Another fabulous day in Costa Rica! I totally love it here, although I don't think I could ever live here full time. It's SO HOT. Once it hits noon I sweat out the Ying yang until about 7. It's always about 98% humidity here so that doesn't help any. I haven't been caught in the rain while working yet. We had one big storm a couple nights ago and it rained a bit this morning before work. The storm was terrible because its so darn loud in this house because you have to keep the windows open to get some air flow. So you hear the pounding rain and wind as well as all the trucks driving by (they are the worst). We are right on a highway and around a bend so the trucks always start accelerating again right outside the house. The trucks are of course very old too so they are so darn loud! I usually don't sleep past 4 am when they start to come out full force. Something I didn't know about the vehicles here: they are twice as much as in America because of the import tax. So a $15,000 vehicle is $30,000 here. And you have to pay in cash! Tough. No wonder everyone drives old beaters. Actually I have seen a few pimped out Yaris's here which is funny. Another funny thing I learnt yesterday: there is a crocodile which patrols this water channel that runs through the sanctuary, and he got one of the dogs last week! :( and he tried to eat another one too but he happened to survive, but was so badly wounded they had to put him down. They have canoes you can use in the channel but I think I'm going to keep my distance! Anyway today we went to Puerto Viejo! A small town on the ocean about 30 mins bus ride from the sanctuary. We took off at 8 am so we missed the afternoon chores but they said it was alright. We being myself, Julie, madi, and Paul. The buses are supposed to run on a schedule, once every half hour but it really doesn't. Sometimes we wait 5 mins and sometimes we wait an hour. Today was an hour. Once we made it to puerto Viejo we walked around but found out lots of the stores and restaurants are closed Mondays and Tuesdays. We found a bakery/restaurant that was open so we popped in there for lunch and I had a grilled avocado sandwich and fresh squeezed orange juice! Mmmm so delicious. One other weird thing I didn't expect is that they don't serve us fruit at the sanctuary! Which is so weird because its so abundant here, they have pretty much every fruit and vegetable imaginable. And it's not expensive either. I bought a watermelon for myself for $2 and madi bought two big mangos for $1! I was kinda expecting a lot of fruit so that was one surprise. Back in puerto Viejo we decided to visit a really nice beach called punta uva which was 7 km further south. We rented bikes for the day for $5 each and made the trek. It was a really nice ride there but so hot on the way back. We were dripping sweat by the time we dropped them off again. But the beach was so worth it. It was kind of in a bay, with beautiful hills or mountains of trees surrounding it on the three sides. The water was warm again and because it was in this bay it wasn't super wavy like usual, just nice rolling waves that you could kind of float on. The beach was not busy at all, there were like 10 other people on the whole beach, and a cool old man lent us some beach chairs to use. It was nice and sunny today but so hot, we all got burnt. After leaving the beach and returning our bikes we went to a bar and had two for one mojhitos (sp?). They were super good. We also had margarita pizza thank goodness because we got back to the sanctuary at 6:30 and found out they didn't make us supper! (Every though we told them we would just be gone for lunch). Also there are so many crabs here!! anywhere there is dirt or sand, there are crabs! You have to watch out where you step because there are tons of little holes in the ground where they burrow down. We watched some today while on the beach and I found them quite entertaining. They crawl into their hole and grab some dirt and carry it between their claw and body like a football and then crawl back up and fling it in a pile. Its quite funny. Also saw many disgusting spiders today! (Ciara!) One kind if spider makes its web in the power lines. So there's one line on the pole and another about 3 feet up, and the web is the whole 3 feet up between the lines and 3 or 4 feet across. The spiders themselves are probably about as big as my palm. And there are so many webs that for most of our 7 km ride, the power lines are just completely covered! Very gross. But also kind of cool because they don't bother you way up there so you can just stare at them! All in all it was a great day and I'm ready to get back to work tomorrow! Good night!