Our first stay was on the west coast at the Riu Guanacaste all-inclusive resort. We arrived mid-day. It was humid in the open-air lobby and the reservation desk could not find our reservation--aack! Are we stranded in another country with no transportation and no place to stay!? Are you kidding me!? The staff let us go eat a late lunch at the buffet and they finally found our reservation. We had a room at the top of one of the towers with our own private top floor outdoor jacuzzi--so cool! My awesome hubby booked that.
We hung out enjoying our private view, tasted all the dining options we desired, explored all the pool areas, (I) played the pool party games, rented jet skis, did SNUBA, and sunbathed with the iguanas.
Part II of our trip was inland at higher altitude at the base of the Arenal Volcano. It was a 3 hour ride to the Arenal Kioro Suites and Spa, including a dirt road to get there. This is definitely an adventure. We enjoyed the seclusion, view of the volcano from our room, lovely pathways around the property, the spa, and of course the hot spring pools.
This is the trip I will never forget because one, my hair handled the humidity gorgeously, and two, because I lost a chunk of my hair while zip-lining here.
Our travel agent booked us a tour with Parque Arenal Mundo Aventura and scheduled a ride for us to & from. La Fortuna Waterfall was so beautiful! We hiked down, played in the water, met a couple cool couples, and hiked back up for lunch and our afternoon adventure. We have no pictures of actual ziplines because our hands were not free. We had all the leg and body harnesses, helmets, and we wore special gloves and held a metal thing with a pad that was our brake on the cable line. We did 7 pretty huge zip lines--I think the longest one was 1 km long, and these were over huge deep canyons! One attendant goes first, then each tourist goes one at a time, getting one off the line before sending the next. You go pretty fast and use your brake hand when you get near the end if you are going too fast. There's a bumper brake on the line to soften the final catch if you are speeding in. You sit in your harness with your legs forward and your head/body tilted slightly back, left hand on the ropes at chest level, and your right hand on the cable above and behind your head. I think how your ropes are rotated in your left hand can direct your body to slightly rotate to one side or another.
Anyway... as I'm coming down the line, the attendant in front of me grabs the cable and shakes it up and down a bit, I don't know if that was to speed me along or slow me down or just to create excitement, but my brake hand bounced off the cable and the ONE thing we learned in our 5 minute training was if that happens, do NOT try to put it back on (you will miss and friction burn your hand or arm). So I was coming in HOT, and I didn't have a "rudder" anymore so my legs started to rotate to the right slightly as I came in to the landing area. My glider thing hit the brake with such force that my body spun around and my pony tail flew up and around and into the wheels on the cable where I was tangled and stuck.
Thank goodness I had a helmet on and my hair back in a pony. So I'm standing there slightly hunched down with the back of my head attached to the cable, not even aware that my sunglasses weren't on my face anymore. I hear the guy standing behind me telling the guide at the other end "alto" or something in Spanish that meant we have a problem and don't send the next guy (who happens to be my husband) down yet (*thank God, I can't imagine him crashing into me at the end! ha!). So he's behind me trying to untangle or cut my hair away not really seeming to know what do do with me. I am now aware of the strange silence surrounding me as the family of 4 who were ahead of me are staring at me in shock not wanting to say anything upsetting. Finally I'm free and I see and save my RayBans that are about 6' from falling down into canyon. (Maybe it's strange to think that I would have been more upset about loosing my sunglasses than my hair.) And then I notice the clod of horse hair on the dirt ground at the end of the cable... but it was MY hair! It looked like a lot there on the ground. But I'm not broken so I move on and play it cool, at least I have my sunglasses back! So Chris and the last few tourists in our group do their turns and we're all together again. And we have 2 more lines to go. It's either do the last zip lines or take a loooong walk back to the end. The shock starts to dispell and I'm realizing that I may have some whiplash. So I try not to think about it and we all finish the zip line course. The tour guide doesn't seem to understand what went wrong in his limited English and I'm not sure how upset to get with them since I am seemingly fine, but the more time passed, the more upset I got. Chris says you can't really tell I lost a bunch of hair and without a mirror I have to believe him. I wrote an incident report and they did get us a bag of ice to put on my neck.
I was fortunate in the end. Back at the hotel I threw away my shirt because there were burn lines and I discovered subtle burns on my shoulder and collar bone. It happened so fast I didn't realize it at the time. I also lost more brush-fulls of broken hairs as I washed and brushed it. Luckily I had a layered hairstyle and the chunks of hair were all underneath because my hair had been pulled up in a pony. So I iced some more, took some iburophen, and drank the local Rum cocktail as we enjoyed the lovely view.
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