Today we left La Fortuna and took a four hour drive back over the mountain to Monte Verde. Along the way we stoped at a wind farm to see the wind turbines up close. When we got to Monte Verde, we hiked through the rain forest in the dark searching for insects and other wild life.

At the wind farm, we discussed how 99% of Costa Rica’s energy comes from renewable resources, and only 1% comes from fossil fuel. We saw that only two thrids of the turbines were spinning because those two thirds of turbines would generate all of the wind energy that this area has use for. Water turbines can also be manipulated to control the amount of energy that they generate; the dams they are located ine can be opened up to allow more water to pass through without spinning motors and generating energy. Some excess energy can be stored in batteries, but much of it would end up grounding and lossing charge.

Our second stop of the drive was at Café Monte Verde’s Finca Life plantation. We learned about the history of the company and grouped up to go find employees to ask questions to. My group was assigned to find Coffee Pickers, but because this is the off season for coffee, we could not find anyone. We then got a tour around the propert led by the owner and his dog; they asked us do some work in the section of land with newly planted trees. Because the trees are not fruit bearing age, it is beneficial to plant livestock-produce inbetween the trees to fix nitrogen to the soil and help the baby trees grow. We cleared the weed, watered the ground, and planted beans and corn. As a reward for our sub-par work, we got to try five different coffees, including two of thier unique flavors derived from unconventional processing of the coffee beans (both of which were the best coffee I have had all trip).

We are now staying at El Establo Mountain Hotel, which has a few ways to manage energy conservation. There is a little box near the door where you need to place a key card to turn on the electricity in that room. They also only suply each room with about 45 minutes of hot water at a time. And, they dont heat or cool the rooms, the rooms instead have vents they can open on each side (hall and outerwall) to create a wind tunnel that vents and cools the rooms.

After about 10 minutes of unpacking, we shuttled to the top of the mountain to take a night hike. This was my favorite part of the day. I got to meet and touchTWO moss-mimic bugs! Our guide first found a mossy Paying Mantis on a random tree; then he showed us the home of a mossy Stick Bug who raised her front leg up to shake my hand. We met two different Tarantulas, waitin outside of thier holes for prey to pass infront of them. Finally, we saw two sleeping birds and way too many tadpols, but the full grown endangered frog, posing for us on a bromiliad plant, was cool.

We were asked to consider the pros and cons of renewable energy, but, if I am being honest, there are not any real cons. Sure, it is expensive to build the facilities for and imposible to transport across the leangth of the United States, but we would have the money if we actually enforced the taxes on the top 1% of earners, and we could easily build the needed facilities where they are needed. The only barrior to renewable energy in the US is lobbying. Rich people do not want to see wind turbines off the coast from thier hundred million dollar beach houses, so they pay off the lawmakers to tell them to block renewable energy legislation. The big oil companies are making too much profit off of gassoline and selling their waste as plastic, so they give some of it to legislators to ensure there will not be any limit on fossil fuels. And, the only pro needed to combat any “con” people try to argue is that we will all die unless we switch to renewable energy; it is only a matter of whether Earth will get too hot for anything to live in first or whether we will run out of the fuel everything runs on first.