We rode on a bus from Monteverde which took three hours, and it was so much hotter.  The beach which is called Playa Coco has nice brownish sand, the first part is soft and then it gets harder as you get to the water.  When we first swam we decided to walk to the right from the hotel, where we heard the swimming was better.  At first, I didn’t think anything was different, but as we swam I found there was a difference: the water near the hotel had much more rocks under it so it was hard walking.  The water was extremely warm , and I recommend coming here for the water alone which is so much warmer than in Vermont. 

While swimming I did find a used band-aid, but was surprised by what I found next…a fish jumped out of the water and grabbed the band-aid!  Later someone tried to catch the fish by hand but was unsuccessful.  Someone else touched something squishy, and we saw a jellyfish which made everyone run out of the water and back to the hotel, which is how my beach day finished.

When our class got to the zip line place not many of us new what to expect. I was super excited but also nervous to go on the zip line. When we were getting our harnesses on the workers had been making them tight so that they would not come undone when going on the zip lines. They gave us helmets and heavy duty work gloves that had a leather padded strip. When we got all the equipment on we got into a van and they drove us up to a shortish trail that brought us to the first zip line.

But before we did anything with the actual zip lines we had to be shown on a small practice wire by our guides. They had show the group how to sit, brake to slow down, and guide yourself straight. After that we went to the first zip line. The first one was not very long compared to the ones to come. I think some of us were a still a little nervous but when I did the first one, all of my nerves went away and there were only smiles. Around the fifth zip line we had to double or some had to triple up to do the zip line so you would not get stuck in the middle of it because it was 850 meters long and super high up in the sky. We could not see that much because there was a lot of fog.

After that the other zip lines were not as exciting as that first one, but they were still pretty long. After the twelfth zip line we came to the Tarzan swing. I was super nervous and did not know if I wanted to do it. After watching other people do it I made the decision to try the swing. When I got up to the gate they connected stuff to your harness and then opened the gate. They held you by the back of the harness and they had you crouch and then let go. When you started to drop it was a free drop and then the rope caught, the feeling was like being on a giant swing. How you stopped was they hit your feet to slow you down, then grabbed your ankles and held you and made you stop.  Watching other people’s faces when they did the free fall was super funny because they would have so much fear in their face. After that we all went to the last zip line. That one was 1km, and we went with partners. Dillyn and I were partners with one of the guides. On the zip line it was really fast and fun. When we got to the end of that one we got our harness off and waited for everyone else. When everyone was done we dropped our harnesses and went into the gift shop.

After a day of many activities that made the day seem longer than it was, our class split in twane to separately view the contents of the Bat Museum in Monteverde. But after a mix-up, our class was smushed together and was rescheduled to 2 p.m. rather than 1 p.m. Once there, Vino (or Mr. Batman as he called himself) shared fun facts and pictures about bats, then let us inside the bat cave.

Once inside, he showed us what the different types of bats looked like, both fruit bats and nectar bats, but that other types of bats would require too much supplies and effort to keep inside. We all got flashlights and could view all the bats we wanted.

After we got our fair share of batty-goodness, we exited the cave, said goodbye to Vino, Forest, and Coffee (his dogs), and left to get ice cream.

We took the bus up a steep road to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. When we got to the top of the mountain it was all misty and cloudy. Then we got a guide to help us find our way to the animals and a bunch of bird nests.

We saw a quetzal and it had really bright colors all over like red,  blue, green, and a little bit of white.

We then hiked to the continental divide. One side was really windy and the other side was really calm. I was grabbing leaves and throwing them over my head and they would go to the calm side and just fall right away. Then we walked all the way back down and saw two howler monkeys sitting in a tree. But all of the walking was worth it because of all of the views and experiences.

After we finished our dinner we all got into groups of five and split up to go on the night hike. I was in a group with Phoenix, Dillyn, Skyler, Willow, and Ritter. We entered the trail through a bunch of plantain trees. While we were going up the first couple of steps our guide stopped us, and we all gathered around this inch long black scorpion, all curled up. Once we got further into the forest we stopped again to look at a small spider in the path. After looking at the spider for a couple of seconds we heard our guide say “Wow, look at that.” We all turned around and saw a three inch cockroach on a dead tree. When we got on another trail we had to walk for five minutes before seeing anything.

Then we walked down a couple of steps and I heard Willow shriek, but I couldn’t see anything because I was in the back. When I got to the front I didn’t see anything but a dirt bank with some holes in it. When we looked in one of the holes there was a black tarantula with orange knees. I think the night hike was one of my favorite things that we did in UGA. 

We walked to the farm of Eliza Matas, who showed us around her property, sugar cane field, and to her sugar production shed.

At the medicinal plant garden each group got one plant to make up facts about, without actually knowing anything about it, other than what we could see, smell, and touch. For example ours looked a fly trap and smelled of rotten meat, we said it attracted spiders to kill– that it was carnivorous. It also was good for clearing up sinuses. Only one group knew the actual facts about their plant. Each group then presented their plant to the rest, trying to convince the others that theirs was the real one.

After, we all voted on which one we thought was the real one. Each vote your group got counted as two points in the Cien Game we are playing.  It was fun to make up facts about the plant then find out from the naturalists (Molly & Rachel) what their uses actually were.

Today we went to learn and do activities regarding climate change and how we can offset our carbon emissions. We listened to a lecture from one of the naturalists at the campus on carbon neutrality. We saw remarkable data on how the temperature has increased and diagrams that showed the progression. We learned some animals in Costa Rica are being forced to move to higher elevations because it is becoming too hot for them. Climate change is already causing rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, change in agricultural productivity, loss in biodiversity and causing a increase in mass migrations and conflicts. What we came to do was to offset all of the energy we used to get to Costa Rica. We do this by planting trees.

For twenty five dollars per person you get 4 or more trees to plants. How this works is that forests capture the carbon from the atmosphere, helping to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2. There’s a lot of work to do to plant these trees, but we just did one step, filling the bags with soil, but there’s also cleaning the seeds transplanting the seeds, planting the trees weeding maintenance and monitoring of the plants. We got over 300 bags of soil which overall is probably enough to offset our travels in and to Costa Rica.

We started at 6:35am and it was lightly misting.  We saw a lot of birds but I don’t remember what they were all called.  There were blue ones, black and yellow ones, a plain black one and lots of brownish ones.  We walked along the road with binoculars ready. 

That’s where we saw two parakeets.  They were very colorful and loud.  Our guide, Jacob, was very helpful because he had a bird guide to help us identify specific birds we found, but I still don’t remember what they were called.  After 45 minutes or so we saw a big white hawk in the same tree where the parakeets were.  I don’t think we have white hawks back in Vermont, so it was pretty cool to see. It flew across the field with two other birds chasing it. The little birds seemed to chase it away and our bird watching tour was over.  It was a memorable experience and I’m glad we did it.

We walked to a house and saw cow pastures on the way. When we got the house we met a woman named Cindy and her 10 year old daughter.  We washed our hands and she filled a bowl with a cup of cheese, two cups of corn flour, a pinch of salt and water until the dough was the right consistency.  She kneaded it together until it was just sticky enough and she put her grandmothers thirty year old skillet called a comal on the stove and heated some vegetable oil. 

Cindy put the dough on the table to show us how to make shapes called biscochos.  We made circle and heart shapes and gave them to her to fry in the oil.  We made more shapes, and she fried them up for about fifteen minutes.  Once we used up all the dough she filled a platter with all the biscochos and set out a pitcher with fresh squeezed orange juice. 

Then we ate the biscochos and orange juice we thanked her and went out onto her porch to play with her cute puppies.