Tamarindo

Getting around Costa Rica without a car leaves one at the whims of the public bus system. We were delayed in leaving Monteverde because of a small disaster...we lost the camera. I immediately freaked and of course started crying; you know how much my pictures mean to me. We had only been on the canopy tour that day, so we knew the our only shot was there. Lady luck was watching over us and a nice lady had turned in my camera! It meant we couldn't take the early morning bus out, instead we took the 2:30 out of Santa Elena.

So this bus was headed for San Jose and we needed Liberia; the bus driver said to get off when we get to the highway. And on that note...I've mentioned before how absolutely horrible the roads are here. It took us 2 hours to go 30 miles; that's right, 15 mph over horrendously bumpy roads. So we finally get to the only real highway in Costa Rica and we get off the bus...in the middle of nowhere. We see a sign that says Liberia 75km the other direction, thats a start, now we wait. The climate here is much different than the cloud forests; we're in cattle country and man is it hot! Standing at what we think is a bus stop, we've got a few Ticos around us and while we felt perfectly safe, we definitely stood out. I wish we had an invisibility cloak to cover our packs; sometimes I feel like an idiot with this huge thing on my back. I digress... So we see a few buses pass but none to Liberia. Finally one comes by and a Tico runs up to it, we follow, they allow him on the bus, and then it speeds away...we're thinking 'what the..?!' So we wait longer, in the sun, and yes another bus did finally come, and more importantly, they let us on.

Liberia is a big town with no reason for a tourist to really go there, but we needed to get to Tamarindo early the next morning to catch the Quarterfinals games. So we got a halfway decent hotel that looked safe and ate at the Burger King across the street. On the fast food topic, its hilarious how the American food chains have adapted to Tico food. For example, McDonalds has the McPinto breakfast that has eggs with gallo pinto (the common breakfast dish) and Taco Bell serves french fries with their tacos because Ticos eat french fries with everything! Its too funny. Anyway, we get up at 4:30 the next morning and catch another slow, bumpy bus to Tamarindo.

Tamarindo turned out to be great! We had 3 days of no rain!!! A first for our trip. The sun was great, the water was beautiful, and we ran into fun people. Lonely Planet recommended a great hotel that we never would have found otherwise. It was right in the middle of a bunch of construction (nothing surprising for here, its booming), but that allowed us a discount on the rooms because of the noise. Our hotel recommended a good place to watch the games and at 9am we headed out. This restaurant was owned by Frenchmen and was obviously the local place to watch futbol. We had a great time and met a nice English girl that was staying at our hotel until her spanish school started. We all headed back and swam in our pool, it was heaven! Nothing fancy, but man the water felt great.

After the second game we walked along the beach and found the famous Witch's Rock Surf Camp (its a restaurant named after the famous place for killer waves). They have 2-for-1 happy hour and nachos 'as big as your ass'- sounds good to us! We had a great time with good conversation with our English friend Vicky, a recent law graduate from Oxford. We are learning alot about the differences in European and American graduate schools, not only in price, but also in time required to get a MD or JD. Americans get ripped in both ways.

So the next day was another futbol filled day and it was great! Our poor English friend was bummed about Inglaterra's loss and no one foresaw Francia upsetting Brasil! Our Frenchmen friends were going nuts!! It was hilarious. Again, we headed for some beach time and pool time...life is pretty chill here. Vicky joined us for dinner and we decided we weren't ready to go home yet. Pretty much the whole time here we have been in bed before 10pm (sad I know) but we usually have an early hike or bus to catch, plus the sun sets at 6:30 and rises before 6am. But not this night, we headed to the local place to be on a Saturday night. It was great; we never set foot on the dance floor, but we were entertained the whole night with watching idiot tourists make fools of themselves!

Today Brian and I signed up for the quintessential surfing lesson! It was time for me to conquer the waves and let me tell you...we did great!! The beach here is a perfect beginner beach; the waves aren't too huge, so they are great to learn on. When we first started I was catching great waves and had stood up on only my 3rd try! Brian seemed jealous :) Then we realized the instructor had given me a beginner board, and him the professional one...we traded and suddenly perfecto! Brian did great too! I tried and tried but I couldn't get up on the pro board, it was really hard. We traded back and Brian even did it on the harder board. It was a blast! We could definitely say we had a day of surfing (not just crashing). We were very tired and a little battered when we finished, so we cooled off with a dip in the pool.

So truly we are sad to leave here. Maybe its the lack of rain and beautiful sun that keeps us wanting more, or maybe just the relaxed atmosphere of having nothing to do but sit on the beach all day. Either way, we must move on. We're headed to Quepos in time to watch the Semis and see some old family friends. We're sad to miss the 4th of July weekend festivities, everyone watch some fireworks for us!