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Someone with a backpack crossing a hanging bridge over the cloud forest, the jungle opening up below

Learn Spanish.Travelling Costa Rica.

A lesson each morning at a local school, lodging sorted, and the rest of the day with the whole country as your classroom. From fifteen days to two months.

Choose your destination

How it works

This is not a course you travel to: it is a trip you learn on. Three things, and they come together.

The lesson

Mornings, in small groups, at a local school with Costa Rican teachers. The Spanish they teach is the one you will hear the moment you step outside, not the textbook one.

The lodging

The school sorts it, so you are not hunting for a place yourself or landing somewhere without knowing where you sleep. It is part of the immersion too: Spanish keeps going outside the classroom.

The trip

Afternoons and weekends are the country: the national park, the soda, the bus, the corner shop. That is where the morning's vocabulary turns into something that comes out on its own.

Choose your destination

Each place has its own school and its own reason to pick it. Pick one and tell us what you are after.

PendingWhat is still being settled

The destinations below are the ones the client gave as examples and the list is not closed yet; neither are the agreements with each school nor the lodging arrangements. We would rather show it like this than advertise venues and prices that later change.

Aerial view of Punta Catedral in Manuel Antonio, with the strip of sand between two turquoise bays

Puntarenas, Pacífico central

Manuel Antonio

Rainforest and beach ten minutes apart

The country's most visited national park, and the smallest of the famous ones: a headland of rainforest dropping into two pale-sand bays. You study in the morning and practise in the afternoon, half an hour's walk away.

  • Manuel Antonio National Park
  • Punta Catedral, the island that joined the mainland
  • Capuchin monkeys right on the trail
A teacher writing «yo quiero estudiar español» on a blackboard, with two students at the table
A lesson there · Manuel Antonio Spanish SchoolPending
I want to go to Manuel Antonio
Playa Barrigona from the air, near Sámara: the Nicoya peninsula rainforest running down to white sand

Guanacaste, península de Nicoya

Sámara

The beach town where people still speak slowly

A bay sheltered by a reef, so the sea comes in calm and you can swim all year. It is one of the few Guanacaste beach towns that never turned fully touristy: at the corner shop and the soda, people still speak Spanish.

  • The bay, calm thanks to the reef
  • Playa Barrigona and Playa Carrillo, next door
  • The Nicoya peninsula, one of the world's blue zones
Three students and a teacher working with newspapers on a wooden table
A lesson there · Intercultura Costa Rica Spanish SchoolsPending
I want to go to Sámara
The cone of the Arenal Volcano seen from La Fortuna, its base covered in rainforest and clouds over the summit

Alajuela, zona norte

La Fortuna

At the foot of the Arenal

The town that grew up facing the Arenal Volcano and its almost perfect cone. Hot springs running warm off the volcano, a waterfall buried in the rainforest, and one of the most recognisable views in Costa Rica.

  • The cone of the Arenal Volcano
  • The hot springs of the Tabacón river
  • La Fortuna waterfall, between walls of rainforest
An open-air lesson on a wooden porch, with the northern lowland vegetation behind
A lesson there · Spanish Immersion Costa RicaPending
I want to go to La Fortuna
An ornate yellow colonial-era building on a street in downtown San José, with a red building and city traffic behind it

Valle Central

San José

The city where you hear the whole country

It is not the postcard Costa Rica, and that is why it works for learning: a real city, with its neighbourhoods, its traffic and its hurry. Nobody here switches to English to help you out, which is exactly what speeds things up.

  • The Mercado Central, from 1880
  • The Gold and Jade museums
  • The whole country within three hours by bus
A small group lesson around a table, the teacher pointing at a vocabulary sheet
A lesson there · Intercultura San JoséPending
I want to go to San José

Tiquismo of the day

Güila

/GÜI-la/

What it means
Kid, child. It is informal and affectionate, and it is used for any gender even though the word ends in -a.
How it is used

Esa güila habla tres idiomas.

«That kid speaks three languages». It is not derogatory: it is affectionate.