We got there Sunday afternoon. We had two days of acclimating, beach time, and trying to visit Parque Nacional Rincón de la Vieja (the hotel sent us to visit on the exact day it's closed during the week).
Wednesday we start the real vacation by trying to see the Monteverde Cloud Forest via a zip line canopy tour adventure at Selvatura Park.
Never. Again.
Instructions were given at the beginning, but the day was cloudy & hand signals were hard to see. We managed the first 7 or so (of 18) fine, but on the last one we did by ourselves, we were given two different instructions - when I went down, I was told to brake the whole way. BF says he was not told this.
I got there first, turned to watch him, and knew he was going to crash. He was obviously not seeing the hand signal, and he couldn't tell that the guide was banging on the rope, telling him to slow down.
I hope none of you know how time slows down when something like this occurs. How everything gets burned into your retinas. I hope none of you ever find it out.
I saw him hit & the tree rip into his left leg. Thank Elath, he didn't snap his leg like I first thought. He has a gash just under his knee, that needed six stitches. He also broke the 4th metatarsal in his left foot. Considering what could have happened, we got off easy.
Selvatura got us out of the jungle, had an EMT do First Aid, then took us to Clínica Santa Elena where he saw a Costa Rican doctor of Taiwanese descent & got stitched up. As BF likes to say, he had a collision with a tree, and he's the only one who walked away. The nurse suggested he say that he got attacked by howler monkey's. The Selvaturan guide says that they only have accidents about once a month. The nurse says that they see the EMT all the time.
Yeah. Seriously - don't zip line. It's an adrenaline rush, but it's not like you really get to see the forest when you do it.
We cut out early, and got home yesterday. Unlike United, which tried to extort money from me to put me in a "reserved for special needs" plane seats when I wrecked my ankle, American reworked our entire flight for us, got us in the US on Thursday, home on Friday, put us in bulkhead seats with no one else in our row on all three legs, and checked our luggage all the way through - with sympathy & appropriate help the entire time.
He'll be fine. We only have prelim X-ray results, so there could be more broken bones that we don't know about. I'm leaving comments open for now, but I want absolutely NO horror stories of any kind. I have no idea how much more, if any, I will want to talk about this vacation that is not a vacation. Respect that.
scifantasy? That good luck you've been hoarding this year? I call you out, and I call you out thricely: Share. It. Now.Tags: american airlines, bf, costa rica, injury, travel, united, vacation, ziplining