Costa Rica Trip 2017 Trinity and Lexington Catholic

Full day #4: Today was a great day. We started early at 6:20 to record data for our project, and that went pretty well. We ate a nice big Costa Rican style breakfast consisting of Eggs, Pinto beans, and rice... for the third day in a row:) I’m not complaining tho bc it was pretty dang good. At 8:30 we were on our way to horseback riding station. Eddie, our tour bus driver, drove us and the ride was really fun, Eddy’s a g so that was pretty nifty @JonMichael. I had the best horse, bc I was the best ridder, and I spoke in Spanish with the man who lead the rides. I was the best, so it was pretty fun. We all named our horses, Jon Hughes’s was Reginold and it kept farting on everyone, Will Mullin’s was Ferrari, Mine was simply Stud, Lauren’s was named Dapper and was the best and most amazing grey horse(she TOTALLY didn’t insert this when Mac wasn’t looking) and I kinda forgot the rest. Jon Michael named his ¾ and Sam named his Mystery from Spongebob. We went riding for about an hour and a...

        Today I entered the rainforest and went zip-lining. It was really cool in the rainforest, and was a long hike to the zip lines. we came back to the work area and started our science projects after lunch. My group couldn't technically start our science project due to the rain so we started making the hot pepper spray and the citronella spray. For the pepper spray we  used 200ml of water, 46.3 grams of hot Costa Rica peppers, and 1 gram of cayenne peppers  and blended it all together in a blender. For the citronella spray we used 12 grams of the plants leafs and 200ml of water to make the spray. Lastly we poured all of this in a spray bottle and then put it in the refrigerator to keep it all fresh. Tomorrow we will start our experiment and spray the trails down and see how the ants will react. Hopefully it doesn't rain tomorrow lol... stay tuned in for my blog tomorrow to see how our first trails go, for o...

This video shows the extraction of a fungus garden. Day 3: The photos below are from our research presentations.

- Alexander Noal

DAY 1: Once we arrived in Costa Rica we took a van to a restaurant where the students ate fish, chicken, or beef as the main course and as sides there was salad, rice, plantains, black beans, and corn tortillas. One thing that was shocking to me was the drink we were served. It resembled a root beer float but as I took a sip I tasted a familiar flavor that I commonly drink in Lexington. It was iced tea. However, it had a white frothy mixture at the top which threw us off. After we finished our meal we hopped back on the bus and drove 90 minutes on a very slim dirt road. We drove past trees and livestock through the heavy rain with a volcano on each side of us. We arrived at our cabins and were treated by many fam dogs. Next was dinner, the cooks prepared seabass, cooked carrots, broccoli, potatoes and a delicious pesto sauce. After we finished we ate an amazing dessert and discussed why leaf cutter ants are so important to society due to their ability to make antibiotics that are ...