Day 5: Snorkeling and Boruca Class

    This has been my favorite day so far! We started off the day really early with a wakeup time of 5:45 am. Then, we got breakfast and loaded up into the bus to go pick up the boys at Innoceana. Everyone was still pretty sleepy, so we got to wake up a bit during a class Laura, a diving instructor who accompanied us on our day, gave as a refresher for the fish we learned yesterday. Once we wrapped up the class, we gathered all of the gear we would need for today and got back into the bus for a 40 minute bus ride to the boat. 

    We got on the boat and went through the mangroves to get to the ocean in order to get to Cano Island, a biological reserve, the highest level of nature protection in Costa Rica. Being able to go to Cano Island was an incredible privilege since most of the island is closed off to others besides specialists living on the island and researchers with special permission, but recently, Costa Rica has opened the norther part of the island for snorkeling. The boat ride there was about an hour long and I was even given the opportunity to drive part of the way there. The water was a beautiful crystal blue and was the perfect temperature once we got in.

    Before jumping into the water, we got a short reminder of all the things we needed to keep in mind while snorkeling. While in the water, we saw the most beautiful view. There were a variety of parrot fish, surgeon fish, sargeant major fish, puffer fish, king angel fish, scissor fish, a huge manta ray, and even an octopus!! The first couple minutes we got some free time to swim around and explore on our own, but later in the day, we were given a clipboard in order to document how many fish of a certain species we saw. Once we got back on the boat, we got fruit and a very yummy burrito!!

    I don't really know what happened on the way back from the island since I fell asleep, but I'm going to assume everyone was resting as well since everyone was very tired and a bit sunburned after a long day out swimming. After docking and before getting onto the bus, we sat down for a bit at the dock's restaraunt to test different aspects of the water such as the pH, salinity, and other important factors that may affect the wildlife in the area. Laura showed us how to use the different tools do to each of these things and we all took turns testing the samples out. There were also two darling little dogs that kept us commpany while we learned.

    On the bus ride back, most of us took a nap and looked forward to get back to our places to shower off. We got all nice and clean and went back to Innoceana for our class of that day. Today we were given two presentations, one on Elements of Water and Water Quality as well as another one on the Boruca community, the indigenous group we'll be visiting tomorrow. We were very hungry once our class was over so we went to grab some pizza and hang out. I had an amazing day today and I'm so excited for tomorrow!!

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