Sandpiper Inn Playa Hermosa

... long. Today we discovered that our skin was itchy and I had a number of red spots from some sort of sea creature that comes in with the tide occasionally. If is fairly harmless and was gone by the evening. We're staying in a Spanish style small hotel, right on the beach which is lovely. There are palms all around, outdoor cafes and a small pool. This is our vacation within a vacation time. There isn't much in this small place but we have wandered around and found some small ...

... hotel, tomorrow. The people have been very nice, I'm working on my Spanish, and the evening rains are delightful. It gets dark at around 6, and with no TV, I have been able to go to bed normal time, and wake up at 5:30ish to go seek waves. Sort of like keeping my normal schedule - the tides change, so my schedule may as well. OK, well, I am off to run the beach and then jump in the pool before presumably eating, doing some reading, and falling asleep by 8:30. See you soon.

We headed off early (the first bus was at 4am) for the journey back to civilisation. We were headed north up the Pacific coast. The journey took all day and 4 buses but in the early evening we reached Quepos. Quepos is a small town that for me was the sort of place i would turn around and walk out of if i could. From the dirty bar lined streets with broken neon lighting to the large impersonel, overpriced, unfriendly hostel we stayed in to the crowds of tourist crwoded round fast food ...

... hotel for new guests and some of us went begrudgingly along thinking it was going to be some sort of sales pitch. Surprisingly enough, there weren't any sales, but infact information on the hotel and area and Costa Rica. Rather helpful in the end. That evening, Ryan's dad (Murray), stepmom (Gail), Aunt Ellie and Uncle Josh came by the resort for a visit and meet and greet with my family. Saturday Feb 2nd, We got ...

... of palm trees for shade. At the hotel we met a man travelling on his own named Patrick. He is from Montreal. He said he would like to camp but didn't know a good place. We told him about our special beach that is really hard to get to. He suggested we all go together in his rental car for a few days.

... while we surfed. Mandy watched on and took photos of the little fellas making their way across the beach to the water. About fifteen minutes later all these little heads started popping up around us out in the surf. They were everywhere. One swam up to me so I put him on my surfboard to give him a rest. Turtles are cooler! There are quite a few Americans that live in Costa Rica. One of them, Joey, told us about a waterfall nearby. He gave us some directions and we were off. One of the ...

... fella who comes from Spain) hooked up with a few other backpackers (funny Canadian fella who is an expert in worldwide toilet habits), a Polish fella and an Aussie bloke) and we all plotted in the town square waiting for the first boat down the Rio Frio to Los Chiles. Heard a scary story about a girl who recently developed a hearing problem. After seeing the doctor it seems a cockroach had crawled into her ear. All the doctor could do was tell her to put alcohol in the ear ...

Well this week has been anything but. Tamarindo has turned out to be quite a cool place to hang out...as I've ended up staying like 5 or 6 days now. My birthday turned out to be be well fun, drinking games and then a bar called reysol. Have been with these 3 English blokes who've all come from a ski season in whistler, really cool guys.Went surfing a couple of days ago, the surf was ok, got some severe chaffage from my board shorts...not guna be surfing in those again!! Is so ...

... of tourists, who had evidently gotten lost themselves on the way to the beach. I can't imagine how, with their stellar sense of direction. But, they assured us, if we would note the markers along the beach, the Hotel Las Tortugas was between markers 7 and 8 and we were at marker 16, so we were very close. And, what do you know, they were right. We were even able to watch the sunset from the beach, before we stumbled up the drive to the hotel, two and a half hours after being ...

... I didn´t know what to bring, so I brought a pineapple! ha! It was really funny... After, we went to my fav pub in Jaco - Tabacone. There was a 70´s American band strumming away, so we played pool and downed some Germain beer. It was a pretty worldly night for sure! All the new experiences of spending Christmas outside of your own compounds. what more to come...