x-mas

Tuesday, 25 December

When I got back to the hostel last night, I met some new people. One was a lady from Russia – it took my awhile to place her accent, but once she said where she was from it was obvious. She lives in NY and was surprised to hear that we thought she had an accent. She says that everyone in NY has an accent so she just did not notice hers anymore. Adam, the new person in my room, and I talked and I told him my story of quitting, going to school, etc. He did not like my reason for quitting my job (burnout) and thought that there was something deeper there. To some degree he was right – I am trying to find my path in this world and I realized that it was not doing what I used to do. It was a good thought provoking session.

At breakfast, I asked the lady from Russia what she was doing today and she said that she wanted to do the canopy and bridge tour. I asked if I could tag along and she agreed so we took off to book the tour. Unfortunately, all of the slots were already booked for today so we had to schedule a trip for tomorrow morning at 8am. While we were signing up for the trip, we finally learned each others name and I shook her hand and said it was nice to meet her. Her name is Maria. The sales person asked if she was from Costa Rica because of her name and she gave him a hard time that Latinos are not the only people that have Catholic names. Apparently, she gets this a lot.

We decided to go to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve to do some hiking. I was totally hoping that the trails were much better than the trails that I had yesterday. When we got there it was misting lightly and was not too cold. I could tell by the buildings that this was going to be a better hike for the there were more buildings and better built ones than in Santa Elena – I was happy to see this. We started our hike (as suggested by the front desk person) and started talking about miscellaneous stuff. We realized later that we were so focused on talking that we were not paying attention to what was around us.

We eventually made it to the suspension bridge that is in the park and took a lot of pictures. Maria reminds me a lot of Cheryl in that she has a kids sense of wonderment at everything. This makes things more enjoyable for it makes me sit back, relax and enjoy. As we went on with the hike, it started to rain and became a little windy. It was not too bad until we got to a point on the trail that took us on the edge of the hill where we were slapped around with the wind blowing up the hill. I took a video of this just to show how hard the wind was blowing (watch the video). We saw several trees that were rocking back and forth with the base/roots of the tree moving in the ground. It was kind of cool to watch and amazing that more trees had not fallen over. At one point, a little further down the trail, we actually heard a loud snap that sounded like a branch or tree breaking and falling. It was a cool moment. I couldn’t help thinking that since I was in the forest, I could hear the tree fall. Overall, the trails were much better than Santa Elena and due to the trails not being as high in the clouds, we were able to see a lot more stuff.

Through all of this we got soaked. Maria did not pack properly for the wet and cold weather and her pants go soaked under her poncho. She was also wearing sneakers so her shoes and socks were also soaked. When we made it back to the visitor center we took off our jackets and and tried to get warm. I showed her pictures of the beach in attempt to help her. We ended up taking a taxi home and taking nice warm showers.

During one of our conversations, Maria told me that she was going to go to Manuel Antonio in a couple days. I was getting sick of the wet and cold and decided that it would be nice to go back to the beach. I was already considering canceling my volunteer gig and this helped solidify my decision, so I canceled it. It would be nice to get my deposit back, but I doubt that it is going to happen. We were deciding where to go for dinner when Maria saw that the movie Lakehouse was on tv, so we watched it – not too bad. We then went looking for dinner. Surprisingly, a few places were open and we ended up at a pizza place. We both ended up getting a vegetable cream soup and the fish cassados. Over dinner, she told me how she believes in signs and karma and gave me examples of them in her life. She also believes that everyone we share a moment with happens for a reason and that we are to obtain some knowledge from them during this encounter. If anything, my encounter with her made me more aware of obtaining knowledge from anyone that I meet. After dinner we went home and I showed her some pictures from my china trip for I was telling her about it during the hike.

Below are pictures from the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve Hike: