Hey All,
I arrived in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica on Tuesday morning, fell back an hour to Mountain Time, I picked up a rental, a small Daewoo 4x4 and drove 5 hours to the town of Tamarindo, on the Pacific Coast. That was pretty much the day, I had stopped for lunch and by the evening I was tired (I had effectively gotten up at 4 a.m., and something wasn't agreeing with my system, so I just crashed.
I have to say that the two airports are interesting. I think it is easier to judge siz by the number of luggage carousels, than the number of gates. Panama City had 5 carousels, it had a lot of duty free shopping, alchohol, cigarettes, perfume and electronics. San Jose had 3 carousels, but the shops were more along the lines of souvenirs that you may have forgotten to get, oh and it is in the middle of a major remodeling project.
Wednesday I got up and started the search for a dive shop and surf school. The only dive shop in town was booked for a few days, so I drove over to a neighborhing town and got signed up for a trip on Thursday. I returned to Tamarindo and signed up for surfing lessons in the afternoon, at high tide. I spent the remainder of the morning getting a little sun and walking aroung the town browsing. I guess it is a sign of how much of a tourist town it is on the number of shops, not just souvenir places, but clothing and the like. I did pick up some neat coasters that have slices of cinnamon embedded in rosin, they smell real nice.
I showed up at 3:00 p.m. for the surf lesson, fortunately some other students showed up and that kept the cost down. It was a familyfrom Dallas, with three teenage all giving surfing a try. We carried the boards to the beach and the instructor gave us lessons on how to get up, easier said then done. Then we headed out to try it. Suffice it to day, the waves were rougher than they had been in several weeks and it wasn't a good day for novices. I did get to ride a few waves, but never successfully got up. I chipped one of my two front teeth when I was paddling out and encountered a wave that tossed the board up and made me chomp my jaw. It was an experience, I may try it again, maybe. I was going to do the blog last night, but then the news of the brige collapse came on.
Today was a two tank drive trip in the neighboring town of Flamingo, it is a nice dive shop run by three Germans, the only other divers were a couple of German guys. They joked that they were going to do the brief in German and then if I had any questions, I could ask in English. They were pretty good dives, both about 60 feet, and 45 minutes. The visibility was a little low, only about 20-30 feet, but the schools of fish were bigger, I even saw a school of sting rays. The top picture is a picture of the beach Playa Flamingo (Flamingo Beach). On the way out to the dive sites, we even saw a whale playing around. I also thought it was interesting that I could see the thermal layers as we descended, it was like how you see as heat raidiating off the highway.
The picture below is from the hotel where I am staying, just of the little breakfast area. I had noticed a squirrel messing around with the coconuts yesterday, then today I noticed that the cocnuts had stayed on the tree, just chewed through. The squirrel was sort of interesting too, it had a mostly brown body, but with a big gray strip down it's back and tail.
Evan
