Costa Rica Day 5

Up at 6:15am -- which sounds rough, but it's Central time and also we've been going to sleep early, since the  nightlife is pretty quiet. Breakfast at 7am, the driver picks us up at 7:30 and we head off to our excursion, with a long detour to pick up people from the Marriott, which is part of a huge gated private property. The driver shows us one house and tells us that it's Michael Jordan's, "although he's rarely here". We pick up Richard and Cathy (from Atlanta) and Rick and Loreen (from Boston)--I think Rick is Richard's son although I don't think anyone quite said that--and head for the zipline.  One the way, we see a funeral, with about 40 people walking down the road, carrying a coffin; it's not a formal slow march, and the men carrying it trade out with others from the crowd. The coffin has a peach colored cover; as best I can see as we drive by, it looks like faux fur.
We arrive at Pura Aventura. Our guides are Orlando--who's rather short but otherwise looks like any surfer back home--plus several who are more Mayan looking, including "Carlos Santana", "Perrito", and a couple of others. The ranch here is 1400 acres, and looks a lot like Appalachian farmland except a bit more flat land, not as hilly; we take a truck across the ranch and up the hill. Orlando gives us a demo of how the zipline works. There are two cables, one above the other; the pulleys lock between them. Your harness goes around your thighs to make a seat. You get a glove with a heavy leather pad; you keep your trailing hand in a ring around the cable, and pull down on the cable to brake. Other than that, it's just lean back, pick up your feet and away you go! Loreen is pretty scared at first but Orlando rides in tandem with her for a couple of lines until she can cope with going solo. They have "eleven zip lines plus a surprise." The longest line is 600 meters, and several of them are quite high up. The view, at least for a first timer, is not spectacular: you're above the trees and can see through the hills to the ocean, at the right moment; but you're also going pretty fast, and there's no way to stop and stare. And you're preoccupied trying to keep your harness from twisting, and braking, and not losing your glasses to the wind. The real attraction is just to be able to say "I rode the zipline!" Some of the lines are long, some  pretty short, sometimes we get down from a platform and walk around the hilltop to the next station. The "surprise" at the end is that your last line brings you to a platform about 30ft off the ground, and you have to rappel down. Off you go, and there's enough freefall for your stomach to say, "Wait, what?" before the belay brakes you.
On the drive back from the hill to the tour HQ / snack bar, we see a troop of howler monkeys in the trees, and an iguana sunning on a tree trunk. At the snack bar, we meet the Oregonian couple who run the place for the owner, and have mora (blackberry) and piña (pineapple) smoothies. Heading back to the hotel, we pass some bulls; our driver tells us a little about the Costa Rican version of bullfighting, which sounds more like playing tag with the bull. Our driver has a scar on his cheek, which he says is from a bull's horn.
Lunch is tilapia and fruit salad, plus fries. Diana tells Mac, the older waiter, than we're leaving tomorrow; he's very sympathetic with our reluctance to leave. After that, some time in the pool, a couple's massage, and then back to the bungalow to pack and write out the diary. Our writing is interrupted by crashing in the trees out back, as howler monkeys move through the trees. "Did you see the baby monkey?" "No, the banana tree is in the way"--not the sort of conversation I'd ever expected to have.