Day 10: Shopping, hiking, and hot springs.

There wasn't a lot of new information to share with you all today, however I'll still do a summary of all the things we did today. Our tour guide loves to provide us with many facts, his facts started as we drove over a dam. This dam is used to cross the largest man made lake in CR. This lake is known as lake Arenal. Costa Rica steives for sustainability, with this, they use wind, geothermal, and water for power sources. 43% of all of the hydro power produced in CR comes from this man made lake. This lake uses three surrounding rivers to fill it. On the other side of the lake there are wind mills which produce 7% of Al the energy used in CR. This lake is so large it would take a fit person about one and a half hours to go from one end of the lake to the other. I thought this was pretty cool. I love seeing how CR is using nature to power their country.

Our stop was just on the opposite side of the dam. We unloaded at a wildlife hiking trail. We hiked through the rain forest experiencing the many moods of mother nature including brisk winds, heavy rain, and we extreme heat. But it was all worth it as this 2 mile hike lead to spottingz of bats, howler monkeys, stingless bees, penis tree, spicky rat, tarantula, humming birds, termites, and even a baby spider monkey swinging in the trees. Here are some facts we learned as well. CR has 4 species of monkey: whites faced, howler, spider, and squirrel. There are 121 bat species in CR including the spectrum bat which is about 30 to 40 cm in length and is big enough to eat small birds and fruit. Termites are crunchy and taste like pinewood. Sap is produced as a defense against termites and to heal the tree. The hiking trail also has many bridges. The longest bridge was 97 meters and the highest was 60 meters in the air.

After this we were able to shop around town for a while. We hit up a few souvenir shops and I was able to find a few things to take home.

We concluded the night relaxing and talking in some hot springs with some friends. Temperatures of the springs ranged from 91° to 102°.