Yesterday morning we went on our first touristy tour to do a hanging bridge walk through rainforest canopy. Yes the bridges were very high and yes I was quite scared at first, but by the 5th one I was much more comfortable. The scenery was so beautiful and with the help of a very knowledgeable guide, binoculars and our awesome-super-zoom camera, we even saw Howler monkeys and a two-toed sloth!
Our next stop was Rancho Margot, which is about 15km from La Fortuna, via a beautifully painted bus with no suspension down the bumpiest, rockiest road I've ever seen! This bone-crunching trip was well worth it from the second we pulled in to the ranch though - it is so freakin awesome here!! It's hard to know where to start to descibe this place. It's a privately owned, self sustainable ranch in the middle of the mountains, on the lake, overlooking the volcano, serving organic food, employing local people and putting back into the community in so many ways - including providing free transport on the aformentioned bus for kids who would otherwise have no way of getting to school.
They also run amazing tours, one of which we went on today. It would scare the pants off our parents to go into detail, so here it is...! It was 4 hours of horse riding into the mountains, crossing river rapids on horseback, hiking on a muddy trail on the knife's edge of a ravine, crossing another rapid on foot (water up to our chests), climbing rocks to the prize......a completely hidden waterfall - the only access to which is the arduous journey just described. The return to the ranch was this in reverse. It was exhilarating, terrifying, exhausting and so much fun! Not convinced I'd do it again (or at all if it had been described in detail before hand!), but sooooo glad we did. Sorry collective parents, but we're still alive - that has to count for something!?
Oh - and Chrissy, the neck pillows were very comfy, but unable to counteract the turbulence or the loud canadian girl next to us; and the animal noises were mostly mooing and clucking. The latter didn't get across at first because apparently the chickens here speak a different language!