Today we arrived in Costa Rica and four of us, Casey, Shirley, Susan and I will go zip-lining. We left at 9:30 a.m. on an air conditioned bus to go to our zip line destination. A funny story: a lady sitting across the isle said to us she was 83 years old and was glad she wasn’t the oldest on the tour. She said this looking at Susan who is 71 years old. I said, “This is what surfing in the sun for 30 years will do to your skin.” Susan didn’t think any of this was funny. We arrived and put on straps and harnesses and helmets and carried a very heavy device up a hill and waited for quite a while before take off. We could watch as Casey and Shirley took the dive. The heavy device was used to hook us up to the cable. It was my turn and I just did it. What a thrill. I landed on the first of twelve platforms and was caught by a very young girl. I was expected a muscular man to catch me. I was amazed at the young people catching us. I asked one boy how old he was and he said 15. Wow! As you arrived on the platform a young girl would say, “Stand up.” I said, “That’s easy for you to say.” Most of your weight was behind you and you had to grab on to something and pull yourself up to a standing position. As I struggled to my feet fearful I would fall off the platform I celebrated that I had survived. This continued for eleven more platforms. Susan didn’t quite make it to the second platform and she had to turn around and pull herself, hand over hand, about 10 feet to the platform. Her arms hurt for the next few days. But, it was a wonderful experience and I was thrilled to jump off into a rain forest and zip along over the tree tops: a wonderful experience.
The ride back to the ship was interesting too. The tour guide gave us a little of the history but all I could see was crumbling old buildings, trash and liter everywhere and bars on all windows and doors.