Tuesday, December 31

Our overnight in the cloud forest was at an actual working dairy ranch, and the first activity of the day was milking.  This is not something Josh had ever done before, and he was not very successful.  I think he was too gentle, but he only got a few small squirts into the pail from a very full udder:

Our next stop was at a one-room school which is partially supported by the travel company we’re with, Classic Journeys:

The school serves children from first to sixth grades and has a maximum enrollment of twenty, although currently there are only seven children attending.  The materials are very basic; here are the teaching materials for the six grades, and, strangely, a baseball:

All children in Costa Rica get free breakfast and lunch at school; this makes going to school very desirable for children from very poor families.  Here’s the school kitchen:

We then drove to a wonderful organic farm where we had a terrific guide walk us among all the plants and describe them with tastes when appropriate.  Josh has been absolutely wonderful about ordering things he’s never had before at our meals. He wants to experience it all, and he wanted to taste everything offered.  That can get him into trouble, as he jumped to be the first to taste a fruit called nani, which tasted (he said) like vomit:

Harvesting casaba tubers is hard work!  The stem of the plant is cut, and the remainder of the plant is literally pulled out of the ground:

At some point along the way we were offered a green somewhat frothy drink; Josh was the first to try it, but this time he enjoyed the surprise taste:

Chocolate is grown in Costa Rica—the fruit grows on a stem right off of the trunk or major branch of the tree:

We then came to a mound of material on the ground.  Our guide called Josh forward, put some on his finger, and painted a mustache and beard on Josh, only then telling him it was monkey droppings! 

Turns out that was a joke and the material was charred sugar cane stalks used as fertilizer.  Finally we came to a machine which crushes the sugar cane and produces cane juice.  It took lots of muscle power to crush the cane:

We then drove to an absolutely lovely resort on the side of the Arenal volcano where we have a room with a very large hot tub right in our room! 

There’s music tonight starting at 10:00, and fireworks at midnight.  We’ll see who makes it.  We need our rest for zip-lining in the canopy tomorrow.

Happy New Year to all.