Leslie's Day 5 Blog!

Hola!!

Today has been super fun!

Breakfast was really yummy! We had watermelon, pineapple, eggs, toast, cereal, and, surprise, surprise, rice and beans!

After breakfast, we headed to the zip lining place. I was a little nervous when I saw the really long and really fast zip lines (the longest almost a half mile long and the fastest about 55 miles per hour), but after I did the first longer one it was really fun!!! Everyone in our group did the zip lining - no one took the chicken path back down! I also heard almost everyone in the group scream, including myself...

After zip lining, we came to the hotel we are staying at tonight and tomorrow night. I really like it here! It's at the base of the Arenal volcano, which sadly hasn't been active since last October. But the hotel is still really nice and really pretty and the pool is super fun, too!

Next, we went to ASIS, which is a reserve that takes wild animals that have been illegally taken as pets and trains them to go back in the wild again. It was really neat to see and touch all of the animals (I got to hold a spider monkey's hand!!), but it was sad to see how many animals are illegally taken from the wild. We also learned that for an animal to be taken from its habitat, the mother of the animal is usually killed. I think it's horrible that people do that, but I'm glad there are reserves like ASIS that are helping stop it.

After dinner (where there were no beans, which is my first meal here without black beans), we all went down to the pool and jacuzzi. Now, we are taking turns blogging and swimming!!

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day of seeing waterfalls, meeting new people, visiting a school, enjoying hot springs, sight-seeing, and picture-taking!! Very excited!!!

-Leslie K.

P.S. I never got a chance to blog about the night hike last night... It was wet. We were the only group of four groups who got rained on. It actually poured. We weren't able to see very many animals, but we did see 3 big grasshoppers, a cricket, a frog, a possum, 2 spiders, and lots of flowers! And on the bright side we only saw 2 ants, and they weren't fire or bullet ants!! Woo hoo!!