September 2011

It has been a difficult last few days, as you can see in the picture below.

We decided to move to the Rancho a la Playa yesterday and got a fantastic rate here because it is the off season. We now have a great little room with a small private bathroom, cute kitchenette, and adjoining restaurant that has great local food (casados) starting at 2000 colones, which is about $4.

We decided to stay in Samara for the next two weeks as we both really love it here. The beach is amazing, we are pampered because we are one of 10 tourists in town, and we are getting incredible deals on everything. I think in the next few days we may try sport fishing or horseback riding with our new Canadian friends.

Yesterday we were adopted by a dog we decided to name Tio Pepe. He followed Kevin home from the beach and tends to wait for us either outside our door or our new hotel, Rancho de la Playa.

Tio Pepe loves to follow us on walks to the beach or even out for evening dessert.
We have both decided that life as a dog in Costa Rica must be really fun. They cruise the beach, adopt stray tourists, chill with the other neighborhood dogs, and very rarely bark.

One of the ways we spend our mornings is looking for areas to work out, using rocks, coconuts, logs, driftwood, etc.

We thought we would use the above log-gym, but then just down the beach we found an actual MUSCLE BEACH gym with barbells made from log trimmings. It also has a pull up bar and dead lift station.

I think we will return there tomorrow for more jungle gym action!

Well, it's getting towards 4pm here. This is typically the time we head down to the local Spanish school for tourists which has yoga and Latin dancing classes for $2 per person. How can you go wrong with a deal like that? I think Tio Pepe may join us to get his Om groove on today

Samara is home to some great, laid-back people, some gentle surf surrounded by an amazing rocky bay, and some funky art produced by the school children of the local grade school.

"The world is friendly for those who are also friendly."

Samara is the only town I have seen in this week or remember from two years ago in Costa Rica that has a weekly beach clean up on Saturdays. And while all of Costa Rica has engaged in a campaign against plastic bottles, Samara has a more fervent and home-grown version going on.

Every early evening crowds of young men play a [dis]organized game of soccer on the beach at low tide. A language and cultural school provides cheap (like $2) drop-in latin dance and yoga classes to college age visitors and retired ex-pats from North America, Germany, and Italy.

We keep seeing bizarre (to us) hybrid animals like this guy:

So we're just a little smitten with this place. Can you tell?

Oh, and we keep cracking up at this sign.

After our final very lazy day on Tamarindo, where we were owners of a hostel for about 6 hours, we were gracefully told that the hostel was closing and that we'd have to find greener pastures.

Who would want to close this view?
So we, as well as the other beach bums who had been living there for the last 6 months, were kicked to the curb!
It was a good time to bid Tamarindo a fond farewell and began our 4 hour journey to Samara!
Because direct roads along the coast are practically non-existent, we took a bus from Tamarindo and then made transfers in Santa Cruz and Nicoya, then finally arrived in Samara. Wandering around small towns in Costa Rica with random tourists is a unique experience!

Well it's time to walk down to Town (population 243?) and check out the local action. We may even find a yoga class here!

PS - written by Liz

Our hostel, Beach House, has two awesome dogs: Skinny and Kung Fu. The names pretty much sum it up because one is skinny and the other does kung fu. Por supuesto. We haven't seen the monkeys yet, but apparently they fight over monkey poop. But they fight over everything so I guess that makes sense.

This nice point is about five kilometers from our door so we were tired in this picture!

Here's how we spent our first morning in Costa Rica: playing hookey from school at the parque, flirting with the public art and wildlife, and doing pull-ups on the jungle gym.

Like this!

I eat rust:

Liz is an athlete.

And Kevin is not.

But he sure can nap.