Zip-Lining

This weekend the entire group went to Monteverde. We stayed at Hotel Montana. The view outside our hotel rooms looked over the mountains and across to the Gulf of Nicoya. Absolutely breathtaking!

Saturday morning we woke up and went to the reserve where we had a guided tour. The main goal many have when going on the tour of the reserve is to see a Quetzal. The Quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala. WE SAW THREE! The male birds have some of the coolest colored feathers I have ever seen: blue/green and red.

A few interesting facts:
Female Tarantulas do not eat their mates...they molt and eat their own skin which is why people believe that they eat their mates.
Tarantulas live in holes
There is a Hollow Tree in the Cloud Forest
Costa Ricans are very supersticious

Saturday afternoon we went zip-linging! It was so fun! We had to ride a skilift up to the first high tower to start our descent on zip wires. While we were riding up to the first tower I was in the lift with Jessica and Ellen as well as three of our guides. The guides were all guys. As we rode up they only spoke to each other in Spanish because they thought we would not be able to understand what they were saying. It was entertaining for me because they were talking about us. Ellen continued to listen to them talk about us during the whole two hours that we were there going down the zip lines. At one point Jessica told them that we could understand what they were saying but they did not seemed phased by that...oh well. :)

Eaves dropping to Spanish has become one of my new favorite things to do. Most of the time people assume that we don't know what they are saying because we are so obviously American...