Day 6: Exhausted Children running experiments

The bugs have almost accepted me. Today, I have hit a new record low of bug bites gained, as I think I only got 2, so that's maybe a 80% drop. Soon, I will be one of them. (determined face and fist pump). Anyways, today started off a fun little HOUR earlier, so it was a bit of a struggle to get to breakfast on time but we made it. The cooks made up for the early wake up call by serving cacao pancakes, which were just about everything wonderful you could earthly expect out of food for us earthlings. We had the standard strawberry-banana juice with it, and then we packed into a bus for over an hour to arrive at a former cattle ranch. There, we started on a hike, first through the rainforest. In the rainforest, we came across several rivers, and stopped at a fairly large and beautiful waterfall, called the Enchanted Waterfall (said with a mystical voice), with quite lovely foamy water right after it hit the rocks, where we were allowed about 5 minutes to do what we wanted. Jessica and John both chose a more daring approach, changing into swimsuits and trying out the cold water. I however, tried to cross a couple of the drier rocks, and promptly slipped, soaking my entire lower half. Emptying your boots only does so much, ya know? Then, we continued on with the hike, where we entered the dry forest. While the dry forest certainly had drier areas and trees, the path was made of clay-like soil and the path was steep in many areas, so we had a lot of trouble trying not to slide. On the bright side, I'm about 90% sure none of us got ticks, which was apparently a danger, so yay!! We finally arrived at our destination, the hot springs.

The hot springs have some very nice mineral water, as well as mineral mud that's apparently worth a lot in other areas. So, we of course smothered our skin with it, which was fun and felt very nice.

It seems to have made skin smoother, but I personally suspect the mud just took the first layer off, cause it was kind of grainy, so it may not actually be that great. The hike back was a little less interesting, and I think we were all starting to feel muscle pain. When we got back to the hacienda, we had lunch that Finca la Anita had packed for us, with ham and cheese sandwiches and mystery soda. Then, we got herded back on the bus, where I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep, and in the end, we started doing our science an hour later than expected because we apparently walk slower than they thought we would and none of us had any energy. Then, we started doing our experiments from 3-6, where my groups dirt samples were annoyingly wet and refused to dry. Then, we had a fabulous dinner of PASSIONFRUIT JUICE (my favorite), plantain chips, and a hispanic twist on beef lasagna. There was this amazing desert with a blackberry sorbet thingy and a molten chocolate base (I stole half of my sister's portion ;D ). Then, we went back and science-d some more, for some of us (me + group and others), till 9 or even ten. Then I wrote this.