After Friday’s journey to the symphony, I packed and went to bed early because I was leaving Saturday morning for La Marta. It was the lab section of my Environmental Impact and Society class (yes, I actually get lab credit for this, heck yes!!!). La Marta is a wildlife refuge owned by my university.
So we were supposed to meet at 7 am so that we could all leave together (my Enviro Impact class was teaming up with the Ecology class and we were going together). So sleepy-eyed we stumble onto the bus, and head out. About an hour and a half later, we stop at a dam to talk about water and energy production.
The Dam.
The lake is covered with lillies. You can see a little bit of the dam off to the right, and off to the left (you can't see it), there was a little restaurant where we ate breakfast (spectacular view).
So we ate and were on our way again. Climbing up through mountains on winding roads (with no guard rails, yikes!). We got to La Marta and settled in.
Our little house in La Marta.
We ate lunch and set out on a hike. I’ll let the photos explain it.
Alyke, my professor talking about a banana tree.
A sketchy bridge. Only three people allowed at one time.
The remains of an old coffee plantation.
There were bats in the ruins.
Yeah, I walked about three feet from this guy, no big deal. Alejandro (the ecology professor) thinks it was about two meters long.
The view from the top of the lookout point.
A recent landslide cleared this slope. In the future, it will be reinhabited with trees, but for now, all that's growing there is shrubbery.
More greenery.
A stream running through the park.
A little waterfall so clean you can drink it...
...so I did.
It got warm...
...so we went swimming.
The walk back to the house was a little unpleasant, but oh well.
I combined the hikes from Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning into one big photo mess, I hope that’s okay.
Now, I guess I’ll backtrack. After the hike we went back and got cleaned up to go into a nearby town to watch the futbol game (Costa Rica was playing in Mexico, and two of the girls on the fieldtrip are Mexican and wanted to see the game).
The town set up a trailer with a sheet on it and prjected the game in the town square.
After the game (we lost 2-0), we went back to the house and had dinner and roasted marshmallows over candles in the dining room because we were too tired to walk back to the coffee ruins for a bonfire. Everyone went to bed early as they shut the power generator at 9 pm. We hiked the next day as well and headed back to the city, sweaty, sick of green, and happy with the whole weekend.
