Costa Rica 2011 - Back in Paradise!

Back in Paradise!

The shuttle ride into town had an eerie familiarity except this time I was the seasoned traveler giving tips on touring Costa Rica and the hot spots in Tamarindo.  My excited traveling companions from Louisiana took in every exotic site along the way and savored their first Imperial beer, pleasantly surprised how good it tasted.  Something about a full day of travel and a warm summer night (although this is Costa Rica’s “winter”) can make any cold beer taste heavenly!

I practiced my rusty Spanglish on our patient and very friendly shuttle driver whom seemed quite willing to have me fumble around for the right words in Spanish, as broken and halting as it is.  We settled on Gary speaking Spanish and I would respond in English – a win/win!  Like many Ticos, Gary works a few jobs to support his family and, naturally, one of those is as a surf instructor.  There may be more surf instructors (per capita) in Tamarindo than lawyers in Washington D.C.  And they all are too eager to take on a new client.

This morning, after 12 hours of blissfully rejuvenating sleep, I enjoyed Costa Rican café on my third floor balcony where a surf report is not only unnecessary but far less accurate than an eye-witness of the conditions – height of the waves, direction of the surf, and quality of the on shore breeze.  Living across the street from some of the best surfing in Costa Rica (this is the surf spot featured in Endless Summer 2) is one of the better decisions in my life!

I strolled around town reconnecting with old amigos and happy to see some of the same faces and places as last summer, including my favorite smoothie place where I ordered my usual – a large mango smoothy – just fresh mangoes and crush iced blended into a perfect breakfastJ  Even the trip to the Super Mercado offered some of the same fare and friendly faces that I greeted almost daily last summer, picking up fresh fruit, veggies, and fresh fish.

Of course, some things have changed.  Sharky’s, where they catered to Gringos with beer pong and karaoke, was leveled in favor of a much studier structure for an undisclosed business.  Truth be told, I liked Sharky’s for the company of other American while watching the NBA and NHL playoffs last summer, and most of the World Cup.  In fact, I recall watching the NHL finals with some diehard Chicago Black Hawk fans, dedicated enough to wear Black Hawks (full weight, regulation) hockey jerseys throughout the game in spite of 80 degree weather in a crowded bar without air conditioning!  They were rewarded with a Stanley Cup victory and I was edified to see how sportmanslike they were to the Flyers fans in the audience who suffered through another defeat. 

Likewise, Godfather’s Pizza suffered a similar fate to Sharky’s perhaps catering too much to the seasonal gringo influx with nontraditional fare that seemed only to attract Americans homesick for a taste of the States.  In its place now is a more traditional pasteliceria, a tantalizing pastery shop I will no doubt frequent after a long day of surfingJ