Mal Pais

Hi All,

We have successfully completed our offical Spanish Language Courses. We finished on Friday with little fanfare. We had a good time at our school in Flamingo and managed to squeeze in a few days of surfing at Tamarindo Beach. We made a lot of good friends and the school was excellently run and professional. Thinking back to when we began learning spanish in January, it is hard to believe it is over! I feel really happy to have learned Spanish and I can honestly say that I can communicate pretty easily. What a great gift. Peter had a really successful time and by the end of our schooling, he had studied 12 verb tenses and he is still trying to decide if that much knowledge is power or not! We had an okay time with our host family. It certainly wasn't all warm and fuzzy but the family was nice and accomdating. The fine balance between sane and crazy tourism is not a reality here in Costa Rica - real estate, "foreigners" and development are going off a bit here, and our host mother certainly let us know how she feels about it.

We arrived in Mal Pais on the Nicoya Peninsula - just south of where we were in Flamingo on the western coast of Costa Rica - yesterday afternoon. But, it took about 4.5 hours to get here on sometimes rough roads. I wasn't quite having Baja travels flashbacks, i.e. the road to San Carlos, but it was truly bumpy at times. If you look at a map, Flamingo is just north of Mal Pais on the coast. As the crow flies, it seems pretty straightforward, but, there is no direct, coastal route. So, it was a long day in the car. However, once we set foot in the ocean, it was all worth the trip. The beach here isn't as white and clear as others we've seen, but, it is mellow and long and always seems to have a coolish breeze. We are staying at a surf camp right near the beach and it is nice. We spent most of the day lazing around the pool in the shade reading books after we went for a drenching run and Peter had a surf. The waves are a bit too much for me in the morning, but, I can see myself getting out there tomorrow afternoon when the waves are more mellow and the tide is low.

So, we were close to changing our flight to come home a bit early. We are having fun but both of us are a bit travel-weary and Costa Rica is not as cheaply priced as our previous destinations. However, it turns out paper tickets are almost impossible to change, so, oh poor us, we are planning to stay through to the 9th. We haven't really figured out what we're going to do after our ten scheduled days here are up. We may stay longer here or we may head out to see the volcanoes and rainforest. As always, I will keep you posted on our travels. The postings have been slim lately because I've not had a ton to report, but, I will do my best to keep it up.

Hope all is well and Happy St. Patrick's Day. Raise a Guiness for us since all we can get is Imperial and Bohemia - not that we are deprived at all!!

Love,
kerry and peter