Personal
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Arrival 90degrees from Cambridge.
Finally, about 50 years after Stan and I marvelled at huge tortoises, I’ve arrived at The Galapagos islands interestingly at the same place that Darwin landed t 200 years ago! I guess better late than never 🙂 This afternoon I did a little walk by the cultural centre which is full of profoundly depressing stuff…
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250km shopping trip..
Today I tagged along with Margaret and her driver for an all day shopping trip up north from Quito. First stop was Calderon where they specialise in making highly coloured figurines from bread dough or masapan. Reasonably interesting and I guess where Oxfam gets some of its clutter from. A little factoid garnered was that…
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Where is The Equator?
Today I ventured out of Quito with Margaret (who I met in Samara in my first language class) to find The Equator. Armed with my Garmin GPS we took the public transport buses, 50 cents for a 30km journey, to Mitad del Mundo where the Equator was determined in 1736 and the nearby Museo Inti-Nan…
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Rio Pacuare rafting
Just back from an excellent white water rafting experience with Explornatura. The trip was good value at $220 including an overnight stay at the remote and beautiful campsite by the river. Its now the end of the dry season so the river was running a bit low but still plenty to have fun over the…
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Turrialba Canyoning
Today was canyoning day, originally it was going to be real canyoning . However, Ronald of Exploratura managed to convince me to go on their simpler local trip that incorporates zip wires and a hanging bridge. Mainly I suspect because he was going to be doing it anyway to show Kerstin, who is the Costa…
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Long distance bus travel
Today I skipped my final lesson and Graduation Ceremony at Intercultura so that I could get away for some adrenalin experiences. The bus ride from Samara to San Jose certainly made a good start in that direction it was a 6 hour 240km trip along a horrendous road, reminder to self, NEVER sit on driver…
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School days are happy days?
Finally decided to leave the Intercultura language school here in Costa Rica. I’ve had about 35 hours of classes solely in Spanish plus a few hours of homework. What have I learnt? Mainly that I’m a slow learner like I was at school when I was a kid. An interesting life observation is that to…
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First week
Today I completed my first week of Spanish school and if the results of my first test are anything to go by it’s been a bit of a flop 🙂 we had to write 100 words describing a family from 3 cartoon pictures – couldn’t even begin to make sentences! Filling in the verbs ser,…
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Spanish verbs
You just have to love the Spanish culture. Today we started learning verbs by playing charades. Some of the verbs the school deems essential in the @Nivel Principiante 1 Unidades de 1-7:- eructar – to belch orinar – to urinate vomitar – to vomit amar – to love estornudar – to sneeze I was given…
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Geoff estudiante
After yesterdays fun trip along the coast to Corillo “yo monto la bicicleta” with Kerry who is also lodging with Nuria Today was the start of Geoff as the “estudiante” after a very brief test at 7am I was, surprisingly, assigned to the beginners class 🙂 Wow! Nelson our teacher doesn’t speak ANY English in…