Students will be picked up at the airport and taken to their lodging site be it a host family, apartment or hotel. This is free of cha
rge. An orientation to Santo Domingo and the greater San Jose area will be provided. Students will also be dropped off at the airport upon their departure.
These are organized every weekend at an additional cost to the student. They include visits to the Beaches, Volcanoes, and National Parks with activities such as nature walks, bird watching, river rafting, canopy rides, rappelling, bungee jumping, and soccer matches.
The host family can wash and dry clothes. Arrangements can be made for students staying in apartments and hotels to have their laundry care provided.
Students can obtain Costa Rican colones from ATM machines using a Visa Plus debit card. Some machines dispense US dollars that can be used for purchases or exchanged for colones in banks. Unlike many Central American countries the lines are not particularly long and service is prompt.
You can access the Internet, send letters or make phones calls locally or internationally without any problems. If you have a laptop there are more WiFi hotspots available all the time. Internet Cafes charge about 200 to 300 colones an hour for use of the Internet (about 40 to 75 cents US). They also provide international phone service through the Internet for about 10 cents a minute. In addition a list of phone numbers for collect calls will be provided. Calling cards provided by ATT, MII and Sprint are also the good options for calling home. All 1-800 calls from Costa Rica are considered to be international. The Costa Rican phone system allows the use of cell phones but the price is high (a dollar a minute) and only 4 band cell phones are allowed. Local calls can be made using a public phone with a card purchased locally or bronze colored coins. These calls are very cheap.
