What a day!!!

I don’t know how Julie did it, but she did. She had to get up at 545 am to volunteer at her Nature Preserve for a ½ day…lucky me I slept till 8 am and woke up to the sound of the surf outside the window of my cabina (at Tortilla Flats). I walked down to the bar/restaurant and snagged a fruit juice, and took it for a walk on the beach as the start to my day. Perfecto. The beach is gorgeous, black sand (from worn down volcanic rock) with HUGE waves…which forced me to choose not to rent a surfboard and catch a beatdown from the Pacific Ocean. After my walk I took a quick shower, to get wet, and to tame wally’s bed head (my hair is getting LOOOOOOONG), then headed down to the bar/restaurant for a lazy breakfast while reading the book that the owner of Hacienda Baru (Julie’s Nature Reserve) had written about the 25 year process he has witness of the reforestation of his land, which was previously used for cattle ranching and rice and palm oil production. Breakfast was delish, fresh fruit, banana bread, scrambled eggs and 4 cups of the deliciously addictive costa Rican coffee (sidenote: I think I will probably have to bring back large quantities of this coffee to the states, as I have fallen in love with it, and I’m sure after 3 months of drinking multiple cups a day, I will be thoroughly addicted – whether I like it or not.) After breakfast I headed back to the beach and spent 10 minutes just meditating on the waves…recalling my summers life-guarding on Plum Island, MA; and just thinking how lucky I am to have this opportunity to travel. After meditating, I did a long, slow, rejuvenating, full-body stretch…prolly 20 minutes. What a way to start the day. I moseyed back to the cabina and grabbed my camera, and set off down the beach for a photography walk. One of my goals in Costa Rica was to learn more about photography…I have always been interested in it, but never really understood anything about focus distances, apertures, shutter speeds, lighting etc…so prior to my trip I purchased a Canon Powershot A95 – because it has multiple settings…AUTOfocus for those basic snapshots, but also 11 other settings that allow to you adjust the various characteristics of the photograph manually. So I have been slowly reading the manual and trying out new things…see some of my results below. Anyway – the walk on the beach was phenomenal…the rainforest comes right down to the shore in some places, and in others large chunks of volcanic rock remain exposed as the ocean slowly wears them down. Local surfers were out on the waves 10-12 footers were normal at low tide, and there is a small shop to rent boards and take lessons…unfortunately 12 foot waves are not for beginners. I also saw local Tico fisherman, using the throw nets, surf casting for lunch. Parts of the beach that are near where the mountain water runoff forces small rivulets down to the ocean are covered by rocks that the water carries down the mountain slopes. Not yet blasted enough to become sand, yet still worn down to be smooth, I snagged a cool looking one for my collection of rocks from around the world. (yeah I know, I’m a tool :o)

After returning from my photography excursion it was now late morning, and getting really hot, I took another quick shower to cool off and snagged an old, unused lifeguard chair in the shade of the beach side cashew trees and settled in to read until Julie got off work. They let her out early, around 11 instead of 1, and she came back to the beach with a craving for pizza. So we walked a few km to the local pizza joint, and settled in with a Bavaria Dark (as Julie complained of still having a hangover, and the female bartender recommended a BD in the frozen stein as the perfect cure…and it was) So we sat drinking and chatting waiting for our pie, and the bartender puts on the TV and starts watching “Election” the cheesy early 90’s movie with Mathew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon…unfortunately we got sucked it by the twilight zone atmosphere it created…and the bartender and this one other Ex-Pat who owns a construction company down here added to the strange vibe with weird conversation. Needless to say we scarfed our pie and bounced…could not get out of there fast enough. A nice mosey back to the cabina and a swim in the ocean to work off the pie. Spent a ½ hour body surfing some of the smaller waves, and battling the current of the larger ones…it was fun, but definitely tiring (and I didn’t know till I got back to San Jose, that the beach at Dominical is one of the biggest shark areas in the country). So we were lucky to escape with all our limbs :o). After the big meal, and the exercise in the surf we headed back to the cabina for a little nap before the evening. After the rejuvenating nap, we headed to the bar/restaurant for a beer and some cribbage until the rain passed (it rains everyday for like 20-30 minutes in the the afternoon around 4 or 5, and cools everything down, but leaves mudpuddles all over the dirt roads). After whooping Julie in cribbage (she had to teach me the rules again, so I don’t think she was happy to lose both games to the rookie); we headed off to her favorite restaurant in Domincal for dinner (I was hoping fresh seafood, but it was a Thai restaurant…still yummy but expensive). After dinner we walked another few km in the pitch black now – no street lights anywhere in Dominical, to the local dance club where all the TICO’s go to pick up gringos, and vice versa. Again they were playing raggaeton, hiphop and dance music…really loud…but we snagged a Cuba Libre (rum and coke) and grabbed a table to see how things shook out (cause at 10 pm we were still early). After 10 minutes or so – Julie got asked to danced by this Honduran guy Jose Manuel, and he asked me permission to dance with her. Pretty funny. When the song was over he came back to me and offered to buy us a round of drinks…he didn’t speak any English, but between my broken Spanish, and julies Spanish we had some interesting conversation and ended up hanging out with him and his girlfriend the rest of the night. Again we danced until 2 am, including this hilariously awkward 3 person dance where everyone was holding hands and spinning around…absolute riot. Instead of risking walking home on the dark road, we snagged two huge water bottles from the bar, and walked out to the beach where we again headed home along the ocean by moonlight. No swim tonight, we were too tired, but still a great way to end an evening.