Sámara

We left for Sámara on Sunday morning and I definitely under packed. Sámara was absolutely beautiful not to mention my group and I stayed at my sponsor's beach house literally right on the beach. The best hook up ever. The family cooked for us (I am officially in love with Costa Rican food) and the maid kept things nice and clean. We woke up at 5:55am to do a 6:00am run along the beach, and I swear the moment that sun rose it was hot hot hot. After running the first morning I was laying out in the sun hot as heck at 7:00am, craziness. The purpose of this trip was to gauge the communities awareness of the purpose of the estuary in the ecosystem and their everyday life and to also find out how the closest communities are affecting the estuary. In order to do this, we spent long days walking thru rural communities, trying to speak spanish and handing out surveys. I commonly was mistaken as a Tica (Costa Rican women) and people would try to talk to me in spanish and I would do my best to play it off using the spanish I know, it was an interesting experience for sure. We had one night swim during our time in Sámara. During this night swim I saw plankton glow for the first time (and was thoroughly impressed). It's soooo cool, they look like little glow in the dark sparkles I believe by exact quote was something along the lines of "I've always wanted to sparkle! My dads gonna be so jealous!" (We share a love for sparkly stuff, wish you were here Daddy). On our last day we finished our surveys early and enjoyed swimming in the ocean and horse back riding along the beach (I think I am addicted to horseback ridding now). We arrived back to San José on thursday completely exhausted and finished out the work week as quickly as possible, looking forward to a weekend in Tamarindo.