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We are back from the Jungle! After 5 Days of pure nature we are back in civilization.
After a short weekend in San Jose did we go by bus and boat to Tortugero where we stayed two nights in the Mawamba Lodge between the Caribbean See and the Tortugero River. The little piece of land the lodge was on was about 150 m wide and the only way to go somewhere was by boat. Continue reading »

The school is over and we’ve said goodbye to our teacher and, those who had classmates, to our classmates too. No we have to go to the grocery store to buy the missing parts for our farewell dinner we are going to cook. Tomorrow we will pack our stuff and move to a hotel in the center of San Jose for two nights. In the evening we’ll pick up my mom and on Sunday we’ll eat lunch with our host parents. On Monday we’ll start our tour through Costa Rica at 6 in the morning with the trip to Tortugera. I’m really excited and I hope we will see some nice animals. At the moment there is nothing more to say. I hope I can write my blog frequently during the travel and I hope I can report about exotic animals and beautiful landscape.

Only one day of school to go. Today our class shrank today again down to three students now and since tomorrow is my last day two next week my ex-class will only contain two students. Even though we are only three in our class, more then half of the students in our school is in my class At the moment it has three classes, my dad is one, there is an other student who’s alone in his class and our class. In the afternoon it’s even worth, today I was the only student who had class in the afternoon. I asked today the schools class coordinator about this situation and she told me that February and March are month with only few students but in June, July and August they have between 100 and 120 students manly from the US. So I’m glad we picked the low season.
Today from 11am to 12pm we had a special class they do once a month. All the students where invited to learn about a few typical tico meals and of course after that we could eat them. So we didn’t had to go for lunch either.
Today was also picture time and I took pictures of my class, my dads and my teacher and from the school.
Now I have to go home and do my homework for the last time. Tomorrow evening my dad and I will cook Zueri-Geschnetzeltes and Roesti for our family.
I also found a solution for my picture problem. I totally forgot that I can copy all my pictures to my iPod! That’s why I took the cable with me!

My class

Today I have to write at an Internet Cafe because at school the computers are not running.
I don’t know when but during the first two hours of class a blackout occurred. Since we didn’t use any light we didn’t knew it until the cleaning lady came to tell us that is time for the break instead of the usual bell ring. So during the 10 o clock break we couldn’t read our mails and the other students had to drink cold coffee. I thought that at lunch break we will be able to read our mails but as at noon the bell didn’t rang was clear that it had no power yet.
The three ladies at in the office had less work to do then usual. Usually the do nothing and occasionally the use the computer for I don’t know what. Today the couldn’t even do that so one of them was painting here nails and the other two, I don’t know.
After lunch we had a lot of time on our hands until my afternoon class started so we went to an Internet Cafe to check our mails.
My dad quitted his afternoon class for the last three days since he is a class of one in the morning. He suffered more about the blackout because he was supposed to watch a movie but without power that wasn’t possible.
As we left after my class there was still no power and the girls from the office where also gone.
I hope tomorrow we’ll have more luck with the power and I’ll be able again to write my blog at school and not waist my money on Internet Cafes.
To be honest it’s not a lot of money I’m wasting on Internet Cafes. Yesterday I was at the Internet Cafe about two hours and I paid 1000 colones. 1000 colones are about 2$ or 2.50 CHF and today after lunch we paid each for about 30 minutes 250 colones so a little more then 0.60 CHF or 0.50$. Most of the Internet Cafes have good computers and since no one has fast internet connection like in switzerland it has Internet Cafes at every corner. I hope on our roundtrip for the next three weeks it will have computers at the hotels so I can keep up writing the blog.

Today is not a very sunny day either. During lunchtime it rained quite a bit. I hope tomorrow it will be nice and warm again.
Today I’m trying to find a way how to save my pictures somewhere besides the card I have in my camera. In the first place I want to do it so my pictures are save in a second place and the second part is so I can clear my card to take more pictures. The internet connections are not very fast so I tried for over an hour now to upload my pictures to save them on my webserver without any luck. The next thing I will do is to look for a photo place where I can burn my pictures to a CD. If I can’t find a place to burn a CD I’ll just buy an other card when I run out of space. At the moment I still have enough space even though I took about 270 pictures in the last two weeks. Most of them I took on our large trip on the first Sunday but I’ve also taken a lot last saturday on our trip to the volcano Irazu, the city Cartago and the orchid garden Lancaster.
The trip last saturday was ok. The places where interesting but the guide not nearly as good as the one the weekend before.
At the volcano we had a nice view into the crater. Irazu has, like Poas, a lake in it’s main crater but there is no activity to see like at Poas. As we entered the Irazu Park it had some People at the side of the street who where selling chess and our guide went to buy some. I didn’t minded it but thought it was a little strange because he was the guide and not a tourist. After the volcano we went to take a look at the Basilica of Cartago. This place is a pilgrimage place. I’ll tell the story about this pilgrimage place an other time. On the way to Cartago we stopped at the street because someone was selling potatoes. Our guide took a look at the potatoes but couldn’t find what he was looking for. We continued our journey to Cartago and the guide told us that we had some time to stop at a farmers market to take a look at it. Guess what, the guide bought some potatoes. I thought by myself that this stop was only for the guide to buy his potatoes.
After Cartago we went for lunch at a nice place in a valley near a lake. Next to the restaurant it had a little marked where they sold crafts. As we where ready to go we had to wait for the guide until he had seen all the things they sold and until he bought some junk. After that we went to the orchid Garden which was about to close thanks to our lazy guide.
Even though we where late we had enough time to see the orchids because it had not that many as there where supposed to be.
All in all the trip was nice and the guide explained us everything but he behaved more like a tourist then a guide.

Orchid at Lancaster Garden