WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION, PART FOUR
Costa Rica: Monteverde

From Fortuna, we made our way to Monteverde, a cloud-forest preservation area founded by Quakers from the United States, who fled the Draft during the Korean War and now manufacture cheese in the wilds of Costa Rica. It is now a popular destination for tourists, who are lured by the opportunity to zip through the forest on a tenuous wire, a hundred feet in the air. This attraction is called, for some reason, a canopy tour. It has a certain appeal, but Rob and I elected to do the SkyWalk instead. This begins in much the same way as the canopy tour, except one climbs the hundred feet upward on a slippery metal spiral staircase and walks amongst the verdant treetops on shaky suspension bridges.

The first few moments were unsettling, and I almost climbed back down. I do not mind heights, but the pouring rain and wind were disorienting, and the bridge shifted under our weight in a way that made my stomach flip. Worse, the structure was crafted from metal mesh, which appeared flimsy and afforded a dramatic view of the fate that awaited us below, should the bridge snap in two. Luckily, I overcame my fear. Rob and I walked, alone in the sky, enjoying the breathtaking vistas at a leisurely pace. My memory being a leaky sieve, I longed to whip out my camera and record the views that affected me so, but the rain would have damaged its delicate workings, and really, I feared that a photograph would not have done justice to the experience. What, to the naked eye, was a tableau of almost unimaginable beauty would have been transformed by the camera into a flat expanse of green, the layers and subtle textures rendered imperceptible.

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I spent the journey to Monteverde in a cross-eyed daze, havt was transforming into bronchitis. The roads were too frightful to allow sleep, and yet remaining awake did not prove a viable option, so I went into a trance. I remember flashes of the gorgeous scenery and seeing a boy hold a baby sloth up to the tour bus window.

Another woman from the bus joined us at our hotel, Fonda Vela, and we had a pleasant lunch together after we finally arrived. Her name was Cathy, and she was from a town near where I grew up in Maryland. Traveling alone, she seemed eager for company, but she chose to relax in her room rather than join us in a walk to town (three kilometers). By that time, my cold had worsened, and I was not thrilled about the hike, either; I am not entirely sure how I made it at all. Much of it was a blur, and Rob said I had a terrible look on my face, but I trudged on, my lungs swirling with snot and the humors of infection. Fifteen years ago, similar symptoms would have had me begging not to be sent to school, but I had walked countless miles through unimaginable terrain since my nose had starting clogging and my throat started scratching at the Arenal Observatory Lodge.

I bought and consumed several medicines and let them slug it out in my system, a process that left me dizzy and irritable, but mobile and relatively uncongested. In that state, I judged myself well enough to sign up for a nighttime tour of the cloud forest, a spectacular experience that brought encounters with bats and owls (which swooped out of nowhere past our heads), tarantulas, moths the size of condors, and numerous other insects that I would not care to meet in a dark alley. We also saw sleeping birds clinging to branches, two creatures rather like monkeys that swung from tree to tree, and more stars than I ever knew existed. At one point, the guide instructed the group to turn off our flashlights and just listen to the sounds of the forest at night.

It was magical.

Scroll down for a couple of photos.