Little Ranch House: Costa Rica 10/16 (Day 3)

As promised, our last Costa Rica post is actually Day 3. Day 3 was awesome for two reasons. First, when we woke up on Day 3 it was not raining. As you now know, it was the beginning of two rainless days, which is extremely unusual for Costa Rica in October. The second reason was that we were picked up for our zip-line excursion with Dreamforest Canopy.

We were taken to a private reserve about 30 minutes north of Quepos. We were accompanied by two guides, who spoke some English (mostly just enough to pull some pre-planned jokes and describe some of the flora) and a "photographer". The photographer was a kid (he was about 25) named Tomas. Tomas was born and raised in California and received a master's degree in environmental science from Berkeley. He traveled for to Costa Rica for a six month project and liked it so much he deciced to stay, which meant he needed a job. One day he was in a bar and struck up a conversation with a stranger. The stranger apparently thought he knew Tomas and stated that he had heard that Tomas was a photographer and asked Tomas whether he had his equipment with him. Tomas said that it was on its way. The man offered him a job and he immediately asked his mother to buy and send him some equipment.

In any event, we arrived at the reserve to beautiful blue skies.

After donning the equipment we headed to the first platform. On the way, we stopped to learn about this acacia relative. It is covered with spines to protect it from climbers. The guide offered David $100 to climb it. When it appeared that David was inclined to take him up on it, he began to add conditions, e.g., he had to be naked and he had to slide the way down.

We also saw our first "walking tree". The tree moves a couple of inches each year (but only down hill). The purpose of moving is to provide more access to sun in a crowded canopy.