Month: April 2009
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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…
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Iphone internet access
As wonderful as the iPhone is you still need a connection to the outside world. Here in Samara there are a couple of Internet places offering wifi at 1000 colones per hour (about £1.50) not sure how they define an hour for a mobile device! Or maybe I could use the local I.C.E mobile operator…
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Local life
Had an incredible nights sleep on my boardlike bed, the secret is a quick shower then straight to bed so the latent heat of vaporization cools you down. It’s great to be woken by the squealer birds, just wish I wasn’t so stiff when I woke up. Need to do my pilates again. I visited…