04.20.12
Posted in travel, vacation at 4:09 pm by heidihoho7
We arrived in Costa Rica mid-day, got out of San Jose quickly and made our way to Alajuela for the evening. We toured around the town square for a bit and grabbed a night of sleep at Hotel Los Volcanes, a quiet little place the used to serve as a hospital back in the day.
The first thing anybody should know about our stay here was that we weren’t lacking for good fresh healthy food. Our breakfast included fresh squeezed OJ, fresh watermelon, pineapple, honey and granola. Then they brought out eggs scrambled with cheese, bacon, ham, peppers, etc.
There is a down side to all that food. Eventually, it makes its way through you and we’ve found that they are not really big on flushing toilet paper here. Apparently, plumbing doesn’t include Kohler power flush. 
The city is quite the place to be if you like to drive recklessly down crowded streets. I’m certainly no world traveler, so it took me a bit to get used to the fact the stop signs and road markings in Costa Rica seem to be more of a suggestion than diretion of how to manaja sus coche. (I think that’s “drive a car”) This leads us to our Spanglish, the offical language of Costa Rica. With a bit of hand gesture, the occasional attempt to ask for una cerveza, you can get by quite nicely down here. You can even pay in Spanglish money. Any combinaton of dollars y colones seems to work just fine.
Our second day brought us to La Fortuna where we stayed just outside of town in a beautiful little cabana with a view of the Arenal Volcano. Now, the clouds roll in most of the day so you can see the base of the volcano but not its peak. As I type this, the afternoon rains have brought thick clouds that envelope the entire surrounding area. We did get a chance to hike throug the rain forest around the volcano, and through it doesn’t appear to be active, it’s had enough eruptions since it blew its top in 1968 to keep most tourists at a healthy distance.
The next day was rafting on the Sarapiqui river. We had a blast, charging through class III-IV rapids chanting the nation’s motto of “Pura Vida!” which translates roughly to “tourism rules.” Photos really tell the story so click on them already (well we’ll be adding more when our Internet is more consistent).
Day 4 (I think – I’ve lost track already and frankly, I don’t care) brought us to our rain forest canyoneering day. I would have to say that the rappels were very pretty and I enjoyed the view and blah blah blah, but the real enjoyment was i between each rappel, Heidi and I got to scamper throug the forest to the next destination. Along the way, splashed down wet canyon walls and enjoyed every moment of another day in this tropical paradise.
The guides each day started every sentence with my friends so in that tradition – My friends, if you are thinkning of coming to Costa Rica, I think it’s easy for me to say two thums up so far. We’ve still half the trip in front of us and we’ve already had un tiempo fantatico. Who can say no to fresh breakfast, advenure days (did I mention that they feed you afterwards each time?), quiet evenings, and warm sunny (mostly) weather? I didn’t even mention the hotsprings yet. We’ll come back to that one.
BTW – Internet is not that accessible, so bear with us as we play catch up on getting you posted. Muchas Gracias.
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08.08.11
Posted in Road Trip, travel, vacation at 6:40 pm by heidihoho7
So after our epic flatiron adventure it was time to let the Mercuri’s get back to normal life and for us to move on. Tho after the previous day’s activities we weren’t too motivated so we ended up hanging out in boulder, catching a movie (we somehow always catch a movie on most vacations) and by that point we determined that it was time to get back out and do something outdoorsy… Ben and Karleen had mentioned a fun little place just outside of Boulder (I believe it was Centennial Park) to do some light hiking so we decided to check it out.
We saw a cool little snake along the stream, and bela thoroughly enjoyed rock hopping!
I didn’t mind it either
The Night ended with the short drive to Longmont where we’d made a last minute reservation and found a yummy BBQ place before passing out for the night.
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08.07.11
Posted in Climbing, Road Trip, friends, recreation, travel, vacation at 6:30 pm by heidihoho7
Flatirons can be epic…
The alarm goes goes off at 5:15 and we all start dragging ourselves out of bed. Filling up water bottles and grabbing gear while trying not to wake up Robert (another old VE employee staying with B&K). We load up the Cube and make our way over to Boulder’s Chautauqua Park (or whatever it’s called). We start getting organized, determining who will be carrying what when we realize we only have 2 ropes (it was left in the other car so “we wouldn’t forget it” LOL). While normally 2 ropes seem like plenty, on this day we needed to have 3 to keep things going at a nice pace since Bela had figured out a splendid plan for a team of 4 with only 1 leader. So Ben took off to get the forgotten rope while I played with this adorable kittie. She had a dead mouse but preferred to play scratching post with our 2 ropes. Beautiful kittie wandering in boulder – i hope the bigger critters didn’t get her!
Due to our altitude deficiency (my excuse) it was decided that we’d get hiking and mr. forgetful colorado could catch up with us upon his return. The hike starts out fairly flat and deceiving… though after about 5 minutes i was taking a break to “enjoy the view”. We saw a few hot air balloons off in the distance as the sun was rising and it really was a beautiful sight.
It is actually over a mile and quite steep to get to the bases of the flatirons so Ben caught up with us quickly. Master navigator that I am, i ended up finding our trail (ok i just read the signs) and after some time we make it to the base of the first flatiron – our climb of the day. Many of the climbs start at the base, but ours included a scramble over to the ridge, which we’d planned on following the whole way up the @1000 ft climb following the North ridge the whole way. In the image below you can pretty much see each pitch – where you see trees or a notch that was likely a belay spot.
Bela was ready to go and hopped on the sharp end with a smile on his face. He planned to lead each pitch while trailing 2 ropes for us gals. I’d start up with Karleen simul-climbing a few feet behind me.
Once up, I’d start belaying Bela on the next pitch while Karleen would belay up Ben. It was a great system!
The first pitch was pretty quick and simple, a nice slab that took us out of the trees. Although, funny enough, it ended up back in the trees. On multi pitch climbs we’re used to the belay spots being very tight and usually quite uncomfortable… sometimes with a hanging belay, but this one was quite large and we weren’t even worried about being on a real anchor.
And did i mention the view? It was AMAZING! View from pitch 1 first, then from pitch 2
Lazy belay at the top of 2…
and what rope management???
So next comes the (now infamous) 3rd pitch. Bela led it like the master he is and ended up finding an anchor way off to the side through some tees (another foresty belay stance). I came up next with Karleen right behind me. What bela didn’t factor in was that there was a move on this pitch that us gals REALLY didn’t like. He did a fancy reverse pullup to get down from an overhanging rock – but us gals were like ‘ Ugh no way!’. It was kind of funny i’m sure to watch (if it weren’t so frustrating for the boys – bela attempting to belay from 50′ away with no anchors in between, and Ben down below with no idea what was going on). I went up to it, did the attempt but my pullups don’t work the regular way, let alone setting up for one from the top and letting your legs dangle to an unknown distance with a definite swing if you miss… needless to say I got freaked out as Bela would try to sweet talk me into trying it yet again. Karleen was like I’ll give it a try (and i thought i heard a “hear me roar” in there but maybe that was me thinking it) – i didn’t feel quite so bad as she agreed with me that it was a muscle man move and she didn’t like it either. Here we are deliberating our options (granted from this view it doesn’t look THAT bad- i swear it was).
so after a few minutes of more attempts, we decide that Ben should come up make the superman move and set up a quickie anchor so us gals would feel better. He of course did and we later determined that we could just jump the Gap! Notes for next time
After we all make it to the anchor it was time for the 4th pitch. Bela started up and found the “5.4″ move of the climb – a small ceiling with a crack. He made it look easy of course, but did yell down that “wasn’t easy” or something like that but we didn’t yet understand what that might mean for the rest of us.
Once he got to the top of the pitch it was my turn – i quickly made it to the evil ceiling and proceeded to grunt, yell, transplant a tree with my foot (poor thing that was a good hold), and eventually sweated my way up the thing. The main issue was that the best hold was the crack which is exactly where the rope wanted to go but gravity wanted you to go left and with no good footholds on the right it was weirdly balanced if you aren’t spiderman. Luckily the rest of the climb was pretty easy and i made it up to the top of the small belay area at the top of a spire.
Now it was karleen’s turn – she’d held off since the roof looked tricky and now she made the unhappy realization that her super tight bouldering shoes really weren’t meant for multi-pitch ALL DAY climbing. Unfortunately after trying her shoes, ben’s shoes, chacos and even barefoot – the roof won the battle and the decision was made to escape if possible. Now the guidebook claims there is no escape – but let it be known that from that start of the 4th pitch there most definitely is – an easy scramble over the ridge (we rapped down to join our team as we were not going to leave any man or woman behind) and we found some nice game trails or possibly real trails leading back to the beginning of the climb and bottom of the ridge.
While the summit had been in sight, we still had a tremendous day of epic climbing and we vowed to go back to one day gain the summit. We’re not so sure Ben and Karleen would try a repeat but you never know
We finished the night with some well earned nachos.
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