Mom was the one to figure it out. She noticed that the tiles on the floor formed an arrow that pointed to a vine on the wall. When you pulled the vine, a bag dropped down. And in the bag was a notebook.

The notebook was our first clue in the escape room. It looked like it would help a lot. It had an alphabet code, which was sure to be used later. And it had pictures of jungle animals. It would definitely come in handy as we tried to beat the room and find the Lost City.

We had come to the escape room to celebrate Juana’s birthday. She picked it as her present. At first I wasn’t sure why she would pick something where you had to solve a bunch of problems and get stressed out by not knowing if you would make it to the end. But she was right. It was fun.

After Mom found the notebook, Juana found the key to a chest hiding under a rock. The chest held tablets with pictures of animals on them. They were the same animals that were in the notebook! Dad figured out how to line them up on the tree stumps the surrounded the room. They went in the same order that they were drawn in the notebook. Each stump had a letter on it, so now we had a code. Sure enough, that code opened the lock on the door to the next room.

The next room was decorated to look like we were going even deeper into the jungle. There were plastic snakes hanging around, and a big pit of snakes in the middle of the room. No one wanted to touch the snakes except for me. When I put my hand in, I discovered there were several pieces of rope mixed in with the snakes. They were another clue. I was happy that I had finally solved something. “Way to go, Diego,” said Dad.

Juana saw there was a place on the wall to hang the ropes. We couldn’t tell what order to put them, but then Mom noticed some markings on the wall that helped. The short piece went on the left, the long piece in the middle, and the medium piece on the right.

I looked up at the clock that was counting down. We were running out of time! I wondered if we would make it before time was up. I really wanted us to be successful for Juana. OK, and for me too.

That’s when I noticed that the ropes hung down to reach certain letters that were scratched into the wall. We put letters into the alphabet code in the notebook Mom found at the beginning. The letters translated into numbers to unlock the final door. We pulled it open and saw the Lost City just in time for the final seconds to tick off the clock. Escape!