Playa Coco Day 2

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We woke up to our new surprise town. What will it look like during the day? Always a treat. The one street we saw last night was filled with touristy restaurants & clothing & trinket shops. It was brightly lit & semi busy.

This morning it seems less big & busy. We walked to the dive shops to see if we could dive today. The two we spoke with were all booked up for today so we decided to just hang out at the beach today & dive tomorrow. We had delicious coffee & pastries at a little Panaderia & sat outside. We walked through all of town & saw the beach. It is sooo dry & hot here. All the hills are brown & look burnt. The bay is pretty though & the beaches are black sand. The town definitely caters to the gringos. There's all kinds of signs in English & lots of burger places.

We decided to rent bikes & go check out a beach nearby called Playa Ocotal. After we got our bikes, which were super cute little Cruisers, mine was purple! & had a cute little white basket on the front. It was perfect! Before we headed to the beach we ran a few errands. We dropped our laundry off with a lavanderia (laundrymat). Almost every town has a place you can take your clothes & they will wash & dry them for you. Typically we've had our clothes hung dry, which is the standard in this part of the world, but the last few places have had dryers so we get to pick our clothes up the same day.

Somewhere along our travels, in the beginning, we came across our laundry bag. It is a thick strong plastic bag that has always held our dirty laundry. We've always asked for it back & a few times had to wait while they searched for it & removed other clothes to return ours to it. The other thing about laundry service is that there has never ever been a time where we gave our laundry to a man. Always, 100%, a woman takes the clothes (& it's probably safe to assume she washes them as well). Also, only in the past few places we've been have people had washing machines. Most times our clothes have been hand washed. I always ask for extra soap because they really seem to skimp & our clothes could use extra soap. Today was, by far, the most we've paid to have our clothes washed. Welcome to Costa Rica where everything is expensive. It cost $9 for 3 kilos. The most we've ever paid is $5 & it was a time when literally every bit of clothing was dirty. Oh well at least it will be clean & hopefully smell good. I asked for extra soap & told the lady our clothes were muy stinky. We'll see!

Our next stop was the pharmacy for dramamine. I am not getting seasick on the dive boat tomorrow. Whenever we do the surface interval on the boat I have been having problems. It's annoying because it's all so new. I never used to get seasick. Better safe than sorry though so I will be prepared.

Now that all our errands are done we headed out to Playa Ocotal which is set in another little bay just south of us. We were expecting a pretty simple bike ride, that's what it looked like on the map anyway. However, there were several hills that kicked our booties. The heat combined with the hills, combined with how out of shape I am. Whew. There were moments of stopping in the shade & one point where I had to walk my bike. But it was fun & Playa Ocotal is pretty.

The beach is pretty small & set in a little bay. The hills in this region are completely brown & dry. There's nothing green. I guess during the dry season they dry up completely. We locked up our bikes & walked along the beach to the end where we met a gringo family who watched our stuff while we snorkeled. Apparently the second you leave your stuff unattended here it disappears. We ate our cinnamon roll & headed out to the ocean. The snorkeling was super fun. We saw a ton of Puffers of various sizes & colors & just a bunch of fish that are totally different than the Caribbean fish. The water isn't nearly as clear but there was an abundance of fish. Now we're super excited to dive tomorrow. Once we were done snorkeling & back on the beach we realized we forgot any sunblock. Good work! It's only supposed to be 102 today & there aren't any clouds in the sky. Smart! Oh well, we hid in the shade some & swam as much as possible. We met a couple of guys from Victoria BC & took turns snorkeling & watching one anothers things. Our second snorkel outing was a lot of work. The tide was shifting & the current was really strong. Without fins we were working pretty hard. The currents are definitely stronger here anyway so tomorrow with diving should be interesting.

By this time we had worked up a substantial apetite so we headed to the only restuarant on the beach, a little afraid of what the prices would be like, but when you are starving what do you do? The restaurant is called Father Rooster & wasn't too spendy (well not much more than the normal prices here in C.R.). We ordered fish & chips & a strawberry smoothie. Both things were probably the best we've ever had. The fish pieces were huge & there's no way we could have each eaten a plate, good thing we were sharing. It was yummy & could possibly be better than Ivar's.

Back on our bikes & on the return trip less hills thankfully. On the ride back I was wearing my hat & had put my sarong on like a cape to protect my already burnt shoulders from more sun. Looking at my shadow reminded me of the wicked witch of the west from Wizard of Oz. So, of course, I began singing her theme song in my head, duhnuhduhnuhduhnuhnuh. A few seconds later Geoff said I looked like the witch. It was a great theme song for the ride home and was cracking me up, which is always fun. Back in Playa Coco we rode around & checked out the rest of the town before we had to return the bikes. We also bought some super glue to glue together Geoff's brand new sunglasses that are already broken. Bad sunglass karma seems to follow Geoff. We also bought him a new baseball hat since his got stolen & his nose is like Rudolph right now. Not good. We stopped by the laundry ladys house & picked up our clothes. They smell good! Yippee!

After returning our bikes (to the nuttiest American Expats who were both total chain smokers & each had a bit of a twitch when talking. They were a little weird but very entertaining. One of the guys told me he just tolerates living here because he's on disability & can't work in the US. Whatever that means, weirdo.) we went back to our hotel & showered. I love cold showers in this heat. No complaints whatsoever, it's just about the only time I am totally comfortable. Geoff says he would like warm showers. Not me, it drops the core temperature down to something a little more manageable for a few minutes anyway.

We headed out to the highly recommended & always popular "Lucky Burguer" (that's how the sign spelled it, I just forgot to take a picture, darnit!). There we had a plate of nachos with fake cheese (why haven't I learned to ask what kind of cheese they use?) & really good chicken & Geoff had a Crunch Dog, which we thought would be like a Corndog but it was nothing like that. It was a normal hot dog, smothered in fake cheese & broken up tortilla chips with whatever toppings you wanted (Geoff opted for relish, because that's almost never an option, ketchup, mustard, mayo, & hot sauce). It was a really unhealthy meal to follow a day of diving but what can you do?

We then headed out to find a restaurant with wifi to reconnect with the outside world. It's been awhile. We found a bar called Coconutz with great wifi & 4 hours of happy hour.Perfect! Around sunset a large group of Howler Monkies were climbing through the trees above the bar. It just reminds you that you are right next to jungle. Supposedly they cross through town just bout every evening. I watched one of them pee right above one of the tables in the bar. Ick. After catching up on email, blogs, & the outside world (we even read a little Perez Hilton randomly) we were starving again & went in search of food. We ended up at Pollo Crispy ordering fried chicken. Surprise surprise. It was recommended to us as a cheap eats place by Mr. Canada & it smelled really good.

We ate our fried chicken back at our room & called it a night. We're sore & sleepy from our bike, swim, over-sunned day. Time for sleep!

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Photos

Fish N' Chips!
Better than Ivar's & more than enough to share.

Geoff & his Cruch Dog.
Yes, that would be a hot dog w/ tortilla chips.

Kassandra & a plate a of nachos.
How many times have we seen that...?

Fried Chicken!
Just another healthy meal.