Lost in the jungle and zip lining in Costa Rica - by ZT

My very first plane ride was to Costa Rica! It was a really long travel day but I had fun sitting with my two brothers on the plane. When we arrived in Costa Rica it took us a long time to get a shuttle to our car rental place and then an even longer time to get the right 4 by 4 SUV. Finally we were on our way and drove out of the city towards the west coast. It was interesting to see how people live there and I liked to see the rain forest all around. We couldn't make it to our place that night as we discovered the roads could be pretty rough and it always gets dark at 6 so we found a cottage and settled in.

The next morning I woke up and waited on the couch until my family woke up. There was a 2 hour time change so it was pretty early. When they did we all went for a hike into the jungle. Soon we lost the trail and we were lost in the jungle. About a half hour later we came out of the trees and found a house by the road but there was a prickly fence along the road and a locked gate. Bodhi and I crawled under the gate while everyone else squeezed beside the gate. Then we walked back down the road to our place and had a Costa Rican breakfast of rice, beans and eggs. After a quick swim we packed up and headed for ziplining at a national refuge.



The refuge was named Hacienda Baru and it was a jungle and beach on the Pacific coast. As we walked to the place where we would zipline our guide pointed out a baby sloth in a tree. My dad and brothers and I headed for zip lining and my mom took my sister for a hike to the beach.

I bravely went first and my brothers and dad went after me, the super duper brave one. We went about 6 times before the last one that was 140 feet high. We hooked our lines up to go and Kaden went first, then Bodhi, then Dad and I went last. The guide pretended to shove Kaden and Bodhi off the zip lines. When I went he shoved me off for real. It was awesome!

It was super hot and when we got back to the main part we met Mom and Sage and we all had cold drinks while we watched the iguana and lizards run around. There was a butterfly house too. It was hard to believe it was only lunch time and we were starving so we headed to a beach town.

We went to an outdoor restaurant that was great. They made everything homemade. It was the best quesadilla I've ever had.

Great Sand Dunes National Park - by KT

Great Sand Dunes

            We pulled into Great Sand Dunes National Park around lunch time. The first thing we did was pull up to the shop where you could rent sand boards and sleds. We grabbed three boards and a sled and drove up to the visitor center where we learned about where we could go to sand board. 

When we got out our mom showed us how to wax the boards so they would go faster. We got our boards waxed and started our tough hike on the burning sand out to the dunes. It took us a while to get out to the first dunes but when we did it was an even tougher hike up to the top so we decided to stay on the smaller dunes. However, they were still pretty high. 

We started with a slanting hill that we practiced on and there were a few wipe-outs at first. After a while we moved to the other side of the dune that was much steeper. It was a lot of fun speeding down the hill but I kept falling down. My parents were sliding down the dunes on a sled with my sister while we were sand boarding. Eventually they came up to try and they had a hard time as the boards were a bit tiny.

On my second last try I managed to stay up the entire round and it felt amazing. I decided to go down the side closest to our car but I couldn’t turn enough and fell off a side (more of a cliff than a hill) and hit the bottom hard. I was okay though. We all laughed and then made the long hike back to our car to continue our trip after dropping off our boards.