On our last week in Tamarindo, I ended up with the first souvenir of our year and a half on the road. I took a pottery class and learned the traditional art of making Chorotega Pottery.

Chorotega Pottery can be found everywhere throughout Costa Rica’s Guanacaste province. From gift shops to beach hawkers, this traditional form of pottery is one of Costa Rica’s most popular souvenirs (next to coffee of course). It’s ancient methods have been passed down from generation to generation and are still used today to make beautifully intricate pieces.

I spent a couple of days at the Tamarindo Pottery Studio making my very own piece. It was all done with a hand wheel and traditional tools like corn husks, plus a lot of help from Arbin, who owns the shop.

If you find yourself in Costa Rica, and are looking for a unique experience I highly recommend spending a few days with Arbin in his studio. I had a great time, and ended up with a piece I’m really proud of, that will forever remind me of our six months in Costa Rica. What more could you want in a souvenir?

You can see more pictures and learn more about the studio and my experience over at my craft blog TalkCraftyToMe.com.

Related posts:

1. Week 56: Costa Rica and our “Casa del Surf”
2. Random Factoid: Pura Vida
3. Our ATV Tour from Tamarindo

We got on the local bus to Liberia at 9am which meanders in and out of each town on the way to it’s destination; picking up and dropping off school children, workers, and food and drink vendors as it goes. Liberia is approximately an hour away from Tamarindo by car, but the local bus takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours to get there. We got off the bus before Liberia at the turn off to Playas del Coco (shortly after Filadelfia) and switched buses. Our next bus came along within 45 minutes and we continued on through Sardinal. Within a half hour, we had completed our 3.5 hour journey arriving at Coco.

First off, we stopped in at Deep Blue Diving and arranged for 2 local dives the next morning to check out the area. They quickly took care of the paperwork and fitted us with gear. At $100 USD per person for two local dives and gear rental, it’s more expensive than most of the Asia dive rates we’re familiar with, but seems to be the norm in Costa Rica. Though they did arrange a discount rate for us with the hotel where they do their pool training (La Puerta del Sol) and were kind enough to drive us and our bags there in the shop truck.

After a brain wracking check-in; due to us forgetting our passports at the house in Tamarindo, we wandered into town searching for lunch. Kelly and I have pretty much figured out our go-to dishes for a typical local menu. Kelly will opt for a chicken burrito, while I lean towards a casado con pollo (A typical Costa Rican meal with rice, black or red beans, salad, a chicken fillet, and a fried plantain or banana). Accompanied with a couple Pilsen beers, we quickly recovered from the earlier trek, but headed back to the hotel to beat the 36°C midday heat.

La Puerta del Sol has a large salt water pool where we worked on our sunburns for a while, after which we scoped out the sports bar for the upcoming Super Bowl game. Chatting with a few expats and tourists, we found the scene was quite different from Tamarindo. While Tamarindo is a laid back little surf town and most of the people there are backpackers and surfers traveling on the cheap, Playas del Coco has an older expat and family vacation feel with larger resorts, souvenir tables and shops leading to the beach, and golf carts roaming the streets. Kelly and I stuck around for another round, then sat down at a local pizzeria for dinner before an early turn in to prepare for out set of dives the next day.

Waking up the next morning, we prepped, had a bite to eat, and headed to the beach for our 8AM departure. Upon arrival, we found that we were the only divers going out that day which is a bit of a blessing and a curse. We hate diving in large groups because of the underwater traffic. All those fins can kick up a lot of sand into Kelly’s photos, but at the same time we view diving as one of the few social activities that gets us out of the house and we’ve been home bound a lot with work lately. Deep Blue ferried us out to the dive boat, which had a great dive setup with lots of room and a rear jump deck. Our gear was already assembled and waiting; another thing I’m slightly torn about. I like the service, but I prefer to set up my own gear just to give it a once over and make sure everything is working and done right.

Fifteen minutes later we were at our first site called ‘Punta Argentina’. We geared up, did a safety check and jumped in, where I found that my regulator had a slow leak. I’ve found it’s a pretty common occurrence with rental gear and not a big deal, but as we descended I found it kept a steady stream of bubbles in-front of my mask. I fiddled with it for five minutes or so before switching to my secondary regulator. Bubbles gone, I could finally take advantage of the 20m visibility.

The dive sites we’ve visited in Costa Rica’s north Pacific region are volcanic and lacking in any real reef structure from what I’ve seen. Our DM pointed out 2 clown shrimp, but that was pretty much the only macro life we saw on any of our 4 Playas del Coco dives. What was in abundance was porcupine fish and rays. I’ve never seen so many porcupine fish crawling the rocks and every few minutes you’d see spotted eagle rays and stingrays approaching from the blue. Sitting atop the sand, there was plenty of skate and we sniffed out a couple of moray eels among the rocks.

About 30 minutes into the dive, we came across a large stingray with 2 spears protruding straight up from it’s back. Kelly didn’t want to take a picture of a dead stingray and we were going to move on before realizing it was still alive! The spears were two different types so my thinking is that someone shot it, failed to kill it and at a later date someone else attempted to put it out of its misery after seeing the first spear, but also failed. The resilient ray swam off, leaving us saddened about the whole situation.

One additional perk to diving with Deep Blue: They don’t have a dive time limit. Too often, we’ve been restricted to 45 minutes and have still had another 15-20 minutes or more of air remaining. If I’ve paid for the whole tank, I’d like to use it! All within safety limits of course, but I find the 45 minute rule ridiculous. At around 1000 PSI, we did our safety stop and came up after 57 minutes below. We swapped my leaky regulator with a spare, had some water, pineapple, a couple cookies, and lounged in the sun, chatting with our DM about Cocos Island where he’s had the opportunity to lead dives with the hammerheads. Unfortunately the price point is keeping us away. At $4000 per person for a week of liveaboard diving, we’ll have to pass it by this trip.

The second dive of the day was at a site called “Tortuga” (Turtle). We descended to 20m, circling a pinnacle of volcanic rock. More eagle rays and stingrays floated around us and as we came over a crest of rocks we found four 1.5m white tipped reef sharks resting on the sand below us. Circling around them, we lay on the bottom briefly then moved in for some pictures. Swimming away from the pinnacle, our DM lead us to a fairly large wreck which I poked my head into. Yup, full of puffers. Drifting the length of the ship and peering over the bow, we found ten white tip reef sharks resting in the sand below. We returned to the shallows of the pinnacle and spent the rest of the dive peering in holes for golden moray eels.

After the two great dives, we signed up for another two the following day and returned to town to get dried out and have a deco beer. That night, we went to the Papagayo steakhouse where Kelly and I both ordered the surf and turf. When our plates arrive, we each had two 6 ounce steak fillets and 4 good sized shrimp, plus sides. Kelly couldn’t even start her second steak. An impressive plate for $20 each, but perhaps a little overkill. If you’re coming to Costa Rica, be prepared for some huge portion sizes. It’s rare that we finish a meal here.

The following day, we arrived at the beach to find a group of 10 people waiting for the dive boat. Thankfully, three of them were headed to the Catalina Islands on the alternate boat and two of the others were doing courses so it was just five of us fun diving together, perfect. We drove a little farther out to sea than the previous day to a site called ‘Virador’. Jumping in, we found that the visibility had worsened considerably since the previous day to 10m at the most. Much the same as the day before, puffers, rays, moray eels, and skate. Just much harder to photograph and find.

Our final dive was at Punta Argentina again, but began a little further east at ‘La Cruz’. Again, with the limited visibility we saw much the same as the day before, just less of it. Kelly did come across an octopus wedged deep in-between two boulders, but he wasn’t interested in posing for us.

That evening, we went to La Dolce Vita for another pizza and watched the Super Bowl (and a Canadian expat at the next table losing $500). Go Saints!

The following day we checked out and walked to the bus stop for the 3 hour trip home. On our way there, we saw a sign at a tourist info center that would arrange $20 shuttle transfers to Tamarindo every hour. What sounded like a great deal and would have saved us 2 hours was too good to be true. After waiting for the owner to show up for an hour (Ah, tico time… Pura vida!) and missing the 9AM bus, we left to catch the 10AM bus back to Tamarindo via Liberia.

All in all, we had 4 very nice dives with some larger ocean life at Playas del Coco. The lack of macro life is unfortunate and with the widely varying visibility and higher costs, the diving in Costa Rica has been a little hit and miss. But I’m glad we had the opportunity to get back in the water and it’s added to my anticipation for diving in Roatan, Honduras on the Caribbean side of Central America where we’ll be moving in a few short weeks.

Related posts:

1. Week 14: Diving, diving, and more diving
2. Week 47: Diving Sipadan and Mabul
3. Our ATV Tour from Tamarindo

Lately, aside from taking 3 weeks off in December for Xmas holidays, we’ve been keeping our noses buried in our computers 6 days a week and sticking to our new exercise schedule of an hour each day. Saturdays are a designated day off now. We were having problems coordinating downtime between the two of us before the holidays and decided we needed to have a day each week where we wouldn’t think about work or working out and could just head to the beach, or out for brunch together.

Kelly has also been busily posting great crafty content on her craft blog – Talk Crafty To Me – ‘Dedicated to all things handmade’.

I hope you’re all keeping busy back home. We’re wishing some sunshine your way!

Want to know what we’ve been working on? Check out our online portfolios:
Kelly – FightLikeAGirl.net
Mike – ASFlasher.com

Related posts:

1. Week 57: Workout Week
2. Interviewed by JetSetCitizen.com
3. Random Factoid: Pura Vida

Below are just a few of those memories, as we look back and reminisce over an amazing 2009.

We rang in the New Year with some friends at a beach resort in the Philippines. We had some great dives in January, made some new friends, rented a motorbike, and celebrated my 30th birthday.

February continued in the Philippines, where we saw some of the worst rain and flooding in 30 years. We spent much of the month partying with friends, both new and old, before saying goodbye and heading to Kuala Lumpur for the next phase of our trip.

March 1st we arrived in Phuket, Thailand, where we spent 2 weeks enjoying the food, the beach and the water. We took a cooking class, went diving and did lots of relaxing. We then headed over to Koh Samui, where Mike’s computer broke, and as a result we ended up staying a bit longer than expected.

April was a month of diving. We headed to Koh Tao, which brought back loads of memories from my first trip there. We rented an apartment for a month, caught up with a few friends from the Philippines, and of course the highlight of the month was definitely seeing a whale shark.

In May, we rounded out our time in Thailand, with a couple more weeks in Koh Samui. We saw a Muai Thai match, did a bit of sight seeing, and woke up to our bungalow being torn down around us. We hit a bit of a low point this month and were looking forward to a change of scenery in Bali, (after a quick stop in Bangkok). Our arrival in Bali was marked by a beautiful hotel with a swim up bar!

June continued in Bali, where we ran into Aimee, a friend from Vancouver. I took a jewelry class in Ubud, and we went for a dive with Manta Rays. Mike’s computer broke again, just before we were due to head to Penang, so we changed our flights and made a quick stop in KL first. In Penang we ate! We visited the butterfly garden, hit the beach, and ate some more.

July was another month of diving and one of my favourite months of the year. After a month in Penang with no diving we were itching to get back in the water. We headed to the Perhentian Islands first, where we did 3 days of diving. Nothing that blew us away, but it was a good warm up for what was to come next. Sipadan! We spent 5 days in Mabul, and got to dive the amazing island of Sipadan twice. If you haven’t seen our dive video definitely check it out.

August was another great month. We spent the first couple weeks in Kota Kinabalu and did an amazing motorbike trip (definitely Mike’s highlight of the year). I visited the Orang-utan sanctuary at Rasa Ria, and we ate Dim Sum in Hong Kong. August also rounded out our year in Asia. We headed back to Canada for a quick visit with family and friends, and I finally got to meet my new nephew.

The first few weeks of September were spent catching up with friends we hadn’t seen in a year. It was great to see everyone, but we were excited to get back on the road. We flew from Vancouver to Costa Rica with a plan to stay for 6 months.

October was a really low key month. With all the traveling, and moving around of the previous few months, it was great to settle down and just chill. We found a fantastic apartment and became hermits for the month, with the occasional trip to the beach, of course.

Lauren came to visit us in November and made us feel like tourists again. We did a canopy tour in Arenal, held snakes in Monteverde, and drank copious amounts of booze on a catamaran in Tamarindo. And, like good little Canadians, we watched the Grey Cup game at Sharky’s Bar.

And last but not least… December. After 3 months in Costa Rica, it was time to renew our visas so we did a quick run to Nicaragua. We spent a few days exploring Granada, and enjoying the rum, before heading back to Tamarindo. We took some time off to enjoy the holidays, Mike took a surf lesson, we went on an ATV tour and of course made the most of living so close to the beach.

All-in-all it’s been an amazing year, and I can’t believe it’s the end of a decade! I hope your 2009 was as memorable as ours, and that your 2010 is even better!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo Amigos!

Related posts:

1. Week 18: Hello 2009!
2. The result of a quarter-life crisis
3. Nomadic Professionals – Interviewed by The Professional Hobo

We ran over the basic controls; pretty familiar for a motorcycle rider, and took the ATVs for a quick test lap around the property. Because of the lack of counter steering on an ATV, it wasn’t immediately as intuitive for me as a motorcycle, but I got the hang of it soon enough.

We took off at a beginners pace, driving on some fairly simple dirt roads and a bit of tarmac. We then crossed a washed out road full of water and began tackling some more challenging inclines, ruts, and loose gravelly sections. Pushing through one particular puddle, I splashed water up onto the engine which super heated it and then onto my bare legs. Ouch! Shortly after, Kelly got a little over ambitious and ended up in the bushes for a bit. A few prickles, but no real harm done.

We drove on for about an hour, picking up speed and confidence as we went, eventually arriving at our destination: “Bahia de los Piratas” – Pirate Beach, a small beach amongst the cliffs east of Tamarindo. We we’re covered in dust and everyone in our group of 8 had a spectacular dirt beard, so we stripped down to our swim gear and plunged into the surf.

On the trip home, I opened up the ATV a bit more. Racing through some mud, over some craggy steep hills, and even a few small jumps, drifting, and power slides. All in all, it was a great excursion and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a little fuel injected fun.

Related posts:

1. Learning to surf at Tamarindo Beach
2. Week 59 & 60: Chillin’ in Tamarindo
3. Nicaragua Visa Run from Tamarindo

We started off catching the local bus to Liberia from Tamarindo around 11am. It meanders through each locality on its way to Liberia and took us around 2.5 hours to arrive at the main bus station. A quick taxi ride back one station brought us to where the road from Tamarindo meets the main highway. Having no idea where we were, we had just missed our stop. The cost for the 1 minute taxi ride nearly equaled the $3 we had paid for our 2 hour bus trip. We stopped for a bite to eat at the restaurant beside the Ticabus stop and awaited 3:30 when the bus from San Jose to Nicaragua was supposed to arrive. 2 hours late, the bus finally showed up around 5:30. We kicked a couple people out of our seats and 6 hours after we began, we were finally on our way to Nicaragua!

An hour from the border, we began passing the queue of semi-trucks. Some of them would be waiting days for their turn to cross border inspection. There being only 2 lanes, we were passing in the oncoming lane and often had to stop while the bus driver finessed the bus past traffic on the soft shoulder.

Arriving at the border and exiting the bus to obtain our exit stamps, we were bombarded by money exchangers snapping their wads of Nicaraguan Cordobas. We then had to go through Nicaraguan customs where the bus was unloaded and searched. We gave our passports to the customs official and with our few bags, limited Spanish, and repeating “Turistas, turistas…” we were simply waved through.

A few short hours later, we arrived in Granada and grabbed a cab to our quaint colonial hotel near the central park, appropriately named “The Colonial Hotel”. 12 hours after leaving the house, we had arrived approximately 200km from our starting point. Kelly and I are pretty easy going, but our first experience with bus travel in Central America had proved to be a test of patience.

Granada itself is a quaint colonial city on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. It reminded us very much of our favourite town in Brazil, Paraty. Plenty of places to stop for a drink or a bite to eat. Many of them set up in the courtyard gardens of the old colonial homes. We wandered around the downtown district for a few days exploring the local markets, the bell tower of a church which gave a spectacular view of the city, and stopping in various cafes and street side bars with tables set up on the sidewalks.

At one of these sidewalk tables we met a local brother and sister with her American husband who were having a round of ‘Micheladas’. It’s a Latin American drink, sort of similar to having a Caesar or a Red Rooster with breakfast. A rumoured hangover cure (or just a refreshing afternoon drink), it’s made by pouring a beer into the juice of one lemon, a dash of soya sauce, Worcestershire, and Tabasco, salt, pepper, and ice. Some insist on adding a shot of tequila as well. It won’t replace Caesars for us Canadians, but it’s a nice alternative when Clamato juice is scarce.

I’m also a fan of the local Nicaraguan rum, which I was introduced to on my previous trip to Costa Rica 7 years ago. It’s made in Chichigalapa (just outside of Leon, about 2 hours north of Granada) at the Flor de Caña distillery. We tried to arrange a tour but unfortunately it wasn’t open on Sunday, or wasn’t open for just the 2 of us. We’re not sure which. It was the last day we had available for a tour before we headed home, so we opted instead for a boat ride amongst the nearby islands on Lake Nicaragua.

We were driven around a maze of small islands and given a fairly lengthy lesson of Granada’s history by our guide. We stopped to roam an old fort and then floated around multi-million dollar homes owned by Nicaragua’s elite, stopping to feed a troop of monkeys that were rescued by a doctor who resides on a nearby island. At one point, we were given the option to go for a swim… but after seeing the amount of trash on the shores and viewing the framed jaws of the bull sharks that apparently still patrol the waters of Lake Nicaragua, we passed and stayed dry.

After 5 days in Granada, we boarded the Ticabus again to return to Costa Rica. Things began a little smoother with the bus arriving from Managua on-time around 1pm. We went through the border and arrived in Liberia around 7pm. We had some conflicting information on when the last bus to Tamarindo was, so we ended up waiting for 2 hours with a group of surfers who were also en-route to Tamarindo, before it became apparent we had missed the last bus. We arranged for a large van to drive all 9 of us (plus bags and surfboards) home. It was a tight fit in a slow van, but eventually we arrived home around 10pm. Only 9 hours this time… not bad! ;)

We’re happy to be back with the comforts of home and have since spent nearly everyday on the beach soaking up the sun. It’s unlikely we’ll need to do another visa run following the next 3 months since we’ll be moving on, but we will have to follow the same route once more when we make our transition to Honduras. Now that I’m in the know, I’ll be packing a few Micheladas to-go to ease the journey.

A few more Granada pictures:

Related posts:

1. Our ATV Tour from Tamarindo
2. Week 56: Costa Rica and our “Casa del Surf”
3. Week 59 & 60: Chillin’ in Tamarindo

Saturday came around and Kelly and I wandered down to the beach to find that a huge swell had come in and the usual 1-3 foot waves had turned into some monster 5-7 foot waves and bigger! I wandered into a surf shop to see if a lesson was doable in those conditions and they convinced me that by 3pm things would probably have calmed down a bit.

Normal wave size:

Freakishly large wave size:

3pm came around and not much had changed on the intimidating surf front, but I went ahead anyway since I had already paid and gotten my free t-shirt. I put my rash guard on and had a quick briefing on the finer points of surfing like the importance of covering your face if you stand too close to the front of the board causing the nose end to bury in the sand, converting a surf board into a catapult…

The two other students and I entered the water, pushing our boards ahead of us over the first few waves. After a few attempts at standing up on the board as the instructor pushed us ahead of the surf, it was apparent that I have absolutely no sense of balance. The other two students were fairing much better than I was, so the instructor went back to the shop to get me a bigger (the biggest) board.

For the next hour and a half, I managed to get up on my mammoth surfboard 8 or 10 times, more often ending up doing a push-up to back flop into the water. The few times I did get up, it was a relatively short ride due to the crowd of other tourists in the water. But really, I was exhausted after the first half hour of fighting that beast of a board out through the huge waves to a point where I could hop on.

I’ll be giving it another go in the near future since it wasn’t ideal conditions for learning this time out. All in all, my first surfing attempt was generally a frustrating and tiring experience. I walked away from it with some skinned knees, a tweaked shoulder, and considerably more respect for those people who made it seem so effortless from afar.

Related posts:

1. Week 59 & 60: Chillin’ in Tamarindo
2. Our ATV Tour from Tamarindo
3. Learning to Dive in the Philippines

Merry Christmas from Costa Rica!

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas from the Philippines
2. Random Factoid: Pura Vida

We’ve decided that rather than force ourselves to post something every week about what we’ve been up to, we’ll only post when we do something of interest. We’d rather have good content that’s sporadic, than mediocre content every week.

Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you aren’t gonna hear from us on a regular basis, it just means that our posts are going to be about specific topics rather than a bunch of random stuff we happened to do in a particular week. We’re hoping this will help us index better on google, and make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for when searching our site.

So… say goodbye to the weekly post, and stay tuned for some highlights of our upcoming trip to Nicaragua!

Related posts:

1. Week 17: The last weekly report of the year
2. Week 45: The week that we forgot
3. Week 25: Things to do before leaving the Philippines

On Thursday evening we set out on a Turtle Tour in hopes of seeing a nesting Leatherback Turtle on Playa Grande. Playa Grande’s three mile stretch of beach is part of the Las Baulas National Marine park, one of the largest Leatherback Turtle nesting sites in the world, and is strictly regulated in order to help protect the turtles.

We weren’t really sure what to expect from the tour, or how likely we were to actually see a turtle. When we booked the tour that afternoon, the tour office was boasting of turtles the size of cars, and how they saw 2 the night before. When we arrived at the ranger station however, our perspectives were slightly adjusted when we learned that in all of last year’s nesting season (October to March) they had only seen 32 turtles.

Never the less, after a 15 minute briefing, we set out on the tour (with a lot more people than we expected). We boarded a small boat for a short ride across the Tamarindo Estuary. When we reached the other side, one of the Ranger’s shined his flashlight on the beach, and scared off a small crocodile. Flashlights and cameras are not allowed so we waited in the dark as the boat went back for the other half of the group. We then followed one of the rangers single file about half a kilometer along a very dark path to the ranger station on Playa Grande.

Then the waiting began…

Every evening the rangers patrol the three mile stretch of beach keeping their eyes out for turtles. When they spot one, they radio to the ranger station letting them know where it is, and how far into the nesting process it is. On the night we were there, we’d been waiting for about 3 and a half hours when the call finally came through the radio. At this point it was already 12:30am, and we were just beginning to give up.

One of the rangers gathered everyone together and explained that the turtle was about a kilometer and a half down the beach and that only 15 of us would be allowed able to go. Fifteen is the park enforced limit for the number of people allowed to view any one turtle at a time. We had been told this when we booked the tour, and had also been told we would be in the first group. Problem was, everyone else had been told the same thing.

From this point on the tour went downhill…

The ranger decided that the best way to determine who would go, would be to draw numbers. If you got one of the first 15 you got to go, however then someone asked “What about couples?” so they changed it… if you got one of the first 7 you and your partner could go. We were unfortunately 3 people so weren’t exactly sure how this was gonna work. Anyway… we drew numbers and I got #2, which meant that Mike and I would both be in the group going.

After drawing all the numbers and everyone coupling up, Lauren deduced that there were only 14 people, so just hung out beside us, in hopes that she could tag along as the 15th person. Since the turtle was about 1.5km it would take about half an hour to walk there in the dark. At this point is was already almost 1am, and understandably, the people who weren’t in the group going, wanted to be taken back to Tamarindo rather than wait for an another hour and a half for us to return. The rangers said that wasn’t possible and that they’d have to wait, naturally a bit of an argument started. They Ranger then said if we couldn’t all agree no one would go…. In the end it didn’t matter, because during all the time that was wasted deciding who would go and arguing, the turtle had finished it’s business and we all missed it.

All-in-all it was a little disappointing… not the fact that we didn’t get to see a turtle, but the chaos and the disorganization of the tour it self. Anyway…

* * * * * *

Saturday afternoon was “Booze-Cruise” time. We arrived at the beach, and once again found far more people than we expected. We waited in turn while they shuttled everyone out to the large catamaran in small groups. Luckily we were in the second group so were able to wait with drinks in hand for the rest of the passengers to board. We then set sail towards Playa Flamingo.

We were several Piña Coladas in when we started to notice that quite a few of the passengers were expats, and that a lot of them seemed to know each other. We had another drink, and didn’t think much of it. We headed towards a little bay and all jumped in for a swim and a snorkel… unfortunately there were quite a few jellyfish and both Lauren and Mike got stung. So it was back to the boat for another drink. Booze helps jellyfish stings… right?

By lunch we had started to realize that no one else was really drinking (the boat was all-inclusive and had a stocked bar) and found it a bit strange that someone had stopped the entire boat before eating lunch to say grace. Again we put it out of our mind and had another drink. However, then came the guitars…. and the Jesus songs. Suddenly it all made sense, and we found out that were were the only people on the boat (with the exception of 3 girls who didn’t speak english) not part of the church group.

So we had a few more drinks and we headed back to Tamarindo, enjoying the beautiful sunset.

We stayed on board as they shuttled the church group to shore, and had a drink with the crew, the music was finally turned on, and Lauren got her Salsa on!

That night we made the rounds to a couple of bars in town and had several more drinks before calling it a night.

Sunday was not only recovery day, but moving day for us, and Lauren’s last day in Costa Rica. Mike and I had to switch apartments cause the one we were in had been rented for a couple of weeks, but it was just across the courtyard, and we don’t have much stuff so wasn’t too bad. That night we had a great last dinner with Lauren, and said our goodbyes. It was a really fun couple of weeks and so nice to see a familiar face.

Related posts:

1. Week 58: Settling In
2. Week 59 & 60: Chillin’ in Tamarindo
3. Week 62:
   A Visitor, a Volcano, and a couple of Van rides