Centro Panamericano de Idiomas is the school I attended in 1991 to learn Spanish. At that time it was a small school with about 6 classrooms in a one story house in San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia. For most of the month I was there taking intensive classes, I was the only student.

The nice folks there, Romy, Alfredo and Carlos helped me find a small house after completing my month of classes. Shortly after that, they started offering English classes to the local kids and asked if I wanted to teach. Still later, when my first house (converted garage) was closing down, they helped me find another house. When I left in 1993, they were working on a second, bigger building for the school -- just up the road from where I studied.

I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined the school could grow as much as it has. They now have three campuses: yet another (bigger still) building in San Joaquín -- a very typical mid-sized Costa Rican town close to the capital, a Monteverde campus -- just outside the cloud forests Monteverde is famous for, and a Flamigo campus at the beach on the Pacific coast.

They still enforce a maximum class size of 4 students, but with about 20 classrooms per campus they can accommodate many more students. All the students I talked to on this recent trip were very happy. In addition to home-stays (which I took advantage of), they are starting to offer some apartments for students or their families.

Here are a couple photos of the Monteverde and Heredia campuses -- next time we'll have to go to Flamingo. I didn't have much time to take these photos and didn't want to disturb any of the students so you'll have to look at their web site for smiling students. I can say that I remain very impressed at their dedication to the goal of teaching proper Spanish in a quality atmosphere at a reasonable price.

Monteverde apartments

Monteverde school

Heredia campus (2nd building, now Romy and Alfredo's house and student apartments)

Heredia school and administrative offices

Costa Rica 2007
• Introduction
• Map (courtesy of Google)
• Montezuma: beaches and monkeys
• Arenal: butterflies and volcanoes
• Monteverde: cloud forests and butterflies
• Heredia: wrapping up
• Centro Panamericano de Idiomas
• Photos only (for those who don't want the story)

Other parts of the site:
• Personal section
• Other vacations
• Robert's section