Viva la Vida

The extent to which I love a good bus ride here is ridiculous. When we get on, and everyone is groaning about the fact that we will be immobilized in a chair for the next four hours, I am smiling with anticipation to relax and just spend endless hours with my eyes on the scenery and my ears towards my friends, or the movies playing in the background, or an album on my ipod. I can take in Costa Rica, and considering at this point we have driven all over, I would dare to claim that I have at least laid my eyes on a great portion of Costa Rica. These drives are honestly magical. My view will be obscured by bushes and trees and all of a sudden they'll open up to some spectacular landscape of rolling mountains filled with endless greenery and the occasional quaint home. Otherwise, if we're simply in the middle of the city, mountains are visible on all sides of us as a general rule, mountains caressed by clouds and a gradient of green.

And then there's Heredia, our humble home away from home. In Heredia, you can be taught about Costa Rica in general. Like how cars have the right of way here instead of pedestrians, and that these drivers are maniacs, but there's not a crash or accident to be seen. They are safe in their danger. You are taught about the general Costa Rican way of life, of “Pura vida!”, or “Pure life!” It means, it's all okay, life is good. It's used to accept an apology, as a goodbye, as a hello, as a reminder, that indeed, life is good if you let it be. And this is indeed the personality of the locals here. Its not exactly like Mexico, where everything is relaxed and laid back, its more of an environment where everything is happy, and everything is and always will be okay.

On my walk to school, I follow along a railroad track, often being forced to walk on it since there isn't always a place to walk next to it. There's no bar that comes down when the train comes. There's a couple red lights that might light up if you catch them at the right time if a train is coming, but they're awkwardly placed, and the people who need to see them in the moment and do is few. What alerts you to the train is the honking. When approaching an intersection, the train will endlessly blow its horn to tell cars to either cross the tracks or finally hit reverse. But if they don't do so in time, it's not a big deal. The train slows down, and I've even seen the train stop as it waited for a car to move.

Walking the streets, little things even like the pedestrian walk signals are interesting. Instead of a simple hand for stop and a person for walk, the person actually walks. The pedestrian lights here are animated of a person walking or jogging. And the street performers. They perform in the streets. Literally. They will walk out on to the road where the cars are stopped in front of a spotlight and perform while they wait for the light to turn green. Timing their performance so they have enough time to collect money just before the stoplight turns green. I've seen it all, unicycles, tricks with sticks of fire, it's like a circus on a quaint little intersection.

Walking to school at a certain time of day, the aroma of that which is Costa Rica is so sweet. Walking along the railroad tracks, tracks that criss-cross Costa Rica and link it together, the landscape opens up before you, mountains and valleys are spread out before you, beckoning you to explore, beckoning you to stay a while and enjoy it.

“President!” Emily exclaimed, soon followed by “Vice prez!” from Greg's side of the bed. We were settled on my bed in the hotel room again for a few rounds of cards, no surprise since it had turned into tradition over the past few weeks. What was unusual, however, was Brandon's voice after a round of President to ask if we could learn how to Salsa after the next round. A sort of random request, that I assume had something to do with the combination of our stories from Friday night and knowing about all the salsa classes I took last year in Guanajuato.

Julia found some random Latin music on her ipod, which we proceeded to not really use since its difficult to start learning Salsa to music, as the beat doesn't have any flexibility and when you're learning something like a turn, its good to slow it down for a minute so that you are really able to grasp how to do it.

We began in a straight line, learning how to do the basic step, Emily sitting out because she hates dancing. Moving our feet in the standard fashion, we all counted eights to dance to, creating our own rhythm and our own sort of music, if you could call it that, our feet forming the beat. Brandon, focusing on the counts, struggled to keep still on four and eight, wanting to keep on moving, but before long he got it, just in time for us to try it with each other, which just made it more confusing. Greg paired with Julia while I paired with Brandon as I gave tips to my friends as I remembered little things that would help them in their quest for the knowledge of salsa.

As the comfort level increased we moved onto turns, and by now Emily decided it was time for her to join, Maybe salsa dancing isn't so awful. And so Julia took a break and we got Emily comfortable with the step. What followed was the attempts of everyone to learn the basic turn in Salsa, but before long, while everyone was practicing it without partners, we finally got the hang of it, and then we tried to put it together with partners. Julia took up practicing with Brandon and I let them try it out for a little bit before complicating it farther. The hardest part seemed to be for the guy to keep up the basic step as the girl stopped to do the turn.

I couldn't grab onto anything. I was just falling and falling. Granted, there was some resistance, but not enough to give me any sort of security. It didn't matter how much I squeezed my hand around the rope, it just burned my hand through the glove, and there was still at least 100 feet of the 160 foot drop left to go and I had no control. So I twisted and turned myself down the cliff wall in front of me to the yelled explanation of the guides above and below me of what I should be doing, though to my knowledge, I was already doing it... I guess I wasn't...

Today in Arenal, we awoke early to go either canyoning, that is repelling down waterfalls and canyons, or horseback riding around the volcano next to our hotel. I opted to go canyoning and after a bus ride and a hike up some mountains, we began to descend, vertically. Our first drop was the biggest and was next to a huge waterfall. A 160-foot-drop, it obviously wasn't flawless, but still was extremely fun. We were instructed to put our left hand on the part of the rope above us, and the right hand was what stopped our fall and was to go on the rope next to our hip, releasing and gripping to adjust our rate of fall. For some reason, I just couldn't pull the rope tight enough to stop or slow down and soon enough, I think the guides began to stop and start me in rhythm with my attempts to push off the cliff wall.

At our next attempt, we were to face an 80 foot repel. The first 40 feet were to be free fall, and then you had to repel of the wall behind a waterfall. “I'm going to be able to hold on this time!” I told myself. And I was right. As I turned around to plunge backwards off the ledge, I sturdied my hands on the roads and pushed off, released my hands a little bit and begin to swing back... right to the ledge. I hadn't dropped a foot. So I tried again and just landed right back on the ledge, again, even after making an effort to almost completely release my hands. Finally, on the next try, I combined releasing my hands with wiggling my body to coax the rope into slipping through my harness. I dropped right below the ledge and then got caught again. “Show me your hands!” the guide said, asking me to completely remove my hands from the ropes, but I hadn't heard him, for I finally had gotten the hang of it and was busy getting ready to start repelling off the waterfall as my sneakers flooded and water splashed everywhere.

We had a few more canyons to repel down, one of which was the the plain old dry cliff, with no waterfalls to be seen, but a good one to make sure you've really figured out this whole deal with the ropes. The last one went down another waterfall, but the second to last one was definitely the most challenging. The whole time we had been following a single river that cascaded over various cliffs. On the last repel, we were repelling off the wall behind the waterfall the whole time. This part of the waterfall began with a 45 degree angle, so this time, instead of hopping off a ledge as usual, you essentially just walked backwards until you were being completely held up by your harness and then repelled from there. The water was particularly strong here and there were also walls on either side of you, meaning you were either in the waterfall or repelling ungracefully from side-to-side.

I would say this topped the charts of the best activity we did in Costa Rica. I got to learn something completely new while exploring Costa Rica in a new and challenging way.