Ragin' Rapids!

Three words.  White. Water. Rafting.  

Today was a day of firsts for me.  I have never been white water rafting before and I figured that it would be fun, but I had no idea that I would enjoy it this much!  On our way to our destination for white water rafting, we were able to see the rainforest side of Costa Rica.  It was much different than the city streets of San Jose that we had seen yesterday.  Once we got to the white water rafting location, we were separated into groups and we got our helmets, life jackets, and paddles.  Laura, Dr.Lanier, Greg, Peyton, Kelly, and I were all in the same raft.  Our tour guide was the greatest and certainly made our journey down the rapids entertaining!  He thought it would be funny to tell us the commands such as paddle forward, backwards, and stop in spanish.  It helped us to pick up some spanish, but when we didn't respond he'd often tell it so us again in english!  He could even text and steer our raft at the same time!  At one point and time down the rapids, our raft was turned sideways and I managed to flip out of the raft!  Initially, I was in shock and then I realized that I was floating in the water with rocks.  BIG ROCKS.  That was when I kinda freaked out and was doing everything in my power to get back into that raft!  Half way down the river, we stopped to jump off of a cliff and into the river.  It was so much fun!  Then we got back to the land and found fresh pineapple that our tour guides had cut up for us.  I can't explain how fresh that pineapple was.  It was so good!  After rafting, we enjoyed lunch at the adventure center.  Once we had lunch, we went to our tour for the cocoa plantation.  We were told that it was going to be nothing like Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory and boy was he right!  To get to the plantation, we had to take a little hike.  This included walking over a bridge that was extended over the forest and river and felt like it was so much longer than it was.  I felt like I was walking on a trapeze and I was only one step away from falling off of it!  Once we arrived at the cocoa plantation, we were taught about how the cocoa plant is processed into chocolate.  It was nothing like what I was expecting.  The plant that the chocolate is made from is yellow.  It was really strange to me that this plant had no characteristics or was even close to resembling chocolate, but that was the plant that was used to make it.  We also tasted a milk chocolate and a dark chocolate.  The texture was much different than the chocolate candy that I have had.  I think it was so different because this chocolate was made with 60% cocoa powder compared to candy that is made in the US with only 10-20% cocoa powder and the rest of it is sugar.  After our chocolate plantation tour, we viewed a presentation about the Tirimbina biological reserve.  The presentation explained the many different certifications of ecological sustainability that were available.  Tirimbina is a non-profit organization that makes most of their profits from the tours that they give such as the cocoa plantation tour that we went on.  Tirimbina also has a four leaf certification from the Certification of Sustainable Tourism, also known as the CST.  Costa Rica strives to be as ecologically sustainable in as many ways as they can.  We finished off our day with dinner at a local pizza resturant.     Even though it took a good little while to get our pizza, it was worth the wait!  Today was truly amazing and I can't wait to see what tomorrow has in store!  

Learning the lingo... Alto means stop.  However, even though there are "alto" signs ALL over Costa Rica I think that they view them merely as suggestions.

Laura & I for lunch after white water rafting!

I even got to help grind the coffee beans during the presentation at the cocoa presentation!

The shaky bridge that we had to walk over to get to the cocoa plantation.  It was way too long and shaky for my liking, but it did give a great view of the river that we had went through earlier this morning on our white river rapids tour!