We spent our fourth week of the Spanish school in Turrialba, Costa Rica. This is my first visit to Costa Rica. Chris visited before when he was 20, and has been keen to bring me here ever since. My first impressions in comparison to Panama are that we immediately saw more wealth here, with more solidly built houses with satellite dishes even in the countryside. However, everything here costs a lot more, we stopped at a supermarket and found toothpaste for $8 and even avocados more expensive than in the UK!
The school is nice, well set up with lots of space for classrooms and a good size kitchen. We had a nice room with a view onto the garden and shared bathrooms next door. Only our group of 10 are staying at the hostel plus another couple who are remote working from here for a month!
During our first day most of the group were feeling ill or recovering from a stomach bug, only Chris has remained OK! Luckily I had it very mildly and only in Turrialba, where it was much cooler and less humid than the coast. We had a lazy afternoon, followed by a short briefing from Ingrid who runs the school and travelling classroom programme. It was nice to meet her properly after exchanging emails and texts for the month!
We had classes in the morning this week, with a lot of options for different activities. On Monday we made the trip by bus into the town, stopping by a pharmacy to top up our first aid kit which has had a surprising amount of use already (not really by us, but we’ve been helping out the group). We had a good walk around town and found some great fruit and vegetable shops and an amazing cheese shop too. Chris was particularly happy to find so many types of cheese! Queso Turrialba is a particularly good fresh cheese.
On Tuesday we had a full-on day with Spanish lessons, cooking class, and a dance class! The cooking class was with our teacher Silvia who we helped to prepare rice with garlic, beans, a dish with a vegetable called chayote, plátanos, and a salad. It was delicious! The dancing was also good fun, our instructor was really enthusiastic and he taught us bachata, salsa, and merengue. It was a good class as we learnt more than just the basic steps, which was nice to feel we had progressed from previous week’s classes.
Wednesday afternoon was spent at a clinic, I had a blocked ear and hadn’t been able to hear anything on that side for about 10 days, incredibly frustrating whilst trying to participate in class. The clinic was really good, so clean and everyone was friendly. The doctor immediately worked out what the problem was and cleared my ear out and prescribed antibiotics and drops to clear up a minor infection. It was a really efficient process, now we’re just hoping that the insurance claim process is just as easy. We finished the day by going to a yoga class with Laura the other side of town. It was an amazing yoga session at a botanical garden, a new experience for us as it was entirely in Spanish (but I only got lost as much as I usually do!). We took a walk through the garden in the dark after class, and thankfully made it back to the gate just as the yoga teacher was leaving, she waited for us and explained she had been about to lock the gate which would have left us trapped in the garden overnight! She very kindly gave us a lift back to town, where we went for a nice meal and ended up at some kind of fundraising concert for a local school.
On Thursday, with my newly restored hearing, we went horseriding in the afternoon at Hacienda Monte Claro. It was such a great experience, a real highlight of the week, the horses were well cared for and the landscape was stunning. We had a three hour tour which took us down to a river to swim, then back up on a loop through different landscapes. The horses knew the route perfectly and responded to us well. My horse, Retadora, loved being in third place, so she kept overtaking others. This was especially fun when we broke into a canter, she picked up the pace and sped past everyone else! I’m not an experienced horserider so this was both exhilarating and pretty scary!
On Friday we had our Spanish test, they offer it for free to all students at the end of the travelling classroom. We decided to go for it, even though we don’t need it for work or anything. On Friday morning I was regretting the choice as we were tired after the week, it was giving me flashbacks to French GCSE exams! All went well and we both passed with good marks and can officially say we’re A2 level Spanish speakers. Now we just need to maintain this level, easier said than done back home but at least we’ll be able to get around for the next couple of months with more confidence.
On Friday afternoon we went to some waterfalls outside of Turrialba with Mimi and one of her friends from the town. The waterfalls were really beautiful, nice to get out and explore, although the water was ice cold! The only downside was that I slipped and fell on a rock on my way back. I dropped my phone into the water, thankfully I felt around on the river bed and recovered it, and even better it’s waterproof so it wasn’t damaged! I managed to fall at exactly the same time as Berglin did the same thing, so Chris snapped a picture of us laughing about it. It’s definitely been a week for illness and accidents!!
On Friday evening we had a barbecue with everyone which was really nice to do. Everyone cooked up their various leftovers and we managed to make a feast of it. We even had cinnamon french toast with ice-cream for dessert to use up all the bread and eggs. For most of the group, this was the last week of the Travelling Classroom, with just three of us having chosen to extend to five weeks. It’s been great getting to know everyone, having such a diverse group and a big weird travelling family these past four weeks, a really good way to get into travelling again.
We packed up our bags once more, all ready for an amazing adventure of a weekend rafting, more on that in the next post! Overall we really liked Turrialba, a lovely week off the main tourist trail, with a great climate (think European summer, with temperatures in the mid 20s and a fresh breeze), and beautiful countryside.
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