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Published: December 28th 2007
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In retrospect, this is what we should have called the blog.
**WARNING** Emetophobic readers, this blog contains faintly unpleasant references to nausea and the consequences of drinking to excess
Costa Rican immigration is what you find in the afterlife if you've spent your days sticking pins into kittens and getting on the tube before people have had a chance to get off.
Luckily it only
seemed like we spent an eternity there, and in actual fact it was a shade under 4 hours. This wouldn't have been too bad if it had been for a decent reason, and not a 'lunch break'. Gentle reader, I advice you to seek employment in the Costa Rican civil cervice, for lunch commences at 10:30, and finishes not until 2pm! This makes the French seem like workaholics! Unlike the French, they don't even have decent food and wine as an excuse.
What's more the border 'town' is more like a refugee camp and or rock festival, as you should be able to see from the photos. Our moods weren't improved by a few of life's small blows to the nether regions that day either - such as a taxi ride in
a car that stank of petrol to the point of nausea, a suicidal cab driver, a hangover (Flor de Cana rum is the best in the world!), and nothing to eat all day but fried corn snacks. I could spend a rather entertaining (for me at least!) half our or so listing the mean things I'd like to do to the customs officials. Still, I'm consoling myself that last night they were doubtless visited by the Ghost of Customers Officials Past, Present and Future, and given thorough and unpleasant full cavity searches by all three.
Finally we made it to our destination. Tamarindo is a bit of a cross between some kind of toy town for rich North Americans, and proper bona fide surf resort. On the plus side, the beach is just fabulous. On the negative, up-tight US holiday makers with their extended families being rude to locals, London pricing (this has been the biggest shock!), and dangerous Komodo dragons on every street corner. We've hardly met any Costa Ricans yet!
Having said that, we're still having a fabulous (if very un-festive) Christmas & New Year. It's stinking hot, Natalie is a shade browner than the native
Frickin' bus queue
I've had more fun getting out of Glastonbury. The broken air con leaked on us the whole way. Costa Rican coffee, and we have a very nice wildlife friendly hotel. So far we've seen a skunk (narrowly avoided it's Death Spray by inches - and they do reek), an ENORMOUS Iguana, assorted lizards, and crazy friendly blue birds with enormous tail feathers known as Urraca. Aside: it is physically impossible for anyone from England to say their names correctly, as you need to apply a quite extreme rrrrolling of your rrrrs. My attempts to say this have been the source of much hilarity from the more ornithologically minded locals
We had a very pleasant Christmas eve, as we managed to speak to assorted family and friends (we're back on Skype - drop us a line if you are too), then went for a nice dinner and sampled the potent Cafe Rica aperitif - which is a bit like Kahlua but nicer and served in bigger measures! Christmas morning was then a little slow, but livened up (for me at least) by Natalie's extreme and amusing hangover. Did you know that the official measurement unit for vomit is the tea-spoon? Apparently so!
We finally made it out Surfing & Body Boarding at around lunch time, which was
Worth the hassle?
You've got to admit it's a nice beach! a lot of fun. This is officially a Good Way to Spend Christmas! Coupled with a 4 Cheese Pizza for Christmas dinner, and were as happy as Larry (with a mildly persistent hangover). Mildly miffed to have missed Liz's speech at 9am our time, but I'm guessing she was just banging on about Kite Surfing again. That woman is obsessed.
Update: after a few days at Tamarindo, we were quite glad to move on (despite the surf), and we're now in Playa Samara, which really is the most beautiful beach I've seen so far, but you'll have to take my word for that as my camera has been flat! It's a lot quieter here, and the surf is a bit more erratic, but we're staying in a really nice 'treehouse' style room. It's so nice here that we've canceled our onward trip to Manuel Antonio, and we're going to be spending New Year here. Once again, the animal count: lots of big lizards, birds, and some strange & be-fanged nocturnal Nat-eating beast.
We're now officially very excited about meeting Sarah and Aoife in a week or so at San Jose. We're hopeful we can persuade them to do
a guest blog, so you may not hear from me for a while.
Haaaaaaaaaaaappy New Year!
Jingle Scook xxx
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