El Bosque Nuboso

Immediately after Nicaragua, I went to the bosque nuboso, or the cloud forest, for a few days. We stayed at an amazing biological research center that was right on a river and in a setting that was extremely peaceful—just what my body and soul needed after Nicaragua. And, it was nice a cool, which was also a great contrast to the hot, humid heat of Nicaragua.

My weekend was full of relaxing, lots of card playing—including ROOK (rook, rook, where´s the rook??), spades, hearts, dutch blitz, etc—and star gazing, eating, and best of all: hiking! A few friends and I decided to climb Cerro de la Muerte, or the Mountain of Death. It claims to be the second highest peak in Costa Rica, sitting at about 11,300ft above sea level. The hike was about 9 miles in total, gaining about 4000ft on the way up. It wasn´t a challenging hike at all, but we could definitely feel the elevation! The summit was definitely the most intersting top of a mountain I have ever visited… there were tons of cell phone towers and a road that led came all the way to the top, and there was a man that lived at the top, too. It actually was a good thing that there was someone at the top because a few of the people that were hiking with me felt sick at the top, so they used the guys cell phone to call a taxi to take them back! Yeah, wierd, I know! This hike, even though it was the second highest peak and not THE highest peak (which a few of my friends and I were hoping to summit, and maybe will still be able to!) was so probably the best thing ever for me because I have really been missing hiking in my Washington mountains!

Now, to change gears a bit… I´ll update a bit about what I have been doing the past few weeks: I am now in my ¨concentration” course, which is international business. The main conponent of this course is a practicum where everyone in my concentration has to work with this guy named Mark Schroner who owns a small coffee farm in Guatemala. It is up to us to come up with a few business plans/suggestions for him in order to improve the opperations on his farm. I am working with two other girls in my group on the agro/ecotourism aspect of his farm. We´re still not exactly sure what we are going to do, but we have a few ideas being thrown around. We have a couple more weeks here in Costa Rica, visiting various businesses and writing a paper, then in the end of November we travel to Guatemala to actually live/work on Mark´s farm for about 2 weeks (If you´re interested in looking at his farm online, it´s called ´Finca Santa Elena´).

I´ve been seeing lots of pretty flowers:

Time is flying by rediculously fast!