Come to beautiful Costa Rica with us on this podcast as we explore the wonderful things this country has to offer and improve your listening skills as well!

Lucas from Brazil – studying for FCE
Lucas is listening to all of the podcasts. He’s currently on episode 30.
It’s really fun learning with you/to learn with you

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Email from Josue from Costa Rica.
My name is Josue Picado and I write (I’m writing to) you from Costa Rica because I really enjoy your podcast and I want to thank you guys for helping me improve my English skills.
I just became a Patreon member and I want you to speak about my country Costa Rica. I think that would be a wonderful topic for a new podcast!

Costa Rica
In Central America, Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast and Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Population: 5 million
Capital: San José
Flag: As part of the United Provinces of Central America, which gained independence from Mexico in 1823, originally the federal blue-white-blue striped flag representing various countries was used.
It’s changed over the years, notably in 1848, when a larger red stripe was added in the centre, partly as a reference to French revolutionary ideals. The coat of arms has also changed over time.
The latest version depicts volcanoes on land between two seas, with a ship in each of the two seas, and seven stars representing the seven provinces of the republic.

Interesting facts
It has more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity. (in only 51,100 sq. km – 0.03% of the world’s land – 129th in the world’s landmass (the biggest is Russia, 17,098,242 sq. km, Spain is 505,990 km²) – about the size of West Virginia)
Costa Rica has 50 species of hummingbirds (colibrí, chuparrosa in Mexican Spanish), 750,000 species of insects, more than 1400 varieties of orchids.

It’s near the equator. The sun rises and sets at about the same time every day. You can see the sunrise and sunset from 2 different beaches. It’s about a 7-hour drive.

Costa Ricans refer to themselves as “Ticos” and “Ticas”, not Costa Ricans

Costa Rica’s biggest industry is tourism. More than 25% of Costa Rica’s land is dedicated to national parks and wildlife reserves. There are more than 100 different protected areas to visit.

Gallo Pinto – rice and beans with onions, peppers and ‘salsa inglesa’ (tangy, savory sauce). Some areas cook it with coconut milk and chilies.

Costa Rica is home to wild sloths, one of the most peculiar animals on earth, though they also inhabit other Latin American countries. Reza has some characteristics in common with sloths – perhaps listeners can guess which?

There are two-toed and three-toed sloths. Really the toes act as claws which they use to hang (upside-down) from trees. They can do pretty much anything while hanging from a tree, including eat, sleep, have sex, fight each other about who’s going to have sex with the “lady sloth”, give birth and die. They come down to the ground to “poo” (defecate) – about once a week! They’re very solitary creatures, sleeping between 10 and 20 hours a day! In fact, they don’t really bother much with other sloths except to mate.

Nor are they the greatest of explorers – some sloths are born and die in the same tree and never inhabit another one! They’re so inactive – slothful!- that they’re the only mammal on which algae can grow undisturbed on their fur! If you think they eat slowly, they can take up to a month to digest a single meal! Now, which of those features also apply to Reza?

There’s a lizard known as Jesus Christ lizard. The Basilisk, also known as Jesus Christ Lizard can literally walk/run on water, and that’s how it got its nickname. It’s very light and it can run at a speed of 5 feet per second. It also creates air pockets under its feet.

Costa Rica is the world’s biggest producer of pineapples, by far. In 2019 it produced just under 3.5 million metric tons. To give an idea of how important that figure is: that is more than double the quantity China produced!

What do these countries have in common; Costa Rica, Iceland, Monaco, Panama, Samoa, Mauritius, Andorra?

…and now it’s your turn to practise your English.
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Welcome to our new Patreon supporters who have joined us this month:
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On next week’s episode: Must and Have to – Part 2 – advanced forms

The music in this podcast is by Pitx. The track is called ‘See You Later’

Dream on me by Stefan Kartenberg
(c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (3.0) license.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/JeffSpeed68/58983 Ft: Javolenus

Photo by Sophia Müller on Unsplash