Sloths, Chocolate, and Rainforest

First let me start by saying that I think my Spanish has been improving exponentially. I have been understanding so much more than I ever have in my entire life! The ACM Spanish classes are extremely helpful. Every day we split into two groups of eight and begin with a grammar lesson. Following grammar class we split into four groups of four and correct homework with our conversation professors. After homework questions and discussion we proceed to have conversation class, which usually consists of a topic assigned the day before. Conversations tend to drift off in unforeseen directions. For example, one of the our conversation went from discussing Costa Rican money, to discussing conspiracy theories surrounding the US dollar bill, to alien sighting around the volcanoes of Costa Rica. I guess as long as we are speaking Spanish the professors are satisfied, ha ha ha. Three hours of Spanish in the morning really gets our minds going.

Last weekend the ACM group traveled to the Limón provence to take a tour of a fair trade organic cacao farm. On the bust ride to the cacao farm we stopped at a banana farm/packing plant for Dole Fruit. We saw where our bananas in the US were coming from! By my judgement we are getting our bananas from a very well run farm, the hombre that gave us a tour showed us all the intricacies of the factory, from when the bananas first begin to grow, up until they are packed up in a Dole truck for shipment. I can honestly say I KNOW bananas!

Bananas!

We arrived at the cacao farm shortly after our banana visit, and we were prepared to learn more about something that we as Americans hold so dearly to our hearts, Chocolate. Before we learned about the chocolate though, we had to see where a mentality/way of life that permeates many college students comes from, the way of Slothin had to be viewed in its natural state. I swear they were the cutest, weirdest, prehistoric looking creatures I have ever seen. And I held one! Giovani, or as we know him, Slothman, was found a young sloth and pulled it right off of a cacao tree. It turns out that when they are disturbed they get a bit ferocious. Those little claws move a lot faster than one would expect. Still, the little sloth made everyone grin due to the cuteness factor.

Me holding a Sloth!

Cute

After our Slothin experience we found out how Chocolate is made. I never knew that chocolate came form a fruit! The pulp of the ripe cacao fruit is actually quite tasty mmmm. Also slimy...mmm. The refining process was not nearly as complicated as one would think. Apparently, indigenous peoples of Costa Rica used to make a form of unsweetened chocolate and drink it kind of like coffee. Once Europeans came with sugar and someone brilliantly decided to mix it with the naturally processed cacao seed of the indigenous people, chocolate as we know it was born! Might I add that I have never tasted such delicious chocolate in my life, and don't worry everyone, I bought a kilo and I will be sure to hold some tastings of this delicious organic-free-trade chocolate!

Cacao processing plant

Cacao Fruit

Ground-up Cacao

Our final destination for the day, and where we would be spending the night was the Tirimbina Rainforest Park. We got to talk with a bat expert, and he even had a bat that we could touch! All this animal contact is really making me want to run a my own zoo ha ha ha. Oh, a fun fact about bats, they actually are not common carriers of rabies at all, they actually very rarely have rabies and many other animals are more likely to be carries (sorry, all the cute ones). So have no fear when a bat is stuck in your attack, it is probably doing a good thing and eating tooonns of mosquitoes.


Our morning in Tirimbina consisted of a breathtaking Rainforest tour. The amount of biodiversity was amazing, and we even got to see leaf cutter ants, which are one of my favorite creatures of all time! We saw toucans, huge trees, and walked across a wire canopy bridge. The tour really made me appreciate what Costa Rica has to offer in terms of flora. I feel like every square meter of the rainforest had something like 20 plant types. Epically diverse, and a great way to end the weekend before heading back to San Jose.

Huge tree!