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Published: September 17th 2017
Geo: 9.88667, -85.5722
Last night before we let the cab driver go we asked him to pick us up at 7:30 am to take us into Samara for Kate's surfing lesson at Choco's Surf School. By 8:30 he had not arrived and when I called the taxi I had a business card for, courtesy of the local house manager, the person who answered the phone let me know that "he's on a trip to Nicoya (in Spanish)." Hmmm. So we took the map with us this time and walked it. The correct route is a little over 3 miles and doesn't have the hills that we had to climb yesterday. It was, however, very muddy during parts. There is a reason why most cars don't use this route. My favorite part was when we followed the detour through the cow pasture to avoid some of the really big mud puddles. This was obviously a path created and used by the locals. When we got to the river crossing there was a guy going over carrying his mountain bike so we followed him, hoping to avoid unexpected surprises. Our best wildlife siting of the day was a giant yellow/orange iguana that was the
Born to surf
We were all taken with Alex's "cool dude" face while he was surfing. We don't know if his technique is any good, but he looks like a natural to us.size of a medium-sized dog in someone's front yard. It had to be at least 25lbs. I'm sure it doesn't look that large in the pictures, but it was very impressive.
When we got to town Kate was a little worried because she was an hour late for her surf lesson reservation. We assured her multiple times that the culture here does not place high value on punctuality and that since it is the low season Choco would be happy to have her business any time she showed up. Once again, we were right. No one mentioned anything about our tardiness. While Kate got started with her teacher, Shaggy, Mom and the boys stopped at the local equivalent of Smoothie King for a refresher. Smoothies are made with fruit that is available locally and go for between $1-3. Mom got coconut milk and pineapple with yogurt. Alex had apple, banana and strawberries. Josh had . Yum!
Mike attempted to rent two boogie boards, one for him and one for Josh. Choco only had 1 today. The others were at home not making any money. Josh and Dad took turns on it and Alex jumped around in the surf. Kate started getting up
on the board after only about 20 minutes. This got Alex thinking. Near the end of Kate's lesson he announced that he "might like to try surfing." As soon as Shaggy finished with Kate Alex took a lesson. This worked out very well as Kate was able to continue to practice while he learned and Josh kept boogieing. Mom took photos.
After everyone finished they were able to rinse off in a shower that had been installed on the inside of a strangler fig tree right on the bridge. Pretty neat. Choco gets two thumbs up for having a friendly staff that was able to get both kids up on surfboards pretty quickly. When the staff isn't teaching they hang out or they surf. We enjoyed watching those guys ride the waves. They are very impressive.
We ate lunch at the same spot as yesterday as it is 3 meters from the surf school and pretty cheap. We walked back into town to pick ups a couple grocery items and Mom was approached by a guy driving the van we rode in yesterday. He asked if she spoke Spanish and then started a rambling explanation about how our driver was sleeping
and something about 10:30. Mom told him the short version of the morning's story, but offered to let him drive us home if wanted. So, same car, different driver, same result: back at home. Kids headed out the pool for some Marco Polo and Mike went out in search of more red snapper.
Costa Rican menu tip: Josh asked me what "casado" meant. The answer is "married." I always found this a little funny because "estoy casado" (I'm married) is awful close to "estoy cansado" (I'm tired). At any rate, if you order a casado, it is two food items married together, kind of like arroz con pollo. Today we ordered a chicken casado. What we received was rice, beans, a small salad, a kind of succotash and stewed chicken pieces. It was very tasty, but didn't hold a candle to the ceviche.
Addendum to yesterday's entry: we've had another visitor. A pretty good sized bat is in our family room. Since the rest of my family is enjoying the Canadian bats that live in our family cabin in Ontario, I felt closer to them by hosting a bat here as well. He was gracious enough to let me get some really
Our bat
This was taken from across the room good photos.
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Lynne
non-member comment
Wow - look at the surf dudes! That looks like so much fun. Where's Bridget on her board?