Who wants to ride the emotional rollercoaster and have the brakes go out?

Lisa and I had a very emotional roller coaster within a short 24-hour period

Stage 1: Happy

We started off the morning in a very happy mood by adventuring through the hanging bridges.  The weather wasn’t in our best favor, but it wasn’t raining until we left the park, so we felt success.

As we headed to our next location: Monteverde which was about 3 hours away, it wasn’t the best road conditions, but we were excited to get to our location.

Stage 2: Scared

At one point, we drove along this random path and all of a sudden this lady in a kidnapper, Scooby Doo van pulls up and the lady starts saying to stop, don’t go, and stop.

We ask why, so she pulls out Google Translate because I could only get bits and pieces of the conversation and she said the bridge collapsed and we should not go.  She asked where we are going and we said Monteverde. She then told us to follow her. Lisa said what if she kidnaps us?

I got scared because the US does not pay ransom money.  A jeep came by with 4 guys, so we asked them. They said no worries, it’s ok to go.  We decided to trust them.

We started driving along and we saw two kids on a bike and we asked them in my broken Spanish if it was safe. They told us no.

All of a sudden we see two guys on a motorcycle and Lisa said wait, it looks like the guys in the jeep and low and behold it was!  They came back and told us they told us wrong about the bridge collapse and to follow them.

What nice guys right?

Stage 3: Sad and unwanted

These guys were so nice and spent almost 1 hour leading us to Monteverde.

At one point, I asked them to pull over to ask them how far away it was.  I felt bad, so I just wanted them to show the way.

They pointed up to the left and said rocky road.  All of a sudden we turned around and they waved at us and drove away.

We didn’t event get to say thank you.  Then we felt sad because how could they just leave us like that after all the time we bonded!  We understood how it felt to be “ghosted.”  We tried to ask around the town and show the only picture we got, but no one knew them.  Wherever you are, we hope you know how much we appreciated your kindness.

Stage 4: Terrified

When we got to the zip lines, we didn’t think the zip lines would be as scary. But they were!

Stage 5: Super human

After we finished the zip lines and repelled down into the rain-forest and beat our fears.  We felt like we could conquer everything. We were on a new level of happiness and we felt invincible.

Stage 6: Shocked and thankful

Feeling super human quickly stopped when we left the Zipline parking lot and we were about 10 minutes away driving down a steep hill.  I told Lisa to take a turn to the right at the stop sign, but the car wasn’t slowing. Lisa kept saying the brakes the brakes!

The car flew through a busy 2 way intersection and somehow Lisa landed us in someone’s driveway.  We were extremely lucky because if she had veered two feet to the right or left, we would have hit a person to the left and a house to the right.

The homes in Costa Rica are small shacks, it’s not sturdily built that if the wind blew a little hard, it would knock these homes over.

When we landed in the gravel driveway, we were still going full speed and there was a parked car straight ahead. Well, for whatever reason, we stopped a few feet short. It was meant to be that we were saved.

Then we had no idea what to do.  Who do we call, how were we going to get to Manuel Antonio to stay at the Airplane hotel?

Luckily Carlos was standing outside and witnessed everything and came to our rescue. The only issue was that he didn’t speak English.  My broken Spanish was not that good to get us through this situation, but to our luck his wife came out, Monika and she was from Switzerland and spoke PERFECT English.

She called the car rental place and after many back and forth conversations, they sent a new car, but the only catch, we had to stay until the new car came.  Monika insisted we stay the night, but it was our goal to see the hotels, so we negotiated with the rental car guy that we would follow him halfway and then go on.  

Monika, Carlos, and her daughter Elena were so kind and we will never forget how much they did for us.  It was a Sunday night and I know it was a very unexpected way to spend the night, but we are so grateful for them. 

I fell in love with her daughter.

Here is where we ate dinner and then we slept in the car for an hour before 

And this was the first time Lisa and Eric did a video call. We laugh because on all my other trips, I had to video call my boyfriends, but she never did.  And this time around, she did!

It was a 4.5 hour drive to Costa Verde and honestly, it was not an easy drive. The roads were horrible and thank goodness we were following someone.  I guess I wasn’t that fast because where we were supposed to separate, Michael said goodbye and speed off. I thought I was fast, but compared to him, I was a turtle.

Either way, 4.5 hours later in the pouring rain, we arrived at the hotel, the entire reason we booked a trip to Costa Rica.

We survived 24 hours that could only be similar to movie and grew stronger than ever.