After we ate we had another half hour bus ride to get to our starting point in the river. Somehow our buses managed to drive us all the way down to the river. We saw other people walking on the road because their vans wouldn't go any farther down. At the river, we split up into 7 boats. And of course, my boat was the best. All of the other rafts were guy heavy, so they thought they were going to kick butt, but we had 4 girls and 2 guys and we won. I guess it wasn't a contest, but we started off last and ended up in front because we all have such huge muscles to paddle down the river.
We stopped for lunch at a random clearing on the side of the river, and what happened to be there- a wild boar. Just hanging out. We had to scare him away a few times because he was getting a little close to our food. All the guides on the rafts prepared the food for us and it was amazing. They were super efficient and knew exactly what they were doing, unlike many other trips we've taken.
When we got back on the river after lunch, it started to rain. But that didn't really matter because we were already wet from dodging waves and jumping in the river. Luckily none of us ever fell out, but we did have to hit the deck a couple times and take some huge waves. We were the first group to finish, so like I said, we are the champions.
So after we were all finished rafting we got on the bus to head to La Selva. La Selva is a biological station, actually the best biological research station in all of Costa Rica. Somehow us crazy college kids got to spend the night there with a bunch of serious scientists conducting intense research. La Selva is a nature reserve that protects primary tropical rainforest. It is run by the Organization for Tropical Studies. If we were science majors, this probably would have been a very interesting place to be. However, we are not. We are mostly business majors who have been on too many hikes. But yet again we went on a night hike and a hike in the morning. Apparently most of the animals in the forest are nocturnal, but whenever we go on night hikes we mostly see bugs. On the morning hike we say a bunch of birds, but we (or at least I) are not very outdoorsy people, so we weren't very enthusiastic. The most animals we saw were right by the dining hall. There was a snake in the tree and a toad on the ground at night. In the morning there were a bunch of birds that like the trees by the dining hall better than the ones in the forest, plus an iguana that was just hanging out.
La Selva is a in a very humid part of Costa Rica, and that's saying a lot because Costa Rica is very humid to start. So needless to say we were all kind of gross. We lined up early with all our luggage so we could claim our seats on our lovely air conditioned bus. Then we ate lunch and hit the road.
On our drive we stopped at a Dole banana plantation. However, there was a miscommunication between the travel agency and Dole, so we showed up at 3, but they were expecting us at 2. So by the time we arrived, it was pouring, which meant we couldn't get the full tour of the plantation. Instead we got to look at the processing plant and stand under a tin roof to listen to the rain pound. It was kind of interesting to hear about banana production, but I couldn't hear that much, and we didn't get to taste any bananas. Luck most of the other products we've looked at in Costa Rica, all the good stuff gets shipped to the United States and the Ticos get jipped with the crappy stuff.
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