Day 2 Horses

Day 2: Horses

Today, we woke up to another beautiful day at Finca La Anita. With an earlier morning wake up call of 8 am, we devoured another delicious breakfast and set off on a school bus to go horseback riding. Revisiting the hospitable horseback riding tour location, we all confidently mounted our horses to start the ride up the volcano. With the help of our guides, Luis and Edgar, we conquered the muddy slopes with no casualties and now consider ourselves expert horseback riders.

Returning back to the farm with sore butts and tired knees, an amazing lunch awaited us all. We had plantain chips and cheesy rice with heart of palm, all perfectly complimented with fajita style beef and red peppers. After lunch, we had a 45 minute siesta, except for Tyler. Since he forgot to set an alarm, the gentle sway of the hammock turned his 45 minutes into a two hour siesta. While Tyler was sleeping, we had our first science collaboration with Gabriel.  Don’t worry, Tyler eventually decided to join us in our studies. We spent two hours individually researching our ideas. Then, we shared our ideas with the group to receive feedback, especially from our genius mentors, Gabriel, Ibrahiem, and Gabriel’s brother, Jose. Each of us then had to find a partner with a similar idea to collaborate and push our ideas further. Another two and a half hour session of research resulted in the creation of PowerPoints, causing hungry stomachs.

Finally, DINNER TIME! We ate soup, chicken with mango salsa, potatoes, carrots, and zucchini. Since it was Gabriel’s birthday, we surprised him with cake and glee worthy singing of “Happy Birthday.” Gabriel thought we all made great progress for our first day of research, so we got the rest of the night off. To end the night, we relaxed and enjoyed everyone’s company.

Signing off with much love from Costa Rica,

Mary Mullen and Christine Kane