31 questions on Costa Rica

What follows is my social studies assignment for school.


1. What is the name of the country and where is it located?

Quepos (Kay-pos) is located on the pacific coast of Costa Rica. Costa Rica is between Nicaragua and Panama in Central America.

2. How much rainfall occurs annually, is there a rainy season?

In Costa Rica each year on average it rains 120-160 inches. There is in fact a rainy season from May to November.

3. Are there distinct seasons? During your stay what season was it?

There are 2 seasons. Dry season (December to April) and rainy season (May to November). We were here during the dry season.

4. What was the average temperature while you were there? What is it on an annual basis?

The temperature is about 83°-74° F all year around.

5. Ethnic Groups - does the community look homogenous or does it have lots of diversity?

Other than the tourist population, Costa Rica a very homogeneous society. Most people have black hair and a tanned skin.

6. Do most people live in small and rural towns or in big cities?

People live in all three. But most people live in small towns.
San Jose is the only large city.

7. What is the average income?

The average income per person is 5800 U.S. dollars each year

8. Is the country known for a specific type of art or craft?

They are known for making jewellery, paintings, and pottery. We see a lots of theses things lined up along the beach at little stores

9. What kind of food are they known for?

They eat a lot of different food. They eat food like meat, beans, plantations, rice, and corn tortias.

10. What are the primary industries?

The 3 primary industries are tourism, manufacturing microprocessors and agriculture

11. How many people live in the region and country?

4,195,914 people live in Costa Rica.

12. What does a typical house of a local person look like?

The houses usually are small, have no glass windows and have metal roofs. They are also usually pastel colors (blue, pink, green, and orange).

13. Wealth Distribution - Do you see examples of very rich and very poor people, or does it look like most people have the same standard of living?

Poor people and rich people. Hotels and villas looked rich and others look poor.

14. What kind of music do you hear playing

We did not hear very much music, but what we did hear was either Spanish folk music or music that we would hear at home. It was almost the same as in Honduras.

15. What kind of sports do the kids play?

The kids play soccer, basketball, they box and there are a lot of kids playing at the beach.

16. Television - did they have satellite with lots of choice or not?

They had 60 channels almost all of them in Spanish except for a few English ones with Spanish subtitles

17. How does the food compare to Canada?

At the grocery store it was really hard to find milk. But the grocery stores where better stocked than in Honduras. In the restaurants the food was verily similar to Canada.

18. What kind of Meat do you see in the grocery stores?

Chicken, beef and fish were the main things that we saw.

19. What new food did you try that you never had before?

Co pos (a slushy type thing that had condensed milk shaved ice and flavouring) I also had coconut and macadamia nut breading on chicken fingers.

20. Does Dad like the wine in the country or does he drink something else?

The wine was okay, not as much selection in Canada but more than in Roatan.

21. What is the currency name? Do they also use $U.S.?

The money name is colon, they sometimes use $ U.S.

22. What is the conversion to $U.S.

540 colon = 1 U.S. dollar

23. How much does it cost to buy fish and chips?

Unknown. We didn't find a restaurant that served fish and chips.

24. Americanization - do you see examples of things from home?

Examples of Americanization were television, vehicles, cosmetics (American brands), Kraft dinner, English speaking (some people), American $ also.

25. Are there any unique animals, birds and or marine life that you saw?

We saw sloths (2 and 3 toed), a silky anteater, squirrel monkeys, a baby chunk headed snake, howler monkeys, white-faced monkeys, crocodile, Jesus Christ lizards (that run on water), red winged grasshopper, and bats.

26. What is the main language spoken?

The main language spoken was Spanish but some English was spoken.

27. List a few key phrases and their meaning of words that you learned.

Lo seinto- I’m sorry
Disculpe- Excuse me

28. Describe the most interesting thing you saw or did.

The incredibly large grass hopper, the monkeys the snakes (the wildlife) and the cows walking through the restaurant.

29. What is the thing you will remember most about this part of the trip?

I liked the body surfing but I loved the horse back riding. My horses name was really Little Bird but I named it Breeze (he liked that name better)

30. What was the favourite activity you did on this part of the trip?

Going to the beach, horseback riding through the rain forest or the mangrove tours (both night tour and day tour).

31. Would you want to come back here again?

That would be a difficult decision considering all the bugs but I think I would come back again!