We started our day on Thursday headed to a rain forest for a hike in the Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges Park.
We divided into two groups and took off. One group had Maguil and our group had Raoul.
We had another good hike through some beautiful territory and a lot of swinging bridges.
We saw many birds, bats,
and frogs. We also saw a venomous snake right on the trail!
a golden eyelash viper
Maguil's group also saw some monkeys. The plant life was amazing.
We crossed many swinging bridges, some longer than others.
We were high in the tree canopy
and it was pretty impressive.
We saw begonias,
mosses and spikemoss, stringlike flowers
and a slew of tropical plants.
The weather ended up cooler than expected, and we did have some rain off and on.
When our group was nearing the end, it rained the hardest, but we had time to dry out over lunch before heading to our next stop.
Our second stop was a coffee farm,
where we had the full tour of how coffee is produced from seed
to pollination,
to harvest and drying
, and then roasting,
processing and finally drinking.
There was a cart ride on the tour,
and I may have known and forgot, that the carts are red if for coffee, yellow for bananas, and blue if for people. These oxcarts are traditional Costa Rican fare.
Our final stop was to a local Costa Rican family home where we visited with the family via community tourism,
then helped prepare a meal,
and even went to a local soccer field where we had dance lessons.
We ended with a meal together
before heading back to our hotel.
In the morning we will head to the Arenal volcano park before heading to our next destination.