Day 5

​By Alex Jacoby and Fletcher Ratliff
     This morning in Costa Rica, we woke up to a nice breakfast consisting of toast, eggs, bananas, pineapple, and tortillas prepared by Cecelia. Shortly after, we piled into the bus and headed into the Costa Rican cloud forest. We then arrived at the Quetzal Paradise Park and enjoyed its nice view of the valley with hummingbirds feasting upon nectar from nearby flowers as well as from feeders.
     Our fearless leader, Javier Cano, led us to the trailhead for a short but sweet hike. On the hike, we encountered many things such as a waterfall, a plane crash, and out-of-breath chaperones. After our long trek, we made it back to the Quetzal Paradise restaurant and enjoyed trout, chicken, rice, beans, plantains, Coca Cola, and sour guava juice. Afterwards, we returned to the bus and headed back to Santa Maria de Dota.
     Once arriving we took advantage of some downtime consisting mostly of basketball and multiple games of Uno, before returning to the house of the former principal of Escuela San Raphael. We had to return to finish our paintings of traditional Costa Rican houses that we had started the day before. Within an hour and a half and multiple packs of Oreo cookies, coffee, and ice tea, we had completed our new souvenirs from the village of Santa Maria de Dota.
     After returning to Cabinas Cecilia, games of basketball and Uno began once again to fill in the time just before dinner. Around a half hour later a delicious dinner consisting of beef, rice, beans, broccoli, and tortillas was brought out by none other than Cecilia herself. However, during the middle of dinner, the lights went out and a surprise cake emerged from the kitchen for Alex Jacoby for his 14th Birthday. Javier, our guide, also brought out chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The song was sung and everyone eventually wound down for the night, heading to our rooms to begin packing in order to be ready for the trip to Dominical with a stop along the way to take zip lining canopy tour.