Upon arriving in Costa Rica and driving to our hotel, one thing became abundantly clear: there would be no running on this holiday. Zdenek and I ran 20 miles on the day before our departure, and we were looking forward to fitting in two or three solid runs during our five days in Costa Rica. But somewhere between passing a large sign saying, “4x4 only beyond this point,” and, a mile later, hanging on to the Bego’s door afraid that I might fall into the backseat, I realized that we were not staying in running-friendly territory. Nope, we were going to have to be content with cross-training only.
On the first day, we decided to get a feel for our surroundings by taking a five mile “hike” through the Costa Rican mountains. We climbed several hundred feet to the top of the cloud forest before descending another thousand feet (or more), and then hiking all the way back up again. The average grade of the hill was 20%. It hurt coming down, and it was excruciating going up. Several kind folks making the trip up the mountain in 4x4s stopped to offer us a ride. Two American surfers stopped not once, but twice, aghast that we were actually attempting to walk up the mountain. The temperature was somewhere near 30 or 35 degrees Celsius, we ran out of water, and we were walking uphill in the full glare of the sun.
That was day one. My butt didn’t stop hurting until day four. And every time we drove that road for the next four days, Zdenek and I shook our heads incredulously, not quite believing that we had ever actually made this journey by foot. (I think that, in some respects, this was an okay substitution for our scheduled Wednesday hill workout.)
On day two, Zdenek and I got out of bed at 5:30 am to see if we could find the Howler Monkeys in the jungle. We decided to head to the waterfall about a mile away, since one of the hotel workers mentioned that the monkeys like to hang out there in the morning. This was another 20%-grade descent and climb back up. My legs wobbled the entire team. We didn’t see any monkeys.
On the afternoon of day two, we decided to go horseback riding for several hours during the hottest part of the day. Although we got to stop and swim in a waterfall for 45 minutes midway through the trip, I was barely able to stand up in the stirrups because my legs were in such pain. The next day, my butt hurt in all new places, and didn’t really stop hurting until day five.
On day three, we decided to drink margaritas and beer and beach hop.
On day four, we still did not feel sufficiently recovered to do anything more than laze around the pool. In the afternoon, I attended “flip-turn” camp in the pool, practicing my flip-turns again and again while Zdenek watched me from under the water and gave pointers. I do believe that my flip turns improved considerably.
On day five, flip-turn camp resumed in the morning, and we then headed out for an afternoon of crazy ziplining. We choose the biggest, baddest ziplines in the vicinity, and ones which several other ziplining experts said made every other zipline look like Disneyland. I’m glad I did it, but it wasn’t the huge thrill I was hoping it would be. I’m wondering if another margarita or two would have served me better.
And on day six, we drove 3.5 hours, flew five hours, and descended through a Nor’easter with some of the worst turbulence ever. We then proceeded to wait in the taxi queue for what I’m sure was at least one hour, after having already waited an hour for a reserved black car that never arrived.
Shortly before I left for vacation, I read about an interesting study suggesting that the act of taking vacations does not boost one’s happiness, whereas the act of planning for the vacation makes one very happy indeed. Time to start planning my next one.
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