Bonjour École Wilfrid Walker!
It’s been a while since I wrote you guys an update. How has everyone been since my visit? Has everyone been studying hard?
Since my visit I’ve been super busy. I was in Vancouver for a few days, back in Regina, out in the Canora/Kamsack area, back in Regina, then back in Calgary for a bit, out in Montreal, and now I’m just flying back from being in Costa Rica for 9 days with my brother. Costa Rica was a lot of fun!
My brother, Mykola, and I had been planning our trip to Costa Rica for a while now so that we could relax a little after such a busy year. Do you guys know where Costa Rica is? If you want to look for it on a map, or on the internet, we went to Montezuma, Costa Rica – a really small surf town on the Nicoya peninsula.
While in Costa Rica, we did many fun things. The first thing we did was learn how to surf! It was my first time surfing, but I learned fairly quickly and was able to get up on the board quite a few times our first day out. We surfed at 3 different beaches along the Pacific Coast on 3 different days. It was usually nice and sunny, above 30 degrees every day, and there were always really good waves. Surfing was probably the funnest thing I did while in Costa Rica!
Oh, after my first day of surfing, our surf instructor, Alvaro, also showed us how to climb a coconut tree and peel a coconut to drink the water inside of it. He told us that when the locals go surfing for the day, they sometimes don’t bring any water or food with them because they’ll just climb a tree and drink the fresh water from the young coconuts, and eat the coconut if it’s mature enough. The larger coconuts can have up to a litre of water in them! But, it’s very dangerous to climb a tree like that, so you shouldn’t try it yourselves.
The next thing we did was go zip lining in the forest. We put on all of our safety equipment, learned how to control our speed, and off we went! We went on 9 different zip lines throughout the forest, sometimes up 70 meters off the ground, and got to stop half way through the tour to visit one of the waterfalls in the area. We got to jump off the waterfall into a really deep pool that fed another waterfall close by. It was so cool!
Next, we went kayaking on the ocean and visited Tortuga Island to go scuba diving and snorkelling. That was another really cool day because it was my first time scuba diving. We saw some star fish, schools of really colourful fish, and even a blow fish. We didn’t get to see any sharks; but, it was really cool to be able to swim with the fish like that.
Finally, before we got on the flight home, we visited a coffee plantation. Most of you are too young to be drinking coffee, but some of the best coffee in the world comes from Costa Rica! We got to see the coffee plants, how they plant them, how they grow them, and how they pick and process the beans. I learned quite a bit on that tour and got to taste a few different kinds of coffee.
Now that I’m on my way home, it’s back to the real world. I should find out who my new coach is pretty soon because by next week we will already be starting to train for next year. I hope everyone is studying hard!
Lucas
