La Selva and Puerto Viejo

This past weekend was our third and final excursion here in Costa Rica. We departed early Thursday to get to the Pecuare River, where we went white water rafting. I have been rafting twice before in the States, but I must say this trip was much better. The rapids themselves were very exciting (mostly class 3 and 4) but what made it so spectacular was the surrounding scenery. We floated down the river beside huge mountains of rainforest, waterfalls, and under indigenous villages. Halfway through we all stopped on the shore and the guides prepared us a nice lunch where we entertained ourselves by observing a local pig. After lunch we were quite hot and it promptly started raining as we were going through a beautiful canyon. It was a surreal moment when we jumped out and swam in the rain through this green canyon with waterfalls and suspended wood bridges overhead. Afterwards we all got on the bus and headed out towards La Selva Biological Reserve. "La Selva" in Spanish translates to the jungle, which is a good name for it. This place is one of the most important and significant stations to the scientific community in all of Central America. Everyday many ecologists and bird watchers come here to writes articles and journals about this place and its environment. We stayed here on Thursday night and did two nature hikes, one at night and one the following morning. After our hike on Friday we ate lunch and departed towards the town of Puerto Viejo on the southern Caribbean coast. On the way we stopped at a Dole banana plantation where we were supposed to get a tour of the farm, but because of some miscommunication we only got to see the shorter version. Shucks haha. Afterwards we went to Las Palmas resort hotel, which was 25 minutes south of Puerto Viejo. This was a beautiful and comfortable place to stay for our last three days outside of San Jose. It was right on the beach and had a pool, air conditioned rooms, and a nice patio where we were served meals (which were all very good). From here we took trips to go snorkeling on Saturday (which sucked compared to Caño Island last weekend) and zip-lining through the rainforest on Sunday. Other than that we all hung out at the beach and pool all weekend, some much needed relaxation. On Monday we returned to San Jose but stopped at a place called Earth University for a tour and lunch. It is essentially an international university focused on agriculture, with lots of farming facilities with crops, livestock, and an incredible amount of biting ants. This was probably the best weekend we have had so far, even though I have liked them all.