Fun!!

By Jamie

In Costa Rica we went to the...

Bat Jungle

We went horseback riding

We did a night tour

We saw monkeys above the road

We went to the Manuel Antonio National Park

We went to a chocolate tour at Cafe Cabure.

We did all this in the past week and a half.

Chocolate
I learned chocolate grows inside a fruit as beans on a tree.  The tree is called a cacao tree.  The cacao tree produces fruit pods that are shaped like footballs.  The seeds of those fruits eventually are turned into chocolate.
How Chocolate is Made:
- First, the wet seeds are fermented.
- After the seeds are fermented they are dried.
- Next, the beans are roasted.
- Then the beans are shelled.
- After that they are ground.
- The heat from the grinding turns the beans into a liquid.
- Last, they put in sugar and milk and other ingredients to make the chocolate.

Jason at Fundacion Corcovado (the turtle place)

By Jason
At Drake Bay, Costa Rica

Jason with Rob James, Director of Fundacion Corcovado

At Fundacion Corcovado we put in turtle nest traps.  The way they work, when a turtle hatches it will hit the trap and stay.  It doesn’t hurt the turtle, but it keeps them in one place, so that they don’t escape and they can count how many turtles hatched.  After they count how many turtles have hatched, they pick them up and put them into a bucket to put them on the sand on the beach so they can go toward the ocean.  Why they put them on the sand is so they have a better chance of reaching the ocean, and they don’t get killed by crabs and birds that might want to eat them.

Why they put them on the beach instead of the ocean is they want them to remember the beach so that they lay their eggs there when they get to be adults.

On the runway walking to the beach where the turtles' nests are