Our free day started with an early morning venture to the Monte Verde Cloud Forest Reserve. Early is apparently the best time to see Quetzals, the avian equivalent to sloths. You’re pre-programmed to need to see them, to meet your civic duty to the environment or something like that.

If you feel that way, look a little deeper at where and how you’re touring and support sustainable local tourism that does more than check the box. The “tourismo massivo” Disney Small World Ride version might guarantee you fill in your bingo card in concert with your SD card, but if you ask yourself “why” you might prefer something more natural with less guarantees, where you get what you get, and sometimes not what you expect.

We did see Quetzals, and they are magnificent. But the rest of the experience is more memorable. Our guide spotted one and quickly zeroed in on it with the scope. Three people saw it before one less dexterous soul tripped over the tripod and knocked it out of place, the fourth pretended he could see it so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, and the fifth guessed it moved. The guide reacquired and the bird flew away. But there were other opportunities and unlike the sloth, I didn’t have to convince myself I’d seen it and take a picture of leaves on the off chance it might miraculously appear later.

Our poor guide probably didn’t know that our adult prankster is good at bird calls. Bill kept hanging back just around the bend. Coincidentally, there was always a quetzal calling, just out of site.

Possibly in response to this terrestrial imposter, a flash of iridescent teal streaked across the canopy and landed on a nearby branch. He looked down on his worshipers, and graced us with a photo op.

Fast-forward past waterfalls,

strange fern trees,

moss that sparkled with little droplets of dew,

Ficus trees,

monkeys,

and Waldo’s greener cousin.

Back at the entrance area we watched a local artisan make lovable little glass frogs and hummingbirds, a great souvenir for people with 49.5 pound luggage. It was also just across from the hummingbird gallery.

Strange little birds of many colors and sizes impossibly hovered and darted and buzzed us with danger-close flybys. There was a nice little coffee shop at the center. You’d think the combination of so many frenetic things bouncing about fueled by sugar and caffeine might raise the blood pressure, but the energies must cancel each other out. It was a peaceful and balanced place.

We went to a local artisan outlet for lunch, several tables pushed together under a conversation piece painting of a naked woman holding a large gourd.

The food, not surprisingly meat with beans and rice and plantains, and a beverage of blended fresh fruit, was about the price of a trip to Starbucks. We departed for the zipline place.

We had an unplanned stop. Someone always needs a pharmacy. With our group there is an intrusive entourage. When the individual who needed a potentially embarrassing something opened the door, half the van decided to check what Costa Rican pharmacies might carry. Most returned to the van when they realized the pharmacy people thought we were staging a heist.

Ziplines.

You have to contribute your own potential energy (ie, hike up a good vertical distance) before you can play superman or wonder woman.

But then you get to convert it in a fun way. Long tracks crisscrossed a beautiful gorge.

The course ended with an optional “Tarzan Swing” which starts as a bungee jump and ends as an elastic swing. I’m sure the double-pendulum folks would love the mathematical calculations for this.

You walk to the edge of a suspended platform and they hook you in. Your body goes “this can’t be right” but your mind goes “it has to be safe or they’d get sued, what the hell” and you don’t think about it much longer or you’ll chicken out. You step off the platform, beckoned by the potentially fatal will of gravity (picture Thulsa Doom saying, “Come to me my Child”), and are at some point saved from death by your motion’s conversion to a rubber-band-like swinging motion, only to spring back to a place of falling, then switch back through an arc and Tigger up again. Repeated until they decide you’ve had enough fun with it because the next person is at the edge of the platform.

Back to Chaos Theory. Liz leapt off the platform and turned into a little wrecking ball. She’s even shorter than I am, muscular, and fearless (mostly). Somehow she managed to get herself on a trajectory that clipped tree tops. I think this took everyone by surprise.

On an endorphin high, we loaded back in the van. We decided we needed to stop in town. Our bunch of words less directly communicated what our driver finally latched onto and parroted back to us as “ah, liquor store”. Essentially, yes, we just tend to be more ambiguous.

So we stopped at a large grocery store that happened to sell liquor. And everyone got what they wanted. We dropped off our purchases at the coffee house.

Zelmi’s was described as a pizza place where you sit outside as all kinds of birds fly around you. It was “just down the road”.

Our driver dropped us off just after the University of Georgia Costa Rica campus, which sounds larger than it is. The pizza place was “just around the corner”.

We’ve come to learn this carries different expectations.

We walked down the road second guessing ourselves, a power line our only indication we might be headed somewhere. We crossed little makeshift bridges where water ran over the road. A pizza joint requiring hike-in? We had to have missed it.

We hadn’t.

When we finally got there it was in one of the most idyllic settings you can imagine. It was a pavilion with picnic tables set in a beautiful remote location that makes you appreciate it even more.

Trail crew Geovanny was there. Zelmi is his sister and this is family land. He gave us a tour of the property while the pizza cooked.

If Grandma was still alive, she could appreciate the place. Her version of it would have been “Jane’s Pies”, with gooseberry at the top of the menu. At the end of a dead end gravel road.

We walked through the waxy broadleaf canopy of banana plants to a beautiful sunset spot looking out over more miles of valley.

People who know me well realize a camera helps me deal with the world, so when my coping tool gave up the ghost in this picturesque locale during this golden hour, they intervened. Josh let me take some pics with his phone, which averted the immediate meltdown. And Bill charged his camera later that night and handed it off to me for the rest of the trip.

A few of us hung back at the sunset spot for some peace and quiet. When we left, we came to a fork in the path: go down to the river, or head back to the homestead. There was still light.

There was a beautiful swimming hole in an absolutely gorgeous spot.

With a tiny bit of ambient light remaining, Geovanny escorted us back to the pizza parlor. While communications were limited, we learned this was where he grew up, the property was fed by water from three rivers one of which had the huge waterfall we’d seen in the distance, and he saw it as paradise. We got back to Zelmi’s just as the first pizzas were served.