Tag: Spanish by the Sea

How’s the Spanish going? – thoughts on the Travelling Spanish School

So after five weeks and 92 hours of Spanish lessons, what were our final thoughts, and how did it compare to the travelling classroom in Ecuador?

As a small anecdote, editing this post from El Salvador a few weeks later (no spoilers, we’re still alive) we recently took a tour of the San Salvador national theatre. At first, being the only people on the tour, the guide asked if we’d prefer Spanish or English and we explained, as we often do, that we’re trying to learn Spanish and we need the practice so we’d prefer Spanish. A few minutes into the tour, an American family arrived (who appeared to be of Spanish descent) and requested English, leaving us in the slightly awkward position of having the remainder of the tour given to us in Spanish only for the guide to then switch to English to repeat it to the Americans. Whether he realised that English was our native language or not we’ll never know but, thanks to his clear intonation I was pleased to see, when he repeated each section in English, that I had understood 80-90% only missing the words that just aren’t in my vocabulary.

So, it’s clear that we have definitely improved, for me, my better understanding of the language means that when I’m reading I’m better able to recognise conjugation of words and correctly identify the tense. I’m finding it easier to compose sentences especially when I’m writing and have more time to think it through. I also found the Spanish lessons much easier to understand than last time and learnt more as a result. My speech was definitely the weakest area of my Spanish when we started and it has also improved with the result that I’m finding it easier to make more complex requests. This isn’t to say that we’re fluent or ever find it easy, when people speak very quickly, drop consonents, or do both at the same time (which I am very guilty of in English!) it’s quite normal for me to start only catching as little as 1 word in 10! I now feel however like the key to improving my Spanish is practice, whereas last time I was surprised after 4 weeks how much there was still to learn!

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Wildlife in the wetlands of Tortuguero

Our final included trip for our final week of Spanish school was a night in Tortaguero on the edge of the national park. Tortuguero is on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and consists of a small remote town surrounded by a protected wetland area. We had an early start from Puerto Viejo, leaving at 6am, stopping at Siquirres to have breakfast at the tour company’s base before boarding another minibus for an hour’s drive over a bumpy potholed road. We arrived at the dock and transferred to a boat for a 1.5 hour ride through the canals to reach the town of Tortaguero. This boat ride was part of the experience, stopping to view a crocodile en route and we also saw some fascinating birds and enjoyed the journey through the wetlands.

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Caribbean vibes, surfing and stuffing our faces in Puerto Viejo!

I was probably more excited to go to Puerto Viejo than anywhere we’ve been so far. This however has nothing to do with Puerto Viejo itself, but the fact that I was here 21 years ago with Tom and Nadia during the summer holidays after our first year at University. I have many fond, if slightly hazy memories of Costa Rica, and remember Puerto Viejo as a lazy little Caribbean town with hippy vibes, good food and a hammock hostel off the beach where we spent a few days relaxing.

Obviously a lot has changed in twenty years. We arrived in Puerto Viejo at the end of a short drive from Siquirres in Ingrid’s car. Ingrid is the owner of the Spanish school and travelling classroom, although for various reasons we haven’t seen much of her during the trip. Ingrid suggested a stop for an ice cream in the town which was a great start to the week. Afterwards we drove to the hostel and checked in.

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Bocas del Toro

On Saturday we set off from Boquete straight after breakfast. The trip to Bocas del Toro was a little simpler than the one to Boquete, due to a lack of anyone available to travel with us the Spanish school had upgraded us to a minibus that would go directly from Boquete to Bocas del Toro without going via David. The minibus arrived at the hostel and we could immediately see an issue. It appeared to be totally full of people and luggage. The drivers set about unloading all of the luggage from the bus and loading it onto the roof, something I can’t remember seeing since our time in Africa!

After a few minutes all of our luggage was on the roof and Alex, Laura, Luisa and I had commandeered the back row where we soon realised we were slightly less squashed than the rows in front of us.

Journey to Bocas

Luisa is another of our classmates. She’s 19 and from Switzerland, very sweet and like the rest of the younger members of our group, very intelligent! She’s also on her gap year and aspires to become a vet. She has never studied Spanish before and so was originally placed in a lower Spanish group than us but, probably because she already speaks Italian, she has been quickly promoted through to our group! Luisa had a somewhat traumatic start to our trip with her bag being lost and then delayed for a few days. When it finally arrived everything was complete and intact, except for all of her underwear which had disappeared!

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