Today was our first full day at Finca La Anita! Finca La Anita is right near the volcano Miravalles deep in the rainforest. It is very remote and beautiful with tons of different wildlife, nature, and scenic views. Our first breakfast here was a fan favorite, with some of the best scrambled eggs we have ever had and toast with marmalade and cacao nibs. All the food is either grown right on the farm or from the nearby village so everything is extremely fresh. The owner Pablo gave us a tour of the cacao farm and we learned about the growing, processing, and marketing of the chocolate. We tried an original hot chocolate recipe from Marie Antoinette, a better version of Nutella made with butter rather than the processed stuff at the store, and different percentages of pure dark chocolate with various spices. The drink was our favorite :) At the end of the tour, Pablo prepared us a heart-of-palm salad straight from a young palm tree with a machete. It was so fresh and delicious!! For the science portion of the day we started an experiment to find the location with the most bacteria on the farm in our randomly assigned research groups. We took samples from the pond, compost area, and even the public toilet handles. Hopefully we will see some interesting results tomorrow!
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| Workers extracting cacao with machete |
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| Baby Pineapple plant during cacao tour |
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| Pure dark Costa Rican Chocolate tasting with blackberry marmalade |
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| Inclusion activity to introduce ourselves-speed dating!! |
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| View from the research deck |
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| Planning hypothesis for bacteria culturing experiment |
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| Morning free time hike |
