Costa Rica Day 4-- Tamarindo

Today we decided to just explore another beach about 20 minutes away called Tamarindo.

AKA The land of the Hairy Hills!

Tamarindo is a famous surfing spot and there was a lot more to do there than in Flamingo. We started out by grabbing some breakfast, changing some money (our first time, actually. Everywhere takes American dollars, but then they give us change in colones, so I'm sure we weren't getting the best exchange rate that way) and then looked around at some of the shops.

I bought these two cool handed painted & carved vases off a street vendor.

The boys had to wait for awhile while Becca and I picked out our vases and bartered "un buen precio" with the guy.

The taller vase has "Costa Rica Pura Vida" inscribed around the lip and features a fishie of sorts.

(I don't know why it's loading sideways...)

The smaller vase has a seaturtle...

... and a cashew fruit.

I had no idea cashews grew like this! I actually found out about it at the dive shop where they actually had a cashew tree. The seed of this fruit is what we know as the cashew, but straight off the tree they're coated with some kind of toxin. So they aren't edible until the toxin is roasted off. Crazy, eh?

We also found a yummy smoothie shop that we frequented (as per the boys request... hot, blonde Russian lady working there...)

Quite refreshing!

After that we headed to the beach but is was so blasted hot and there weren't any waves really expected until high tide around 3pm. Poor Burke had to do his favorite activity...

... keep his fair skin out of the sun!

We also saw these guys:

Note the tiny sandcastle construction on the left...
Proof that ALL manboys play in the sand!

Caleb and I both wanted to try surfing, which meant we had some time to kill before we could even do that. So we found an activity to do! There's a river that runs into the ocean at Tamarindo and up the river is an estuary of sorts with a bunch of wild animals and things to see.

So we took a $18/person two hour boat ride up this river...

and saw crocodiles!!! (three of them, about 5 or 6 feet long)

...tons of (egret?) birds,

(We caught this guy in flight!)

(This guy was spread eagle looking upward... way cooler than the picture we caught!)

(See him perched up in the tree?)

...and MONKEYS!!!



Love it love it love it!

Our tour guide was really funny too! He wanted us to pay extra if he got the monkeys to howl. I'm sure he was probably full of a ton of crap when it came to $$ but the timing was perfect for our plans. And he gave us fresh cut pineapple at the end of the tour and pineapple makes everything better!

But the BEST part of our river tour was that we made a lifelong dream of Becca's come true!

We saw mangroves...

Perhaps you are like me and are wondering what mangroves are...
Pretty much they're trees growing out of the water. Or something.

I just wished they would have been more true to they're name... a grove of men, just waiting for me to pick one out for myself. THAT would be a dream come true for me!

Oh well.

I did think these crabs chillin' on the branches were pretty cool though.

Anyway, the tour was a good use of our time and when we got back, it was time to rent the surfboards and try out the waves! It's kind of sad how little I know about surfing, seeing that I was raised in Southern California. And I'm too cheap to pay for lessons, so I just rented a long board for 5 bucks for 2 hours and tried my best... and after messing around for a couple hours, I'd like to share with you my 3 step guide to surfing!

Step One: Paddle, Paddle, Paddle

Step Two: Attempt to stand up


Step Three: Fail (or fall... whatever, same diff)

Repeat steps until exhausted.

But, hey, I can say that I "surfed" in Tamarindo! :)

I grew up boogie boarding and can do that fairly well, as was demonstrated:

Every time I'd "catch" a wave, I'd forget to stand up because I'm so use to boogie boarding.
But, I had fun either way!

Caleb was out there for about an hour and I stayed about an hour and a half. I could have stayed out there longer except everyone else was hot and tired and wanted to go. I really like being out there! The water was so nice and warm and it felt good on my sunburn.

That night we went out looking for a restaurant and found this place:

Outback Jack's: Australian Road Kill & Grill

And we also found this guy:

I took this picture with you in mind, Jill Jill...

In case you didn't notice the date of this post, it happened to be St. Patrick's Day and Outback Jack's happened to be the place to be! I think we were there for 45 minutes before deciding to leave. In that 45 minutes, all they did was find us a table. And that's it. No waters, no menus. They were just too busy and since we didn't really care about the gluttonous alcohol ridden holiday (no offense, Jill), we left. We did make it back there later in our trip. It was ok, but you definitely go to a place like that for the atmosphere.

So, if you haven't noticed, I don't post much about the evenings of our trip. Honestly, the evenings would get kind of boring, especially since we don't drink or gamble. I found some cheap dice and got Becca & Burke to play some Farkle with me.

I don't remember who won, but apparently Becca had a good roll!

So a word to the non-alcoholic, non-gamblers:
Bring something to do at night.

Or else plan on sleeping 12+ hours at night...
not a bad option either!