I had the timw of my LIFE!

Visiting Costa Rica with ISV is the best idea I've ever had. The first week was an optional addition - Spanish language lessons. We were at school for four hours a day, and we had the afternoons to explore. Everyone stayed with another student from ISV with a host family to practice all the Spanish we were learning, and it was a lot. There were also excursions - we went to Volcan Poas and Tortuga.
The two weeks after this are your volunteer project - and you have a choice of community or conservation. I was on a conservation project in the Rainforest down in Peninsula de la Osa, collecting data from nutmeg trees as part of the research into a biodiversity study looking at the effects of selective logging. We were hiking through the jungle for four hours a day, and we had discussion sessions in the afternoons. The rest of the time was our own, and we spent it either practising our Spanish with our 9 year old host sister, at the beach (there's only so much laughing ridicule you can take) or lying in hammocks eating frozen banana helados. The project was tons of fun, and the work we were doing is something that hasn't been studied before, and it will inform environmental policy, likely around the world, in the future.
The last two weeks were the adventure tour. In two weeks, we went kayaking, surfing, hiking, horse riding, cliff jumping, tubing, relaxed in hot springs, chilled out at a mud spa, went zip-lining across the rainforest canopy, rappelled down next to a waterfall, and climbed back up the cliff face on a cable ladder, got to meet some people from a native Costa Rican Tribe, we saw some rastafarian culture on the Caribbean coast, went for a bike ride, saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, and sloths, we went through level three and four white water rapids, and when we weren't going through the rapids, we were pirate boarding each others boats, throwing each other in the water, or jumping off cliffs into the river. On the day we spent at the eco lodge (only accessible by raft) we went bouldering up a creek where we got to slide down a natural rock waterslide.
And, amazing as all that was, the best part about the trip was the fantastic new friends I've made - all the volunteer students, and some amazing people from Costa Rica too.
Travelling with ISV gives you the opportunity to do some good and make a difference, to experience the culture and have a ton of fun - they organise everything for you, check the safety, make sure it's through reputable local companies to give a kick to the local economy. And they are there to look after things if anything goes wrong. Like if a monkey steals your prescription sunglasses.