BEST DAY EVER!

There has been NOTHING even remotely bad about today at all. First of all, we didn't have class this morning so I skipped breakfast and got to sleep until 10:45! Definitely was a great start to the day. Then we ate lunch, and at 12 we left to go... ZIP-LINING! The place we went was in La Fortuna pretty close to the volcano that we went to the other day. In order to get there, we had to drive on the most bumpy road ever... but it was worth it. Also on the way, we stopped at a little convenient store and found the coolest hats ever! I got an orange one, Eric got a yellow one, and Jessica got a lime green one. They all had a different animal on them and said "Pura Vida" on the front of them, which is Costa Rica's famous greeting/saying. Needless to say, we wore them all day long.

The zip line went through/over the rainforest and we could see Lake Arenal the whole time. In order to get to the first zipline, we had to ride up a gondola type thing which was really fun. The guide encouraged us to stand up while we were going so that we could look through the forest for animals... but we didn't see any. When we got to the first platform, one of the workers was waiting for us with mango and pineapple juice drinks. After a short tutorial on the right/best way to zipline, we were off! We basically went on a zipline tour on a series of 7 different ziplines throughout the forest. The first one was pretty small just to get us warmed up, then the rest of the ziplines were huge and fast!!! After they strapped us in, we basically just leaned back and put our knees up and went flying. The ziplines went SO FAST and we obviously had an amazing view over the canopy of the forest with the volcano and the lake in the background. I had been looking forward to this all trip, and it definitely exceeded my expectations. It was one of the most adventurous and fun things that I have ever done, and even the people that were scared to do it at first ended up loving it. Everyone left with a smile, and we got some pretty good pictures and videos. We were technically supposed to hold on with 2 hands the whole time, so this video isn't wonderful because I had it dangling for a while, but it is still pretty cool if you turn your head to the right a little.

When we were leaving the ziplines, we saw monkeys!!!! We were driving down the road, and our driver spotted monkeys climbing around in the trees. We thought there was only one at first, but there ended up being about 5. They were obviously wild, and were climbing and jumping through the trees. It was the cherry on top of this already awesome day. They were the first wild monkeys that we had seen, and everyone had been looking for monkeys all trip long.

The day didn't even end after ziplining! Right after that, we hopped back on the bus and went to a hot spring. I was just expecting a little lake type thing with a bunch of people sitting it in awkwardly staring at each other, but I was definitely wrong! The hot springs ended up being at a resort, and it was a series of pools that we could go to with varying temperatures and slides and waterfalls! It was so relaxing and fun. The slide in one of the pools was the fastest slide that I have ever been on... minus the Texas Freefall slides and bodyslides that go straight down. This slide said that it got to speeds about 45 kph. I'm not sure how fast that translates to, but it was pretty fast, to the point where at some points I wasn't even on the slide, and other points I was going so far up the side of it that I felt like I was going to go in a complete circle around the tube. We all hung out at the springs for a few hours, and ended up eating dinner there. The dinner was a buffet with pasta and chicken and a bunch of other stuff. Definitely a good break from rice and beans! And to our surprise, we had apparently already paid for the springs/dinner so we didn't have to pay when we got there, so we were all even happier.

Now we are back at the Center and having a little fiesta! All of us are sitting on one of the porches hanging out and talking. Man I sure do love Costa Rica :)