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

Eye eye!

how are you doing? we have discovered a really good internet cafe to do this from just up the road from our language school so we can check emails now if theres anything you need to mail us about (addresses are at the end of our profile)

Who´d have thought we´ve only been here five days? feels like longer we´ve done so much already! first few days were quite awkward as we were finding our feet in spanish...however we have now perfected the art of using the odd spanish word with hand gestures and if all else fails nodding and smiling always seems to work!

Our house in Heredia is very nice-they have three noisy poodles tho and its like a fortress-but then again all the houses here are! We´ve got our own end of the house so we can escape easily if the conversation gets too much!so far we´ve tried some unusual dishes-like chilli con carne for breakfast!-but so far all is a-ok!our house mum has two kids not much older than us (Luiz and Melissa)and she likes to talk to us in rapid spanish! thankfully tho Melissa can speak some English and tonight she is taking us out in Heredia.

we´ve been having latino dance classes in the mornings and we´ve even taken a cooking class and can now make real guacamole sort of...however think more eating than cooking went on to be fair

On thursday we went on a tour up into the mountains outside Heredia/San Jose and saw the coffee plantations and loads of fruit farms-and we got our first glimpse of the rainforest which was amazing, we went to the La Paz waterfalls which were 80ft tall and we got soaked (see photo evidence). We saw lots of frogs, some snakes (behind glass!),huge butterflies and even some hummingbirds which were beautiful. Stopped en route on the way back down at some random restaurant with no menus and no choice-so ended up with chicken and smash...no really!

So far the weather´s been, how do you put it, different; in the morning its really hot and sunny and then the afternoon hits and the cloud and rain move in,by 6pm its pitch black!!

language school´s really like being in GCSE'S again-today we had a test and have been doing tenses all week...and have homework till ten pm at night?! yes we know we are crazy-however next weekend we´ve signed ourselves up for the campus on the beach (hopefully a little more relaxed!)

Tomorrow we are meeting up with Amy and Denise (who thankfully speak lots of spanish) and we´re going on a tour to the coffee plantation followed by a trip to check out the capital San Jose. On sunday we have an excursion planned and are off at the crack of dawn to go on a catarmaran to an Island on the Pacific coast, we´ll tell you more about it soon!

Hope you like the photos, more to come!

Love Claire and Victoria XXXX

Hiya! we are both bueno! but absolutely knackered following four hours of spanish so this is a quick one-more to follow tomorrow promice-get everyone else to subscribe!!!today we´ve been into the mountains and rummaged around the rain forest and found ourselves 5 gigantic waterfalls-photo evidence to follow! we saw tree frogs, hummingbirds, snakes and muchos butterflies-was excellento and we are still in one piece following a pretty hair-raising bus ride up there!!!

lots of love,

claire and vic xxx

Ola!!!

hiya guys just a quick note to say that we´ve landed in costa rica and everything is ok-albeit our family dont speak a word of english so its a bit of a struggle and a real incentive to learn!!we started school today at 7.30am and you are not allowed to speak english there (!) our tour round the area with our spanish speaking teacher was not really that educating!!the place where we are is really tropical but wet at the moment-we´ve got a balcony though and in the morning its got a really good view over san jose to the mountains. Vicky´s already done a salsa dance class this morning which was very authentic and we can do cooking and jewellery making too,

anywhoo we better sign off as we have to get to class but we´ll do a longer one soon and we send our love,

Claire and Vicky XXX