Blogs from San José, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean

I arrived at the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica at 8:30 p.m on a Friday, dead tired from a 6:00 a.m. departure from Kansas City coupled with a 9 hour layover in Texas. I really messed up when booking my tickets. My study abroad program offered a group flight, but I decided to save a little cash and search the internet for cheaper tickets. I was ecstatic to find plane tickets for a couple hundred dollars less than what I would have paid for the group flight, and immediately booked them. Live and learn, I guess. I spent the next few weeks navigating a chaotic interaction with some foreign travel agency that kept emailing and calling me about problems with the tickets, and I ended up just dealing with the airline directly. The end result: ... read more

Not a great blog for me to write today as I havent been very well at all! We woke up at about 9.30 which was a really good sleep as we were asleep by 11pm also. But we really needed it especially me as we had now worked out that I have a chest infection (no need to explain why we knew!) so needed some bed time afer being awake at 4am yesterday and a long day of travelling! Ben got up and went on the short walk that Jacob did with the group around the centre of San Jose pointing out things we may need in the next day, and I went back to sleep for an hour. He came back with breakfast, antibiotics, cough medicine and throat tablets! What a keeper! So, all drugged ... read more

It was an early start this morning for our big travel day down to San Jose in Costa Rica. We got up and wearily made our way to our waiting mini-bus at 4.45am. The sun was just rising as we pulled up at the Ometepe Island ferry station and hopped on for the 1.5 hour journey back across Lake Nicaragua. We arrived back on the mainland, said hello to our mini-bus driver who was the same guy who had driven us from Leon to Grenada, and then Grenada to the ferry for Ometepe. He was such a nice driver, and he reminded me of a Nicaraguan version of Mario from the Nintendo game. We took off from the ferry station at about 8.30am, our guide ensuring us that it wasn't far to the border and we'd ... read more

I guess Egypt was not meant to be for me at this time. With all the political unrest I have decided not to follow through with the plans that I made with my friend Karen. Instead of going to Egypt I have now completed arrangements to go to Costa Rica. A friend of Heather's owns a house - 3 bedrooms with a pool and I am going to spend 3 1/2 weeks there resting after a very busy year. I just handed in my last assignment for the Event Planning Certificate Course I was taking through Mount Royal University in Calgary this past year and I need a rest! I visited with the people last night who own this property - John and Dana. 1 1/2 hours later I can tell I'm going to love it ... read more

Whew ! Made it through the holidays. Hope everyone else did too. Christmas was a quiet day mostly spent laying about on the hammocks and skyping with family and friends. Christmas Eve we were invited to the owners place for a lovely dinner with a few of the other guests. Her place was located almost at the top of a local mountain and the view was spectacular. As I think we have mentioned before, the Tico's love their fireworks and the entire 19 days we were there we enjoyed fireworks every night. Christmas Eve was no exception and it was very cool to look down into the valley, watching fireworks throughout. New Year's Eve day was spent exploring in our rental car so when we returned that evening we were quite exhausted. We had a beer ... read more

Well, after 3 1/2 months in Costa Rica, it’s time to go back home! It was a jam packed semester with good times & bad times, happy times & sad times, silly times & study times. It’s hard to put in words my experience here, but overall I would say muy bueno. I learned a lot about myself, life, and of course biology. Saw some pretty awesome things, went to some pretty bitchin’ places, and met some pretty amazing people. I’m going to miss a lot of things about the Tico life and the OTS life, but I am very happy to call California home. Here are some random pics from the whole semester. Thanks for reading everybody - ¡Pura Vida!... read more

We are flying out at 00.10 tonight to San Jose with a stop over in Toronto, we should be there tomorrow at 2.30 PM. We are booked at Casa Ridgway for 2 nights before heading out to Jaco. Should be an interesting and long night. Josee and Sean... read more

Ola! Vandaag hebben we een relaxt dagje gehad. In de morgend hebben we onze was binnen gedaan die gratis door het hotel werd gewassen en gedroogd. Heel handig. Daarna zijn we naar de winkel gegaan voor nog wat basisinkopen omdat we morgen arriveren in Manuel Antonio en daar de winkels dat niet open zijn. In de namiddag zijn we naar een parkje gegaan om te gaan picknicken. Blijkbaar was het vandaag een soort feest, we vermoeden het feest van de jeugd waardoor er veel activiteiten in het park waren. Bovendien kwam het zonnetje fel opsteken en werd het dus een hele leuke namiddag in de zon. Er is een marionette-speler met Nore komen spelen, een clown deed trucjes met zijn hond, en op de koop toe deed ook de kerstman zijn intrede! Het orkest speelde ook ... read more