Blissfully Wanderlost

Tuesday night we treated ourselves to a nice dinner for our month-a-versary at an elegant ocean-side Italian restaurant called Locanda. The menu:

--cocktails
--ceviche
--cucumber, parmesan and pine nut salad
--seared tuna with pommes frites

Price: $37. Cookies we bought at the corner store and ate in bed: priceless.

Here's a picture of a pre-dinner glass of wine at our hotel, El Rancho de la Playa.

And speaking of food (because I always am), I've been helping out in the restaurant kitchen at the hotel, trying to learn some Tican techniques that I can bring back to the States. Edgardo, my capable chef, helped prepare our remaining bounty from Sunday's mostly uneventful off-shore fishing trip.

For $150, we came back with six small fish and one medium snapper. We slowly nibbled our night a way, crying.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of getting a $50 teeth cleaning at a small, tidy, respectable dentist office in Samara, Costa Rica. No X-rays, no BS, no weeks waiting for an appointment. I have one cavity and one sealant that needs re-sealing. So that's another $80 on Thursday. Whatever. Not bad for three years since my last dentist visit (see above for the implied reasons).

The only difference in the service that I noticed is that the extra strong toothpaste they use is grainier and grapier.

Guess what? I'm coming back for all my dentistry needs in the future. And maybe plastic surgery too.

Not that I need it yet. Exhibit A: body by beans and rice.

We've both lost five pounds since leaving the land of high fructose corn syrup.

At Playa Carrillo, four crazy friends invent a new version of Bocce Ball:

Watch it on youtube here.

And that was the best I ever did.

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.