Pura Vida!

Hello all! I'm writing from Costa Rica tonight. I had decided that this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen!!! It's just like mountains coming out of the ocean and everything is a rainforest! Yesterday morning I went to Chiquita! I didnt find out until I got there that we couldnt take pictures of patent pending things (which was everything) so most of my pictures are of flowers from there. They fed us so well! When we got there, they had Pineapples for us with straws in them to drink out of! And we ate so much fruit. We had a complementary 3 course meal of casado. (meat rice beans and potatoes... same as everything down here) We found out when we left that we were the first ever group to tour chiquita! How cool is that! Dear maddy... I did not see a banana spider and I am disappointed! Be safe in Italy! I don't want thomas to have to save you. After that we (about 200 people from the ship) went downtown to the clubs... and they were not ready for all of those people. We were helping to run the bar! Haha. The deans are calling it the Salamander Bar & Club Service Visit. It was fun. The US Coast Guard is here too so at least theres a lot of Americans in port. This morning I was very adventurous. We did the canopy tour this morning at 7. That is where you zipline over the rainforest. The sun was rising so it was awesome. I wish I could do that for an entire day! It was not scary at all like i thought it would be.. we started on the groud so that was good. The poison dart frogs that are so pretty (and dangerous) are everywhere here. Its crazy.. I dont think i realized that they actually existed. After that I went white water rafting. Our guide was so cool. We sat at the front of the raft, went backwards, and stood up. It was only a class 3... so it wasn't even like the rivers in the Appalachian. Today we went in search of coffee after our trip to bring home, but coffee shops close at like 3. I guess that should be a duh thing since coffee is a morning drink. Tomorrow Im going to see sloths... even though you can see sloths from any rode that you go on. And I'll be at the chocolate farm. Costa Rica is so awesome. I dont want to leave to go to honduras. We asked today if we could skip it. Haha. I want to come back here and take everyone from home with me! Everyone here always says Pura Vida, which is kind of like the "super" or "awesome" down here but it's also a greating. Some people used it as a hello and goodbye. I love it. Im going to keep saying it. Pura Vida everyone!