Claire and Vic's Costa Rica Blog

Ola,

Hello how are you?! just taking advantage of the bad weather (sky currently black) here in San Jose and updating this! Weather´s bad in the afternoons as it´s monsoon season here but generally in the morning the weather is nice and hot; so we like the mornings! We have now been here for 9 days at the Spanish language school and man it´s difficult-we even get tests We are hoping to find out more about our volunteer work in our meeting tomorrow-we think it´s going to be general teaching in the countryside area of Monteverde and somewhere else on the coast, but so far the guy organising it has not been very helpful as he´s working to Costa rican "time zones!" so fingers crossed! conversation with our host family is getting better tho as we´re picking up more words and so far we´ve had a few conversations in Spanish to be proud of! we are switching campuses next week to the beach school in Samara where we can stay in a hotel and chill out a bit more!

The food here is very heavy, not to everyone´s tastes it´s all rice and beans and lots of bread - Claire´s craving some nice soup and of course chocolate!! whilst Vicky´s just craving being able to eat what she wants rather than being force fed with bean paste and being served bread and rice.... with everything!!!however the tropical fruit is fantastic-we´ve eaten fruit we never knew existed!

On saturday we went with our amigas from our escuela on a cheesy coffee plantation tour of Cafe Britt (who are the big company here in Heredia) and literally had the story of coffee acted out to us by a troupe of actors which was a bit unexpected!!was good fun tho..actually got vic to try some coffee, tho she´s still not convinced! later on we had some gorgeous fish served to us costa rican style and then the heavens opened - we were so glad to be under the canopy! Our hopes of going to San Jose in the afternoon were scuppered so we ended up going to the mall and watching X-Men - it´s like $3 a ticket and popcorn´s 50p!

Sunday was amazing, we got up at the crack of dawn at 5.45am when our taxi arrived and got them to drop us off at the hotel in san jose so we could get the tour bus to the Tortuga Island in the gulf of Nicoya. Got to see alot of the countryside enroute on the pan american highway ... again quite hairy at times! Boarded our catamaran at the dock and sailed off into the sunrise!!! On the way we saw the most enormous birds ever and were told that they were brown pelicans or the "pirates of the sea" pretty impressive non the less as there were millions of them, enjoyed being treated like princesses on board and getting drinks and fruit served to us while we sunbathed on the nets at the front! we passed numerous other tropical islands on the way and one that up until 1994 had been Costa Rica´s version of Alcatraz!The actual island was beautiful, we went snorkelling before lunch along the coral reef there and felt like we were in finding nemo! then we had lunch outside under parasols next to a coconut grove and there was a traditional band playing who brought along a domesticated warthog which along with charging under all the tables rolled over like a dog if you scratched his tummy! was a really really cool day...we are so looking forward to the beach at samara school!

Pictures to follow, we´ll update soon,

love Claire and Vic

PS thanks for your messages!XXX