This morning was a super-early, the pupils brought their luggage to the bus at 6:45 am and then went for breakfast. By 7:30 am we were on the road to our first adventure of the day – the Tenorio National Park and the Rio Celeste waterfall. We walked through the tropical rainforest and then started to descend the 200 steps and with about 70 steps to go suddenly the waterfall was in sight. A stunning sight!
After climbing all the way back up the steps and walking back through the jungle we stopped for a quick drink and some of the pupils bought bags of fresh mango and fresh pineapple and then started our journey to the Venado caves. We had a typical Costa Rican lunch – casado (black beans and rice with salad and meat) and once finished we collected out hard hats, torches and wellies! We were not quite sure what to expect…..soon we were wading through the ankle deep water in the caves. We could see the stalagmites and stalactites and when we looked up there were sleeping bats hanging from the ceiling and also several bats were flying around. A few were slightly put off by the large spiders, however, we all continued on squeezing ourselves through the various narrow openings. We saw several different chambers, some of which we needed to climb up a ladder to reach and others required getting horizontal and crawling/swimming through the water. We discussed the mineral deposits that looked like piles of uncooked pasta. Eventually we made it back into the daylight and the staff were certainly relieved when everyone was accounted for!
We then continued our journey to the east and as we approached our hotel (for the next 3 nights) the towering and majestic Arenal volcano came into view. After checking into our rooms, some of the pupils went to revise in the restaurant until dinner time, whilst others had some relaxation time. The buffet dinner filled us up well and after a quick meeting to plan for our busy day tomorrow we set up a few games of Dobble!