Chris and I took a real vacation (mentioned many times in past posts) to Costa Rica. We had signed up to take two weeks of Spanish classes through the Adventure Learning Center. After an overnight flight to CR, a stay in a really not-exciting part of San Jose, and a 4-5 hour public bus ride (that was actually quite pleasant), we arrived in La Fortuna, the closest town to Volcán Arenal. We spent a week there, staying with a host family. Lillian, our host mother, is a mother to 7 adult children and a grandmother to 15(!). She spoke no English, which was quite problematic at first, as my Spanish was super rough and I was way too self-conscious to be useful. But, after a couple days, we got much better. The town of La Fortuna was a nice mix of tourists and locals, so we could get some practice with Spanish but weren't totally outside of our comfort zone most of the time. We did some touristy stuff, a small hike, fairly gaudy hot springs, ziplines. We also ate a lot of gallo pinto, as Lillian was a little confused about what to do for a vegetarian, but it was fine. Photos from Arenal are posted aquí. After Arenal, we left to go to the beach. We took a day and went through Quepos and to the beach near Manuel Antonio, which is a national park and beach and is very popular with Tico tourists. The next day we took the bus to Dominical, where we spent the other week. This was a big surfer town, seemingly populated mostly by US ex-pats, which was a stark contrast to the mix of Ticos/Americans (N & S)/Europeans and others in Fortuna. In fact, after we got there, we went for lunch and ended up talking to a woman from Oregon visiting her son, who had moved there, gotten married, and had kids. Chris was complaining about sweating a lot, and her son (total surfer stereotype) said, "you'll sweat out the toxins," to which she countered, "you'll sweat out the work ethic." Anyway, it was a different experience, with barely any need to actually use our Spanish. Aside from the language lessons, we also took surfing lessons with an instructor who had been a member of the CR national surfing team. He was a good instructor, and it wasn't nearly as bad/terrifying as I expected. Until the jellyfish decided that they LOVE me, and I kept getting stung, despite the fact that barely anyone else did. We pretty much spent our time hanging out on the beach, taking classes here, and hanging out with the other students, who were a much younger and bigger group than in La Fortuna. Pictures can be found aquí. After this, we took a shuttle with another student to Alajuela, which is the town near San Jose that has the airport. It was a really pleasant town, though we only spent one night there, very walkable and airy. Pictures from that day aquí.Anyway, I think it was a really great trip, though it made me really want to travel to more and more Central and South American countries (Patagonian Andes, omg). But that will have to wait for another year.
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