Soooo many mountains

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Seriously! There are sooo many mountains here- its soo beautiful. Saturday we hiked up the mountain the Conversa sits on. The walk is only about three miles, but also inclines about 1800 feet. Not only that, but I had no idea that we were doing this, so I wore leather sandals. I had the worst blisters on the bottoms of my feet by the end. The majority of the walk was winding up a dirt road. But the last third, that could hardly be considered a path, took us through the jungle. There was a part that split two different paths, and the one that we took was the wrong one. We were literally lost in the Costa Rican Jungle! It was crazy, but we finally found our way back to the other path after about twenty minutes. After that, we took a well'deserved swim in the pool at conversa. Even though I put on sunscreen, I did get a little burnt. But, I am slowly getting tan.

Before the walk up the mountain, we worked with La municipalidad Santa Ana. It is a wildlife conservation site right outside the center of the town. On Friday, I took a tour there and learned about the farm and different Costa Rican plants and animals. The Municipalidad used to be a guaro and coffee bean farm. Guaro is a Costa Rican vodka that is made from cane sugar. There was old traditional machinery there that is no longer used in the process. The reason we took this tour was to learn about the conservation site so that we were able to help them. Friday, we passed out surveys to the people of Santa Ana inquiring about their use of plastic bags and other environmntal topics. I was surprised on how nice the people were. If we had done that in Chicago, no one would have given us the time of day. Here, people were so nice and almost every person we asked, filled out the survey. They were very curious as to why we were in Santa Ana, where we were from, and also told us their stories. Overall, it was an amazing experience, and I am glad that we were able to help the municipalidad at the same time. In the next couple of weeks, a few students will be creating a brochure in English to help attract tourism to the site. I would love to help with this as well.

Sunday, we went to Tampini, which is a national park about two hours west. There were many paths to walk alongside the river. There was a huge water fall from the top of the mountain. We walked along river and were able to swim in areas blocked off by huge rocks that created little pools. The water was freezing, but totally worth it. I could also see a volcano that has been constantly erupting for over two years.

Because of the all these adventures, I was beyond exhausted last night and went to bedreally early. I know I'm pretty much an entire day behind, but I will try to catch up soon.

¡Pura vida!

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