day 8: saturday

woke up at 8:30 to watch england vs. portugal before my tour at 11:30. game ended up going into overtime and i missed the end. i had a sky trek tour scheduled which is basically a series of 11 ziplines that take you throughout the santa elena reserve rain forest. anyone that knows me knows that i am terrified of heights so i thought this would be a good way to face my fear. to begin we had to walk up stairs about 9 stories with incredibly strong winds but come to find out that would be the most scary part. it was an awesome time and they had all sorts of lines. they boast the highest, fastest, and longest lines in costa rica. the highest one was over 420 feet (thats 42 stories) high, the longest one was nearly 1/2 a mile, and the fastest one travelled 40 mph. just my luck i got stuck on the highest one about 20 yards from the canopy. this gave me adequate time to look down, freak out, and then pull myself to the end. we were on the tour with a group of 6 students from george washington university that were pretty cool. after the zip lines were over we grabbed lunch and then walked throughout the cloud forest on suspension bridges and i had the opportunity to take some cool pics. headed home and ate some dinner. went out to la taberna, a local bar, and hung out with a few of the students till about 11:30. i wanted to get to good sleep because i'm competing in the monteverde eco bike race tomorrow.