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One of quite a few really freaking nice sunsets.



Sunday 6/12


Woke up at about 8:30am and the whole group walked the beach (about 1km) and gathered shells (an everyday thing). We all laughed quite a bit and checked out tide pools. We got back and swam alot, then went into Tamarindo with Juan Carlos and got some lunch with our friend the iguana which there are tons of. We found a scuba company and put down about $100 deposit for diving on Monday. Shopped a bit. Tamarindo is the most touristy town where we're at now. It's not big at all, but there are a ton of Euro's and tourists. Alot of hostels and cabinas that don't look very inviting. We ate lunch with out iguana guest. On the way back Juan Carlos took us to his aunt's place so we could pick up green mangos that oyie was fiending for. He then hooked us up with one of his buddies that got us some pot. Not good pot by any means but we got some, and it got us a little high. We took a long hiatus from smoking so I'm thinking thats the only thing that helped cause this stuff was nasty. When we went into town it looks like everyone living there probably a few thousand, all mill around the center which is the soccer field where different ages get together for games all afternoon. Juan Carlos showed us his motorcycle which was a pretty nice 4 stroke. It looks like thats how the majority of the younger set gets around town. Mayia even has one. Thats an odd picture. We saw her tooling down the road to the house once. The people are Tican, kind of the indians of the country, really dark complexions and they're somewhat impoverished but pleasant and easy going. They own most of the land in this region as a people to herd cattle on. It's theres, and apparently not regulated as much as the states, but tons and tons of beef. Their houses are pretty rudimentary and i imagine the plumbing is worse off than our sick ass house. I mean we can't flush just the paper, i imagine they don't even have toilets in some houses but probably do in all. Tonight, we shaved Oyies head, which is a monumental occasion and damn surprising (you can see if from my reaction in the video), seriously I've never known him with short hair, neither has anyone else so it was crazy. Mayia made us steak, green salad, rice and beans. It was grub, we cleaned out the local market of chorizo, and steak. It was good. We discovered Lizano salsa. Shit is good. spices up rice and beans just right. Both Juan Carlos and Mayia ate with us tonight and it was nice. I'm getting more comfortable with my spanish as they can correct my verb conjugation. There was a good rain goin on with lightning and we had to be up early for diving. The a/c is messing with my sinuses as I have a bit of a cold and the passing from hot to cold is wreaking havoc on my nose.

Monday 6/13

Today is my birthday and i couldn't think of a better place. I got up this morning and it was still storming pretty bad. When I got scuba certified we were told no diving in lightning so we figured that there couldn't be any diving. About 2 hours later, the sky was clear and with no phone we couldn't call the dive place. We have yet to figure out how to use the phones and our families are probably wondering where we are. We all went into Flamingo and found one dive shop that wasn't the one we were looking for. We tooled around a bit more and found the place we booked at. Someone called somebody on a cell phone and I spoke with her and she let us know the dive went as scheduled and that people that were diving had to wait to see if we would get there and they were upset. I asked her if we could apply any of the deposit to another dive and she said they'd be happy to take us out but that our deposit was gone. I pressed and argued (a bit too harshly in their defense as it was my $100) but to no avail. We went to the first place that we found and booked a dive for the next morning. They seemed alot more on top of things and the equipment looked alot better too. Booked that and went back into town and found a sandwich shop owned by Victoria. She's a firey redhead with emerald blue eyes. She is a retiree from Florida, probably in her early to mid 60's. She was cool and her sandwiches were freaking delicious. She told us all about her family and how she came to retire down here. Damn those sandwiches were good. We took off from there and went back to the house for more swimming. Swimming here for me was like a 3 hour deal. The waves were good, the water temp was amazing and it was just damn fun. It started raining and we cleaned up and headed inside. Juan Carlos was there and got us some coconuts from the trees in the back. We mixed the milk with rum and it was damn tasty, couldn't taste any liquor, it was sweet as anything, kinda like fruit juice.




Virginia recommended the Happy Snapper in Brasilito, a tican town outside Flamingo for good seafood. We all got ready and took Juan Carlos to dinner. It was grub, owned by an american retiree it looked like as there were tons of old americans eating there. I had the lobster, most everybody else had different plates of fresh tuna. I had local apple pie for desert. Definitely different but splendid.



After this we went home and crashed so we could dive the next day, plus it rained again tonight, but it wasn't going to keep us in bed this time.