Hello all! I apologize for the week long hiatus...I have learned to appreciate access to the internet when I have it here because apparently ALL internet connections in the ENTIRE CITY can go down for days and, well, that's just the way it is. So I have tried several times to post but to no avail. It's looking good today so...without further ado...on to recount the story of my awesome weekend in Tamarindo!

This was the weekend my good friend Sally visited me from Washington. She got an awesome deal on a flight from Spokane to San Jose, and the plan was for her to arrive on Thursday night at 8:30 and leave Tuesday morning at 9:00. What could be easier, right? Wrong. She left Spokane early Thursday morning and all was going well until her flight from Seattle to DFW got held up because of lightening storms in DFW. She missed her transfer flight from DFW to San Jose and they couldn't offer her another flight to Costa Rica until 24 hours later! Well they could have routed her through Florida but, you know, people were dying in a hurricane and all so that didn't sound all that appealing. So she waited around DFW for 30 hours or so, and then the flight was delayed again, etc. etc. and she finally got here Saturday morning at 12:45am. FINALLY!

The plan was for Sally and I and two of my friends from school, Lindsay and Crystal, to take a taxi from Alajuela to Tamarindo which is in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica. The travel time was an obstacle we had to overcome. We wanted to go to Tamarindo specifically for two reasons: it was supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches on the Pacific and we wanted to do a zip-line tour of the rainforest. Unfortunately Tamarindo was 7 hours away by bus (that's a big chunk of time!). However my host mom's nephew drives a cab and he agreed to give us a nice discounted rate, and traveling via car cut the travel time down to about 5 hours. So we all met in front of MegaSuper (local supermarket) at 5:00am. Sally and I didn't bother wasting our time with sleep, we talked for a while and then walked to MegaSuper at 4:30am to meet our friends. We were off to the beach!

Here we are, still happy and fresh, at the begining of our ride: Crystal, Sally, me and Lindsay.

And here is our driver, Miguel, who hung out with us all weekend and quickly became our friend:

The ride was long and bumpy and seemed like forever, but it was okay. The scenery was great and all in all it beat seven hours in a bus. When we finally got to the ocean we hardly bothered finding our hotel so anxious were we to hit the water. And my god was it ever beautiful! It was totally different than last weekend in Manuel Antonio: the beaches here were wide and long and virtually all to ourselves. Hardly any tourists were around and all together it was a better, more authentic Costa Rican experience. I can understand why Tamarindo is known as a surfer's paradise...the waves were big but easy, and a large sand bar made it possible to walk in waist level water further than I thought possible.

I didn´t wait for anyone...I was the first one in the water!

The beach area was large, inviting, and seemed to stretch on forever...

Sally was so excited to see the ocean! All four of us played around in the water while we waited for our hotel room to be ready. Two of our group put on sunscreen, two of us didn't. You'll be able to guess who the two stupid ones were later.

Sally and I were LOVING the ocean! It was beautiful, the water was amazingly warm and the saltiest water I've ever been in. Really, it was so salty you could almost float on top of it!! (didn't feel that great in the eyes though)

We eventually tore ourselves away from the beach and checked out our hotel. Man, this hotel was sweet! It was waaaay better than the room we had at Manuel Antonio the weekend before. It was one huge, clean room with five nice firm beds, clean linen, big windows, a private bathroom and it was clean, clean, clean! All for $10 per person, and only steps from the beach!! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the room itself but here we are all standing out front of our room...

...our large room was on the bottom floor of this building. There were three or four such buildings on the property....

and the property itself was beautiful! Nicely manicured and just lovely to walk around in. But in Costa Rica that can be said for almost anywhere.

So Saturday we all went to eat and had a nice late lunch in a lovely restaurant literally directly on the beach where we could watch all the surfers, etc. It was great. After dinner we put back on our beach clothes and went to sit on the sand in anticipation of one of the Pacific coast's famous sunsets. It was lovely indeed.

Ohhhh....can you tell between Lindsay and I who used sunscreen?

Oh, yup, Sally's looking a little toasty too....

Ahhh, the lobster twins! If you guessed earlier that Sally and I were the dupes who DIDN'T use sunblock during the hottest part of the day right next to the equator you were correct!!!

No matter, it's true we both got quite a bit of red and that night sleeping was a little tender but we're okay now. It was very unusual for me, though, because I am the queen of SPF 40, I guess I just was so excited I omitted that step. You can bet it won't happen again!

So on to the sunset. It was lovely to sit and watch the surfers and the sun dipping below the horizon. It was a bit cloudy so we didn't have full sunset access, but the colors were spectacular nonetheless.

The sun is starting to go down, and the beaches are starting to empty a little bit. Hardcore surfers are still going at it, but most are packing up and heading home.

The sky just seemed to open up and get deeper and vaster. It was exciting to sit and watch it unfold. Pictures can't capture the beauty.

Jessica, I thought of you when watching all of these surfers surfing by the sunset. I thought about you and how much you would have enjoyed the experience. Sally and I were so enchanted by the whole thing, and the apparent ease of learning to surf in Tamarindo that we fully intended to take hour lessons on Sunday but ran out of time. You can only fit so much into two days!!

After the sunset the plan was to go back to the hotel, wash the sand off and head to a local dance hall where they were having a salsa contest. FUN! Well that wasn't to be as while we were getting ready suddenly the lights went out. I mean the lights in the ENTIRE CITY of Tamarindo! You don't know the meaning of dark until you're on the coast of Costa Rica and there isn't electricity for miles and miles and miles. Luckily two in our group had the forethough to bring flashlights (I wasn't one of them unfortunately) and so we had enough to put clothes on and walk in the direction of downtown. There was one store downtown, a grocery store, that had a genereator and consequently was packed with people buying candles and beer (apparently that's what you need to get through a blackout). So we did the same, and took our candles and snacks to the beach! We spent the next hours putting our candles in the sand, passing around chips and practicing our Spanish. It was great! Here is a picture that's awfully blurry but you'll get the idea:

We were having a great time....singing spanish songs (loudly), telling stories, learning spanish swear words and repating them over and over and using them in sentences, you get the idea. Well right in the middle of our merriment the problem was corrected and the lights of nearby hotels came on, illuminating us....and all of the people sitting around us listening to us!! Seriously, we thought we were the only people for miles and the lights come on and there are like ten people around us who we'd been unwittingly entertaining and who consequently have been hilariously laughing at our shitty spanish! It was funny, and we were embarassed.

We all went to bed early that night, around 9:00. The next day, Sunday, we had made plans to go on the zip-line tour of the rainforest and we were really excited.

I woke up early around 5:30 as I tend to do here. I took a little walk by myself up and down the beach for an hour or so. I do that every time I'm at the beach, one of my favorite things to do is watch locals at the beach surfing or preparing for their day when it's quiet and the day is brand new, it's so wonderful.

The sun is still coming up and the beach looks beautiful

People were fishing and collecting clams, oysters, etc. I enjoyed watching a father teach his very young son how to fish...but the son was more interested in playing with the waves.

I walked a little through the rainforest next to the beach, and got to watch a friend eat some breakfast...

...and then I walked through the deserted town center to watch store tenders start their days.

After a few hours I walked back to the hotel where the others were getting up too. We had to be at the departure point for the zip-line tour at 11:00, so we all went to get some breakfast and enjoy the beach for awhile before packing up our stuff, putting it in our taxi and meeting at the tour bus. The four of us were the only ones going on the zip-line tour at this specific time which was great for us, all the special attention. And you can bet there was plenty of special attention paid to the four young white American girls.

Here we are in our tour bus heading out to the rainforest...very excited!!

After a drive of about 20 minutes or so, we arrive at our destination. The canopy tour company was run by a bunch of guys who were all more than happy to show us around and help us into our gear. The canopy tour company had been there for about five years, and the actual tour consisted of a series of ten zip lines, each progressively longer, that ran through the trees in this dry rainforest. We were really looking forward to it.

Here we are getting helped into our gear...

...and now we look like a motley construction crew. Or a lame, all-female version of the Village People.

Now that we were dressed and had been through a short demonstration tutorial we were ready to climb about two or three stories up a tree to the first platform and the first zip-line.

Here we go........!!!!

Okay, so we made it up to the top of the trees and we're getting ready to go. Pure anticipation, nerves and excitement!!! (we were really freaking high up there!)

Our trusty guides were hilarious and enjoyed making sure we had as much fun as humanly possible on a zip-line.

Okay, so Sally was first out of the gate. We were all giddy with nerves, and she just happened to be first in line. They hooked her wheelie-thing to the zip-line, hooked up her safety belt, told her to get into a sitting position and pushed her off! She took off like lightening laughing and screaming all the way. We were all laughing on the platform anticipating our turns.

She's getting ready....

...and she's off!!!

The rest of us soon followed...

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!!! The zip lines got progressively longer and longer, and I believe the longest one was 200 mtrs or something like that, but each one was more fun than the last. Once we got used to it, and braver, we started doing tricks like going backwards or even going upside-down. That was AWESOME! The whole thing was a hoot and a riot and we all enjoyed it immensly.

Ohhhh hell yeah...we were hot, sweaty, soaking wet and having the time of our lives!!

And to mix it up we all took a turn going upside-down...

At our height in the trees with us we saw huge butterflies, iguanas and even a few howler monkeys sleeping and staring back at us. It was amazing, and so much fun.

And because it was sooooo fun, and the moment seemed right for me to participate in Jessica's Flip Off wall, I commemorated the moment with a nice, solid Costa Rican zip-line flip off. Jessica, this special message is for you girl!!!!

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After the zip-line tour was over, about an hour, we zipped back to the main cabin for a complementary soda or beer. We can all guess which one Sally chose (hint, there's no soda called Imperial)...

When we got back to the beach we were sweaty and dirty and highly anticipating a dip in the ocean. We took a hike up the coast and over some rocks to a very secluded black-sand beach. It was beautiful!!! Here is Sally leading the way as we're hiking over the black rocks and the crabs scurry out of our way...

And we also had an awesome view all the way back to Tamarindo center where we were staying.

It was a great afternoon of an already exciting day...(and check out those foxy tan lines!)

OH! And on the way back check out what I saw....this is a big ass SWARM OF BEES and it was just sitting there on a tree where people were walking within a foot of. EWWWWW!!!!!

So we walked back to the taxi which took about 30 minutes, on the way we played in and out of the water and Sally saw seashells by the seashore (I said that to her several times although for some reason she didn't think it was as funny as I did). Also on our walk back we saw a group of local kids having so much fun I had to take a picture. Well all of them are having fun except possibly for the little one in the middle whom they're burying.

We got back to the taxi around 4:30, stopped at a local Soda for dinner (soda = local ''Tico'' restaurant) and hit the road. It was a long and weary ride home, but we got home and to bed by about midnight. All in all it was a fabulous weekend.

I have to head to school now, but forthcoming will be pictures of Sally and I on Monday when we went to a volcano and strawberry farm!

Pura Vida!