Hola! We woke up today at 7 o'clock and had breakfast at 8, which consisted of scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, homemade tortillas, yogurt, and fried queso. It was quite delectable and far better than anything you can get in The States, even though we miss our pancakes and bacon. After breakfast we spent a few hours working with Andy on our science projects and our understanding of the rainforest. While we were with Andy we were supposed to go out into the field and collect two ant colonies but because it is a rainforest, it was raining. We took a break from science for a few minutes and watched our gracious host, Pablo, make ceviche (Heart of Palm) salad. Heart of Palm tastes somewhat like cauliflower and when mixed with certain ingredients tastes awesome! Soon after, we consumed our meal of spaghetti with meat sauce and some garlic toast, along with the ceviche salad. After lunch we had a short break to get ready for our first hike of the day. We met at 1:30 and hopped on a trailer to get to where we were going to start our hike. So after about 40 minutes of a very bumpy and muddy trailer ride, along with a few surprise visits from some bugs dropping down on us, we arrived at the head of the trail. The half mile trail took us a good hour with our breaks to see the native animals, such as spider monkeys, and it was a slippery downhill trek to Rio Negro, where we went swimming. The journey back to the trail head was a bit more challenging than on the way down because it was mostly up hill and the heat was starting to get to us. But after reaching the head of the trail once again most everyone was smiling, because the difficult journey was finally finished and we saw some interesting wildlife along the way, and for some of us, we completed the journey without getting too much mud on our clothes. We then jumped back onto the trailer for the wobbly ride back to our home base. After recovering from our hike we had dinner, at around 6:30 which was a little earlier than usual, which consisted of a pork chop with some sweet and sour sauce, vegetables, a salad, and mashed potatoes and we had some chocolate cake for dessert to celebrate Ben's birthday (and he received his birthday card after the night hike). Straight after dinner we went on a short night hike, where we saw a ton of different bugs, some emerald glass frogs, and although we didn't see a sloth we saw some signs that there was one nearby.
Although today was exhausting it was amazing to see all the nature and the diversity of animals and plants in Costa Rica. :)The stars are great here!
Amanda and Sadie