day 9: don't go chasing waterfalls

woke up, ate breakfast and mentally prepared myself for the 25k bike race i was going to compete in when my abuela tica informed me that they weren't able to locate a bike for me. it seems that nobody in monteverde is my size so i was out of luck. yesterday i did a test run on ricky's "big" bike but there was no way i could get that thing up a hill plus it didn't have any gears. disappointed, i went and watched some of the race which was cool, they had about 150-200 participants. finished reading my book searching for god knows what by donald miller which was incredible. high suggest it and of course one of his others blue like jazz. for the afternoon we decided to check out a waterfall at the san luis biological reserve. it's over 7 km away so we decided to get a taxi which costed 6000 colones ($12), very expensive for costa rica. we got to the office, payed the $7 entry fee and started the one hour trek to the falls. about 20 mins in brad wanted to get closer to a stream for a pic we jumped down a hill about 6 feet and ended up sliding down another 10 feet or so. we changed our mind and decide it wasn't a good view so we headed back up. apparently we didn't think this through bc we now had to freestyle clim back up 15-20 without many holds. i thought for sure we would die or be saved by lassie. luckily, last year i took rock climbing as a kines class so i got up in a minute (or 10). the rest of the hike was incredible; great views, streams, rapids, and even a few planks to walk across. after a few falls and scraped we got to the waterfalls at 4:05 amd they were, without a doubt, the greatest display of nature i've seen. the first fall was 30 ft. followed by another 70 ft fall. feeling adventurous we decided to get in the water which was extremely cold, 65 degrees or so (grandma, even colder than fort clark springs). we messed around for 45 minutes or so then headed back. when we returned we were about to call a taxi when i met a guy in the navy from corpus. he was on a trip with 8 or so friends and had 2 rentals cars and they offered to take us back. i guess that was my first ever hitchike, not sure. that night we went to moon shiva, the most american bar/restauraunt they have. they had an african percussion group which was pretty entertaining. it was 6 guys playing music w/ so much energy, different a different type of experience. great first weekend here.