| The
Community
Santa
Ana
Our
school is located in Santa Ana, a suburb 5 miles southwest of Costa
Rica’s capital, San José. Santa Ana is the ideal city
to learn Spanish because of its laid back feel and welcoming community.
Santa Ana, Valley of the Sun, is a walkable community where you
will have access to local artisans, a wide variety of restaurants,
banks, shopping and internet cafes. You will live and study amid
coffee plantations, flowering trees, orchids and bromeliads, birds
and butterflies. All this only 20 minutes from San José!
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Santa
Ana Church historical landmark |
Boys
soccer league game in Santa Ana |
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Sunday
morning fruit and vegetable market in Santa Ana |
 The
CPH campus provides an excellent hub from which your language learning
and cultural explorations can radiate. We see the community as an
extension of the campus and are sure that you will come to feel at
home in Santa Ana.
 Our
classrooms are built in traditional Costa Rican style to blend in
with the neighborhood and community. Most houses in the community
are one-story and modestly built.
We have a main office for taking care of administrative issues.
There is also a small library of books in Spanish as well as travel
books and books in English about Costa Rica.
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| The
Republic of Costa Rica
Costa
Rica is a small, diverse "garden" on the isthmus joining
the Americas. In an area about the size of West Virginia, 3.5 million
Ticos enjoy twelve microclimates; a great variety of tropical vegetation;
over 800 species of birds, sea turtles, tree frogs, monkeys, sloths
and more. Here are national parks, volcanoes, rivers and beaches
beckoning for you to explore them.
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Mountainside,
one hour outside of Santa Ana |
Poás Volcano crater
on a clear day |
Weather
Costa Rica is a tropical country and experiences only two seasons:
wet and dry. The dry season is generally between late December
and April, and the wet season lasts the rest of the year. Temperatures
vary little between seasons; the main influence on temperature
is altitude. San José and Santa Ana at 1150m (3772 ft)
have climates which the locals refer to as “eternal Spring”:
lows average 15°C (60°F); highs average 26°C (79°F).
You can venture out of Santa Ana and the Central Valley, where
the average temperature is 22C/72F, to visit the cooler rainforest,
the warmer and more humid jungles or the semi-dry tropical forest
zones.
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| Scenic
Lake near Poás Volanco |
Arenal
Volcano erupting by night |
Touring/Excursions
Visitors
from all over the world come to Costa Rica to see the 850 recorded
bird species, which include hummingbirds, macaws and toucans.
Costa Rica's tropical forests have over 1400 tree species and
provide a variety of habitats for the country's fauna, including
four types of monkey, sloth, armadillos, jaguars, tapirs, and
butterflies. National parks cover almost 12% of the country,
and forest reserves and Indian reservations boost the protected
land area to 27%. Costa Rica also has excellent beaches and
surfing.
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| Manuel
Antonio National Park |
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| Canopy
Tour |
Waterfall
park in La Fortuna |
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 Although
CPH does not offer a formal travel or tour service, the staff
will help point you in the direction of your choice, talk
with you about how to minimize personal safety risks, and
give you hints for getting the greatest enjoyment from the
country and people. Weekend excursions may take you on a jungle
tour, a bird-watching outing, a scuba diving trip, a white
water rafting adventure, or just a walk on the beach or along
a nature trail. Or, on a clear day you might climb a mountain
where you can look to one side and see the Pacific, look to
the other and see the Caribbean's blue water. Wherever you
go, you will soon see why Ticos are proud to call their country
"the garden of the Americas."
Currency: The
currency in Costa Rica is the colón. The colón
floats freely against the American dollar, which means the
exchange rate varies frequently. You can check the currency
exchange rate by clicking on the following website:
http://finance.yahoo.com/m5?s=USD.
Time:
Mountain Standard Time
Electricity:
110V, 60Hz.
For
more information about Costa Rica see Resource Links below
Costa
Rica Tourism Board
http://www.visitcostarica.com
CIA
World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cs.html
Lonely
Planet
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/central_america/costa_rica/
Costa
Rica General Information
http://www.infocostarica.com/
http://www.costarica.com/
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CPH
Language and Cross-Cultural School
Apartado 25-6150
Santa Ana, Costa Rica
Tel/Fax: (506) 282-9920
In USA Toll Free 1-888-233-1638
E-mail: info@spanishincostarica.com
Website: www.spanishincostarica.com
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