Adventure & Ecotourism with Spanish Study

• Language Study
  • Spanish for tourists is a study of fundamental grammatical structures and basic vocabulary needed to begin traveling the off-the-tourist-trail parts of Mexico on your own. The study has a small-group classroom component which is immediately brought into usable form in our Out-and-About Labs. Unlike traditional classroom study, with the help of our Charlantes, you’ll be speaking what you learn as soon as you learn. You’ll be learning in one of Mexico’s safest and most wonderful cities and throughout one of the safest and most varied states.
  • If your Spanish is already developing or even well developed, you can work with us at advanced levels.

• Adventure and Ecotourism Stops
  • Through a statewide, voluntary, and highly cooperative grouping of adventure and ecotourism providers, you can start your activities deep in the ocean and finish high on the third highest mountain peak in North America. We will arrange your Spanish study around the trips you choose to take. You'll have full strength schooling with as many fascinating and enchanting outings as you wish to enjoy. You can arrange for charlants to accompany you so you'll be having fun and developing your Spanish at the same time.
  • All adventure and ecotourism providers are small companies; all are owned and operated by local Mexicans, and all are committed to conservation made successful by grassroots participation and local benefit.

• Travel in and around Veracruz
  • Without even leaving town there is so much to do. The Veracruz Coral Reef System is an adventure and ecotourism dream come true. You can enjoy the reef system via scuba, snorkel, surface tour (by launch), ocean kayak, and simply swimming out from shore. Additionally Veracruz is an important wetlands area with a wealth of lagoons within and fringing the city.
  • Close by, as day trips (or half day), you'll find dunes, mangrove lined passages in lagoons, rivers opening into the ocean, archaeological sites, and incredible birding. We're on a major neo-tropical migratory route for raptors and other birds. For some fun on the dunes you can sandboard.
  • Another hour away is whitewater rafting, zip-line and rappel. For the devoted adventurer, a few hour more upstream are some of Mexico's most daunting rapids.
  • Long day outings will take you to mountain horseback, mountain bike, and walking trips in the mountains. You can choose from activites in the foothills to moving up high on the Eastern Range. Community offerings are wonderfully broad and you can even participate in beekeeping, black clay pottery, coffee production and more.

• Overnight and Weekend Trips
  • Going higher in the mountains, or to more distant river runs, or for birding early in the morning, overnight stays are needed. The local providers will help you with hotels. Unless you want five star accomodations, hotel prices are very reasonable.

• The Adventure and Ecotourism providers
  • All providers are independent small businesses owned and operated by Mexicans. Our language school is highly supportive of grassroots conservation. We have no financial interaction of any sort, at all, with the providers. We receive absolutely no payment of any sort from the providers in our organization (or from any other providers.)
  • Our language school staff supplies office functioning and coordinating efforts to the organization, and we host the organization's website. (We are the only foreigners in the group.)
  • You can get to the sites of the providers with whom we work very closely by visiting our organization's site at www.mexico-ecotourism.org.

• Remember our Mix and Match
  • In addition to adventure and eco-tourism, you can pick and choose from all our programs.There's more to do than time permits.
  • A glance through the other program pages will show you the many choices you have.

Before We Learned Spanish

• Every time we stepped onto a city bus we could only hope we’d get back, and every time we took a taxi we worried that we were paying to get from here to there by way of the “tourist bypass.”
  
• Directions were best guesses at what someone pointing this way and that meant. Banking was almost impossible.And we couldn’t just pick up and go because we just didn’t know how to get out and around.
  
• We desperately needed tourist’s Spanish. We went to the community college and began taking courses. We could read and write, but travel was only a little easier.
  
• We needed to be able to talk with people. We didn’t need the scope of what we had studied, but we needed to be able to speak.
  
• Our tourist’s Spanish will give you what it took us years to find, “How to talk your way into traveler’s freedom.”

EXTRACURRICULAR LESSONS--More Right Places to Speak Spanish.
Playing Guitar, Harp, and other musical instruments Guitar making Ballet Folklórico de Veracruz and other regions Gym with a personal trainer in Spanish Scuba if your Spanish is strong enough
Veracruz, the city, is located in the state of Veracruz. Here's a look around. Veracruz, the city Veracruz, the state The University of Veracruz The Symphonic Orchesta of Xalapa The Aquarium of Veracruz Veracruz Magazzine Mountain and glacier climbing Scuba and Snorkel the Coral Reef