How’s the Spanish going? – thoughts on the Travelling Spanish School

So after five weeks and 92 hours of Spanish lessons, what were our final thoughts, and how did it compare to the travelling classroom in Ecuador?

As a small anecdote, editing this post from El Salvador a few weeks later (no spoilers, we’re still alive) we recently took a tour of the San Salvador national theatre. At first, being the only people on the tour, the guide asked if we’d prefer Spanish or English and we explained, as we often do, that we’re trying to learn Spanish and we need the practice so we’d prefer Spanish. A few minutes into the tour, an American family arrived (who appeared to be of Spanish descent) and requested English, leaving us in the slightly awkward position of having the remainder of the tour given to us in Spanish only for the guide to then switch to English to repeat it to the Americans. Whether he realised that English was our native language or not we’ll never know but, thanks to his clear intonation I was pleased to see, when he repeated each section in English, that I had understood 80-90% only missing the words that just aren’t in my vocabulary.

So, it’s clear that we have definitely improved, for me, my better understanding of the language means that when I’m reading I’m better able to recognise conjugation of words and correctly identify the tense. I’m finding it easier to compose sentences especially when I’m writing and have more time to think it through. I also found the Spanish lessons much easier to understand than last time and learnt more as a result. My speech was definitely the weakest area of my Spanish when we started and it has also improved with the result that I’m finding it easier to make more complex requests. This isn’t to say that we’re fluent or ever find it easy, when people speak very quickly, drop consonents, or do both at the same time (which I am very guilty of in English!) it’s quite normal for me to start only catching as little as 1 word in 10! I now feel however like the key to improving my Spanish is practice, whereas last time I was surprised after 4 weeks how much there was still to learn!

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Wildlife in the wetlands of Tortuguero

Our final included trip for our final week of Spanish school was a night in Tortaguero on the edge of the national park. Tortuguero is on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and consists of a small remote town surrounded by a protected wetland area. We had an early start from Puerto Viejo, leaving at 6am, stopping at Siquirres to have breakfast at the tour company’s base before boarding another minibus for an hour’s drive over a bumpy potholed road. We arrived at the dock and transferred to a boat for a 1.5 hour ride through the canals to reach the town of Tortaguero. This boat ride was part of the experience, stopping to view a crocodile en route and we also saw some fascinating birds and enjoyed the journey through the wetlands.

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Caribbean vibes, surfing and stuffing our faces in Puerto Viejo!

I was probably more excited to go to Puerto Viejo than anywhere we’ve been so far. This however has nothing to do with Puerto Viejo itself, but the fact that I was here 21 years ago with Tom and Nadia during the summer holidays after our first year at University. I have many fond, if slightly hazy memories of Costa Rica, and remember Puerto Viejo as a lazy little Caribbean town with hippy vibes, good food and a hammock hostel off the beach where we spent a few days relaxing.

Obviously a lot has changed in twenty years. We arrived in Puerto Viejo at the end of a short drive from Siquirres in Ingrid’s car. Ingrid is the owner of the Spanish school and travelling classroom, although for various reasons we haven’t seen much of her during the trip. Ingrid suggested a stop for an ice cream in the town which was a great start to the week. Afterwards we drove to the hostel and checked in.

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Whitewater Rafting on the Pacuare River

The Travelling Spanish class included a two day rafting trip. We were both really excited for this, having been whitewater rafting a few times before but only for a few hours each time. We left on the Saturday morning from Turrialba, stayed overnight in a camp in the jungle, and continued down the river to Siquirres the next day.

On the first day we packed a small bag which was taken away to arrive by car at the camp that evening. For the day we could only take with us things that could get wet. We were dropped off outside of town and walked down to the river with our guide José-Luis. He was great, so enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He overheard me say I didn’t get to see red frogs in Bocas, two minutes later he found a couple for me by the side of the path!

We had two rafts for the ten of us, and two guides, plus a kayaker who went ahead at each rapid and took photos and videos for us. Our raft was me, Chris, Luisa, Berglin, and Mimi. Luisa and Berglin had never been before, but José-Luis was great and soon got everyone going.

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We’ve arrived in Costa Rica! A week in Turrialba

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!

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Bocas del Toro

On Saturday we set off from Boquete straight after breakfast. The trip to Bocas del Toro was a little simpler than the one to Boquete, due to a lack of anyone available to travel with us the Spanish school had upgraded us to a minibus that would go directly from Boquete to Bocas del Toro without going via David. The minibus arrived at the hostel and we could immediately see an issue. It appeared to be totally full of people and luggage. The drivers set about unloading all of the luggage from the bus and loading it onto the roof, something I can’t remember seeing since our time in Africa!

After a few minutes all of our luggage was on the roof and Alex, Laura, Luisa and I had commandeered the back row where we soon realised we were slightly less squashed than the rows in front of us.

Journey to Bocas

Luisa is another of our classmates. She’s 19 and from Switzerland, very sweet and like the rest of the younger members of our group, very intelligent! She’s also on her gap year and aspires to become a vet. She has never studied Spanish before and so was originally placed in a lower Spanish group than us but, probably because she already speaks Italian, she has been quickly promoted through to our group! Luisa had a somewhat traumatic start to our trip with her bag being lost and then delayed for a few days. When it finally arrived everything was complete and intact, except for all of her underwear which had disappeared!

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Climbing Volcan Baru – the highest mountain in Panama!

When first reading about Boquete, where we’d be spending a week with our Spanish school, Alex noted the opportunity to go up Volcan Baru, at 3,443 m (11,296 ft) the highest peak in Panamá, and the highest in Southern Central America. Alex was keen but when we looked up the hike we realised that a climb of 1,636 m (5,367 ft),  starting at an altitude where you can experience altitude sickness, might be beyond us considering that neither of us do well at altitude without acclimatising!

The last thing that really made me think this was a bad idea was that in order to avoid the heat most people attempt the climb at night starting at midnight for a 6 hour hike to the summit in complete darkness.

There is another way though. You can visit the summit in a modified 4×4 that climbs up the rough track in 2 hours leaving at the only slightly more reasonable time of 3:30am.

Volcan Baru – as seen from our hostel on the outskirts of Boquete

As we approached our week in Boquete, there emerged two camps in our group. One group wanted to take the 4×4 up for $95 each, and the other wanted to hike, which without a guide is nearly free. There was, in fact, a 3rd group of two who thought the whole idea was insane and preferred to get some sleep.

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Boquete

Our second week in Panama was in a town called Boquete. It’s a more relaxed place than Panama City, located in the hills with much cooler weather. In my opinion the perfect climate as it was mid 20s and sunny most of the time!

Our journey there was our first taste of public transport in Panama. We’d expected a six hour bus ride to a city called David, and then a change in David to a local bus for 35 minutes. It was a Sunday and there was some kind of event near the main road about an hour in, we ended up in a traffic jam for two hours. Having left Panama City at 8:30am, we finally arrived at the hostel 11 hours later!! The nice thing was that the bus stopped for a 30 minute break for everyone to take lunch and go to the toilet, a welcome break and not something we’d seen on previous long distance bus trips in South America.

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San Blas Islands

As part of our Spanish school we got to spend two nights on the San Blas islands. There are around 365 islands in the San Blas archipelago of which around 50 are inhabited and they are owned by the Kuna people, who also own the forest along the coast here. They are celebrating 100 years of independence from Panama this year. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming.

Isla Franklin where we stayed is tiny, with around 25 tourist cabañas and a few for locals who only stay here when it’s tourist season. It’s by far the smallest island we’ve stayed on taking only a couple of minutes to walk the length of and less than 5 minutes for a complete circuit. Everything is very simple, we stayed in a small cabaña made from coconut palms with a sand floor. There are shared showers and toilets, and the power (two noisy diesel generators) is only on for a few hours in the evening. It’s a mini paradise.

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Learning Spanish in Panamá

One of the main reasons for choosing Latin America for our travels was to improve our Spanish. We found a Spanish school whereby we can travel and learn at the same time.

On Sunday evening we had our introductory talk for the Spanish school. Our teacher, Sergio, had been detained by another engagement so it came to Camila, who was assisting us for the week, to give the introduction. After a brief intro she took each of us in turn for a one to one Spanish oral test. I was a little nervous and it didn’t help that the first question she asked me was “Que has hecho en Panamá?”. This uses the preterito perfecto tense which is not one that I’ve used before. I managed to answer some more questions but I didn’t come away feeling confident. Alex seemed to fare better, but her Spanish is better than mine so I wasn’t surprised.

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