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La Fortuna, Costa Rica

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I really want to go back to La Fortuna, Costa Rica because while my family and I were there we had a lot of fun. The things that we did were: Arenal Volcano hike, a tour of a really cool farm, and my favorite, the hot spring rivers. Arenal Volcano I really liked the Arenal Volcano hike. The national park only let us go to the foothills because the volcano is still semi-active, having had a big eruption 1968 and a smaller one in 2010. On the hike we saw lots of lizards. Most of them were about five inches long with a blue stripe down their backs but others were about 10 inches and brown with dark dots. On the hike there was also a massive Kapok tree that is 400 years old and so big that if there was a tunnel through it you could drive a car through if you wanted. The tree had very large buttresses. Buttresses help the tree stay standing in large storms. If I could return to the Arenal Volcano National park again, I would do the zip-line/canopy tour and climb th
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Scuba Diving

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In Lake Atitlan and in Puerto Vallarta I learned how to Scuba dive. You have to do a lot of studying, have to read a very big book, answer a lot of questions, take a lot of tests, and then do skills in  the water to prove that you know what to do, when to do it, and why. To the dives. On my first Open water dive (In Lake Atitlan) Sam (my dive instructor) and I went down to 10 meters (30 feet). We swam in an underwater swimming pool, and then went into an underwater sauna. After that we swam to a far away rock. We put our hands under the rock and the sand was warm! It was an underwater hotspot! This dive site was called auga caliente (hot water). My second dive (also in Lake Atitlan) was also down to 10 meters (30 feet). This dive site is called Casa del Mundo. (house of the world) At this dive  site there were lots of underwater stair cases, terraces, and platforms. Under those, there were lots of big rocks. Around those we found a screw, a large rusty Allen wrench, (whi
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Day of the Dead

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Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican holiday to celebrate the dead. It goes on for 5 days (Oct 29 - Nov 2). In Puerto Vallarta, on November 2 there is a parade. My dad and I went to it. There were hundreds of people in the parade. All of them dressed up with face paint, dresses, fancy shirts, and skeleton costumes.  There were floats, people on motorcycles, all sorts of bands, people on horses, 15 foot tall puppets controlled by one person, and a group of four people that climb up to the top of a really tall pole and then tie themselves to ropes and then swing around the pole upside down while playing music. Some people sell “tacos de Cabeza.” Cabeza is the spanish word for head. It is used to describe the meat from a roasted head of a beef animal, served as taco fillings. Here are some of the photos that my dad took the of things that we saw.
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Our House In Puerto Vallarta

Our house is now in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Puerto Vallarta is a big city on the Pacific coast. We live in an apartment on top of a cafe. It has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living room that is right next to the kitchen. We have six restaurants within a block and the beach is about a ten-minute walk from us. Our house also has a terrace circling half of our house and a terrace on the roof. The temperature is much warmer than what we were used to in Lake Atitlan and Antigua. The temperature has been around 90 degrees since we have been here (two days). Puerto Vallarta has a population of 307,107 people and 5,000,000 (five million) tourists per year. Puerto Vallarta is located in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. My first impressions of the city were hot, noisy, large, lots of cars, and everything you needed, really close to where you live.
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Our Pool

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We have a pool at our villa. Right now it is sunny and warm so we went swimming. We have a small ball and my dad threw it over the pool and I would try to jump and catch it in mid-air before I touched the water.We took turns throwing the ball to each other. I took a timelapse of it. Don’t know what a time lapse is? I will tell you. A timelapse is a camera taking a picture every 1, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, or 5 seconds and then putting them all together so they come out in a really fast video, like this. This one is the game that my dad and I played. Timelapses are really cool, so whenever you get a chance to use that feature you should use it.
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The Arc of Triumph (Lego)

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On September 30th I turned 11. FedEx was supposed to ship birthday presents along with my dad’s new phone, some mints, and fish oil. That stuff was supposed to get here before my birthday, on like the 26th or something. NOT. It got here on the 6th of October!! Like 10 days late!! Anyway. One of the Lego sets that I got was a model of the Arc de Triomphe or Arc of Triumph. It has 386 tiny pieces and it took me about 45 minutes to build. The instructions were kind of complicated. This was also my first Lego architecture set. The Arc de Triomphe (Arc of Triumph) is a 162 ft tall, 150 ft wide, and 72 ft deep white limestone structure located at the western end of the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France. The arc was built over 30 years (1806-1838). The construction was halted in 1814 because Napoleon was defeated. The construction was picked back up in 1833 in the name of King Louis-Philippe I. The Arc was built in honor of Napoleon. In fact, the first stone was laid on Napoleon’s birt
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The Iguana Perdida

The Iguana Perdida is a restaurant that is in front the Santa Cruz dock. Santa Cruz is where we live. So it is not too far from our house, only a ten-minute walk or so. When you go through the gate you come into a large patio area. (It depends on your patio size because if you have a big patio I would say it is medium. If you have a small patio I would say it would be big.) Anyway. When you go in, you see a room with a bunch of tables and chairs. Of to the right, there is a door that goes out onto a deck overlooking the lake. Then you can go through an arch (From the deck) out onto the patio. Back to the room with a lot of tables. When you come in and go straight (not right onto the deck) you come to a bar. Then you can go through a door and you come out into a  room with lots of couches, pillows, and instruments. There is also a TV. In the table room, on your left, there is a computer room, and after that (right before the bar) the kitchen.                                        
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