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Published: June 12th 2016
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Ficus Tree
Mean tree, first occupies a tree and than kills it Hey there! The last weeks where pretty quiet at the University so I had a lot of time to visit a few new places. The first weekend I joined friends from the exchange group to go to Monteverde. In Monteverde is a really famous and incredible beautiful cloud forest, which exists because trade winds from the Atlantic condense at the mountains and create a humid, always foggy environment. Therefore, there grow epiphytes, small plants which grow on the trunks of the big trees. We went to the Santa Elena Reserve, less people and muddy tracks. We've hardly seen any animals because they know how to hide, but the nature - wow! Then we climbed the Ficus trees, which are hollow inside. I don't know how high we were, but we had a really good view up there. The other day we joined the famous Monteverde Canopy - flying like superman over the rainforest. On Sunday we separated and I went alone to the Reserve of Monteverde, the famous one. I passed a lot of guided groups, initially quiet annoyed of so many people, I realized soon what I would have missed without them. The guides actually see all the animals and
birds - and finally I saw a Tucan Esmeralda and a few minutes later a Quetzal. Soo lucky!
During the week I was mostly studying and busy making the popsicles. Then it was again Thursday and I should read a lot of things to study. Therefore, I decided I could do this at the beach as well and went to Montezuma. No one else had time, so I went on my one.
On the ferry I met two Brazilian ladies who wouldn't let me (a single girl) go on with the bus, haha, and offered me a place in their car to go to Santa Teresa. A young English girl went with us. When we arrived, it was already dark and we didn't have any further plans and didn't know exactly where we were, so we just stayed at the hotel they booked. The other day I realized, I'm at the far end of Santa Teresa, 3km away from the centre (if you can call it a centre, Santa Teresa is just one single long road), but I had to study anyway. Well, instead of studying, I was watching the surfers and 1h later I couldn't stand it
anymore and got myself a board as well. With a long board and small waves I finally had a little success :D Later the English girl and me hitchhiked to the centre to get money - and I missed the sunset because she was soo slowly with everything. Weird girl. Had dinner with the American guy from the hostel (sorry Mae, I still don't know your name) and had a really funny night out in the local club. In the morning I tried surfing one more time and then took the bus to Montezuma. I moved in a really nice place directly at the beach, studied a little and then met this group of travellers from NZ, Belgium, Canada and UK – Joe, Joe, Jonas, Kyle and Anna. We went partying in Montezuma and were really surprised to see no one dancing, just making a big circle around the dancefloor. Never seen this in Costa Rica! The next day it was raining, so we didn’t do anything except going for a walk along the beach. Monday morning, I took the buses back to SJo, this time not the direct one but all the single ones to save money. Well, saved
1000 colones and spend 9h on the bus/ferry instead of 6h– definitely not worth it!
The rest of the week was really busy with stuff for the university. Aaaand we tried the first extraction of carotenoids for the thesis. It is coming closer..
Saturday and Sunday I met Kyle and the others in La Fortuna, the small village at the foot of Volcan Arenal. Kyle and me hiked to Cerro Chato, a small volcano with a beautiful lagoon in the crater. We looked like mud monster at the end because it was raining and the track was more like climbing roots than walking. All around the Arenal are thermal springs which are quiet expensive, but there is one place, el río Tabacon de los pobres, with 39°C warm water. The perfect place!
Back home in SJo I talked to the professor of my thesis and I will probably start at the 15
th of June. I didn’t expect that it would go that fast. On Thursday we did the first experiment of fast freezing with the popsicles, they look actually really good. Wednesday came Kyle through SJo and stayed a few days, so we went spontaneously to the
Volcan Irazú. Unfortunately, without the promised view, but the crater was still really nice. On the postcards, the crater has a green lagoon of acid, but in summer it dries out. Anyway, someone told me that the crater didn’t have a lagoon for 5 years now because there is not enough rain. This sounds really weird because since a few weeks it was basically raining every day from 1pm.
The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxing, party at the Calle Amargura with the guys from chemical engineering and the birthday of Cristina and the goodbye party of Roland.
So, that’s it. I just realized that you guys can comment everything too. So go for it if you want to J
Love, Antonia
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