south of Monteverde. It was a short hike, but the view was spectacular. I even went for a swim. It is hard to believe that the water can be this cold in the tropics!

This afternoon I went up into the Monteverde Biological Preserve in hopes of seeing a quetzal. I did not see one but I had a great guide and added about 10 new birds to my list.

Kathy and Linnea went to the Monteverde cheese factory (that is really how we ended up here-- Linnea is always looking for the new culinary experience.) This area was settled by Quakers who objected to registering for the draft following World War II and 4 of the founding members were sent to federal prison for one year and a day. They immigrated to this country because at the same time Costa Rica abolished their army following their civil war.