For week 5 we went to Volcan Poas, the La Paz waterfall gardens, Irazu, and had a tour of San Jose. At volcan poas there were lagoons and a massive crater that had water in it and everything… it was absolutely beautiful. The Waterfall Gardens were very extravagent and had a multitude of things to do… there was an aviary (with tucans that we could hold), a butterfly garden, cat exhibits, and orchid gardens traditional ox carts with oxen that gave people rides in the cart, waterfalls and wonderful food. La Paz is a well known hotel known for being over the top. On the way down the mountain we also stopped at the abandoned hospital which had some amazing photo ops and we bout queso palmita which is kind of like string cheese and is only made in the mountains: that includes Poas and Irazu. Hard cheese is made in Arenal and Monte Verde. When we went to Irazu, which is another volcano, it was so high up that it was hard for us to breathe let alone hike. We go to see the craters which also had water in them, but unlike Poas it was quite barren without much foliage. Later that day we went to see the church in Cartago again and we toured the city of San Jose briefly. ~Koryn

This was the last week of my Basic 1 Spanish class. Then for the long weekend we went to Montezuma. Since it was low season there weren’t very many people and it was very expensive for food, but it was extremely beautiful! We spent a lot of the time on the beach. There weren’t any places to swim because of the rip tides. We had some nice adventures hiking to the waterfalls and getting lost. I bought a pair of Macaw feather earrings for $10 from a vendor there.  Koryn

Part of the trail. We went down the wrong side so had to do a bit of rock climbing.

Spanish class was awesome this week! We were learning food so our teacher brought in a ton of ingredient so we made home made guacamole in class and we also got to make coffee the traditional way 🙂 Later we went to Cordoba for a field trip and saw the Catholic Church there and we went to a gigantic fruit market. Later that day I went bungee jumping too! That weekend a few of us went to Jazz Cafe where the were playing global music and there were dancers to go with with the music as well!  Koryn

The guac and coffee 🙂