One of the days in Costa Rica we worked with mangroves. One of the British girls said they had planted 201 trees the day before, so that may have had something to do with us not planting many. We collected seeds, which was actually kind of fun. Sophie showed us what size seed to pick and gave us PVC poles to knock them from the trees. It was low tide and we had to cross a river, which was muck. I wore socks with my water shoes everyday, which helped a lot. The mud was so thick and deep!  After we collected our 69 seeds we had to fill little sacks with dirt and plant the seeds in them.

During on of the days in Costa Rica we went to Sloth beach. We didn’t get to see any sloths, which was kind of a bummer, however there was a banana spider that was huge and pretty cool, as long as it stayed on the web. Termites’ nests are attached to trees and are big and black and cool. Unlike when they are in your house. That day we only caught one turtle and it was a hawksbill, which was the only one of those we caught during our trip. We left and went on a beach cleanup after. There wasn’t much trash, which was nice to know. Though not many people live back there so I guess they wouldn’t make much anyway. We stopped and saw some macaws eating their almonds after they dropped one out of a tree.

One day we were able to experience a day into town. We sat at the bus stop for about 30 minutes to Puerto Jiminez. It came, let the people off, and left us. There was an old man that tried explaining the bus to us on his watch but it was really difficult.  We finally were able to get to town; it cost 700 colones one way.

In town we had nachos at Carolina, which were super good, and a watermelon juice. We walked to the wood shop and everything was super expensive so I got two turtle necklaces. I found a clothing shop and found three bags, one for me and two for gifts.

I got some coffee and cookies, went and bought some bracelets as gifts. We sat at Mister Chicken until it was time to get on the bus. By this time it was pouring rain and fully dark. We got back just in time to eat some dinner then it was time for dream catchers. I accidentally broke Brittany’s and she’ll never forgive me.

The days in Costa Rica seemed pretty short to me.

The morning went by so fast because we caught turtle after turtle after turtle. The day we caught our first male there was a while in-between, but I think it was about 30 minutes before we were set to leave when we caught the mother load. I believe it took seven people to unload and carry it! She was a big girl, the biggest we caught the whole trip. After that we cleaned the nets again and then it was time to bike home and hunker down for the rest of the day.

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The bus ride to San Jose was memorable. The road was narrow, also on the side of a mountain, and when cars were coming the other way it felt like a game of chicken. The hotel in San Jose was wonderful. It may have been multiplied by the fact that we just spent a week in the wilderness. The shower was hot, the sheets were amazing, and the pillows were fluffy. We went to Machu Picchu restaurant. The steak was interesting. It looked like it was butterflied. Weird.  The sauce did go well with the mashed potatoes. Which were amazing.