March 23rd

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Let me write a little more about where I am. The village, San Franciso, is 13km from the tourist hotspot La Fortuna, where the main attraction is the impressively large Volcan Arenal, which often erupts though it is almost always hidden in cloud. My host family's house is round the corner from the school. The house is largely wood and corrugated iron but they have a dvd player and smartphones. The three daughters are aged 19, 18 and 10.

Here's one way to be introduced to a new class (6th grade so definitely slavering horde rather than docile herd). Friday morning I helped to move the school´s two cows between two sites on leashes. Things were going smoothly, so my cow decided to make a break for it. The class looked through their open door to see me being pulled very fast behind, while the other teacher lead his cow slowly and calmly, laughing. Several days later, they are still greeting me with shouts of 'la vaca!' (´the cow´) and miming being dragged.

Making up a little for the lack of hot water, on Friday evening my host family took me to a very hot river in the jungle. While tourists are charged huge amounts to dip in the hot springs, this was a better guarded spot and free. In Costa Rican style there was no rush, so we stayed for around 3 hours late in the evening eating homemade burritos and leaning against hot waterfalls. Having seen several spiders with bodies larger than my thumb on the bank gave me more encouragement to stay.

Costa Ricans take great pride (´tico pride´ it's called, ticos being Costa Ricans) in living without stress and in being environmentally responsible.

The whole of saturday was spent with my host dad, Victor. What I had anticipated would be a short jaunt into the jungle turned into a long walk with no food but guava and several other fruits I'd never heard of cut from the jungle around. Birds of many colours paused briefly and inquisitively before resuming their joyride towards whichever party in the pulsing trees they were due at. Victor and I meanwhile spent the whole day fishing with a snorkel and harpoon gun in a river. This was at least for me about as difficult as supermarket shopping is for fish. Fish are very quick, even the big ones, so utter concentration is required. The best strategy is to trap them at the top of their pool, the excitement of which made even this vegetarian hope that with a lucky shot their lives would become a one way street in time as well as space. At the end of an extremely enjoyable and slow day wandering around the jungle like this, I had caught nothing and Victor about twenty, which we ate in the evening. In my defence he is a professional fisherman. I have learned that a past career of his was a montador, i.e. those who ride the bull in the Costa Rican version of bullfighting. I'm hoping that this isn't next weekend's activity...

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