After experiencing both the cloud forest and the rain forest, I feel more educated on the diversity of Costa Rica. The cloud forest was more of an informational walk and the rainforest was an observational walk. In both trails, the tour guide did stop and talk but the cloud forest provided a significant amount of information. Not to mention in the rain forest, we were able to witness more of the wildlife that we were expecting. We got to see a small leopard like animal, a family of monkeys, and poisonous dart frogs. During the cloud rainforest, we saw a quetzal and tarantulas. The presence of temperature and humidity was more prominent in the rain forest than the cloud forest. During the cloud forest trail, their wasn’t many trees to shield us from the rain. In the rainforest, there was some misting but the trees protected us for the most part.

The tourists are attracted to Arenal because it has hot springs, a rainforest, and a volcano. Not to mention, there are extreme sports they can participate in like zip lining, horse back riding, and atv driving. I can understand why tourists would be attracted to Arenal because during the one hour that I was walking on the main street, I didn’t feel like a zoo animal. It seemed like there were a lot of tourists there in contrast to Heredia. The views from the hanging bridges of the rainforest are captivating. Additionally, you can constantly see the volcanos regardless of your location in Arenal, unless there is fog.

Some major supply chain challenges that Alberto mentioned are the pandemic, a language barrier, and climate change. The pandemic negatively affected the companies ability to maintain financial stability. Since the world was shut down, these tourist dependent companies were unable to support their businesses. Alberto mentioned the advantages one has when they are more educated on the different languages. When working in a department that involves different people coming to Costa Rica, they need someone who can adapt to the needs of their costumers. Climate change is always a problem for ecotourism. In order to maintain their steady profit, they have to use the money they receive to invest in new things to attract more tourists. If climate change negatively affects the places these tourists want to visit it may cause them to travel somewhere else. Tourists come to appreciate the scenery and educate themselves on biodiversity. Companies weren’t able to effective respond to Covid-19z