Leaving Arenal

After the excitment with all the monkeys and the volcanoes, I was pretty sure the rest of the trip was going to be a let down. But I'm happy to say that I was wrong. Monteverde was beautiful. It's located at a higher altitude and the weather cooled off a little! The ride to get there was interesting...we took a boat, then a 2 hour van drive on a road that's not paved for about an hour and a half. It was a little bumpy, but beautiful! We saw a ton of coffee plantations and a school that was raising money by having 2 kids hold a rope across the road and not let the vehicle pass until they donate some money! Hilarious! Must give them credit; they probably raise some money that way form all the tourists that pass through!
The town is quaint; it was founded by a bunch of Quakers ( I think) from Pennsylvania, so it has a very American connection. We arrived and relaxed for a bit. Our time in Monteverde was going to be spent at the Monteverde Institute which does research with the local environment, etc. We went to the institute to sit for our first talk, from Justin Welch who is in charge of water quality, and he was going to show us how they test if the water has little pollution or a lot. I guess it's okay to say that we didn't know we'd be performing the tests that day.
I'm not sure what possessed me to raise my hand, but when Justin asked, "Who wants to be the agitator?" I volunteered. Agitating something sounded like a good thing at the time. I wasn't aware that I'd be putting on waders and heading directly into the river! Walking in those waders was hard and I had to be very careful or my sized-too-big feet were going to send me tumbling. My job was to "agitate" any sort of living macro-organisms, and my partners were going to catch them in a net and we were going to see what they were. It was a bit gross at first, standing and reaching into the unknown water, and scraping rocks with moss all over them, but I bucked up and did what needed to be done. After all, it's in the name of science!