Day 24-27: Tamarindo
The Pacific beaches at Tamarindo |
Day 24: Thursday 13th August 2009
The preceding 48 hours to today had given me about five hours of sleep, so we all had a much-deserved lie-in until 8 o'clock. We basically had the morning off as Chris and Tom went to sort out his passport. Myself and Daniel spent the morning looking at the group finances in order to work out how much money we had to play with for our upcoming rest and relaxation phase. After doing this I did some shopping before meeting the group in a pizza restaurant and heading on to San Jose’s bus station. We were heading back north, to the north-western Pacific coast and a town called Tamarindo on the Nicoya Peninsular. The town is one of THE major beach destinations in Central America and was beginning to benefit from a great deal of western investment, earning it the nickname ‘Tamagringo’. The bus was one of the nicest we had with leather seats and a CD player and having left at half 3 we arrived at around 9 in the evening. We would be spending the next few days at the 'Black Sheep’ hostel and after arriving and checking in we had an early night.
Day 25: Friday 14th August 2009
As the name suggests, rest and relaxation days consist of nothing except going with the flow. We got up before 8am (a habit that even the promise of a day of relaxation couldn’t help shift) and our only orders were to meet again in the evening at 6pm for dinner. Our room (myself, Daniel, Stevie B, Hannah and Rob) went out for breakfast to make the most of the abundance of western restaurants - getting English muffins and orange juice which would have been an unthinkable luxury earlier in the trip. We had a half hour to explore the souvenir shops and then headed towards the beach. It was a stereotypical Pacific beach - sun, white sand, turquoise sea and palm trees. The rest of the day makes pretty bad blogging - we essentially completed an extravagant cycle of swimming, drying off in the sun, reading and eating. We had our lunch at a pizzeria (something which is becoming somewhat of a trend) where the menu contained amusing dishes such as the 'Happy Cow’ burger and the 'Third World Special’ pizza.
We arrived back at the hostel in good spirits but these were soon dampened when I found that 80,000 colones (about £80) had gone missing from the group fund in my money belt. I also couldn’t find my camera with all of my photos on, so assumed that both had been stolen. I was pretty glum at the evening meal and left early to do a thorough search of my bag. Thankfully (and most importantly) I found the camera, but the money had definitely gone. Bad start to the R&R phase…
Day 26: Saturday 15th August 2009
Day two of our three full days in Tamarindo was going to be based around roughly the same plan of doing our own thing all day and meeting up in the evening for dinner. We decided to save a bit of money on breakfast by fetching in some bread and bacon, which Chris and Daniel made into bacon sandwiches. We started off on the beach again, where I spent most of the day reading in the shade. Stevie B provided most of the entertainment - as TP walked out of the sea, Steve pulled his shorts down. To get him back, TP, Ben and Sam stole Steve’s trunks and ran up the beach with them - only to have their bluff called as he walked stark naked up the beach to get them back, much the horror of the rest of the beach.
Day 27: Monday 16th August 2009
Our last day in Tamarindo began with breakfast at a really nice cafe on the front. 2900 colones (£2.90) bought us scrambled egg, toast, fruit salad and pineapple juice. This good start to the day was followed up with a swim in the sea. Quite a few of the other guys had got up early and gone surfing with Chris and we met up with them again at about midday. None of us really fancied lunch, but myself Rob, Daniel and Steven went for a drink at a beach-side bar followed by pizza and then a bit of shopping where we bought Mrs Lee a present. The afternoon was no different to the general trend of the earlier days - sitting around on the beach before returning to the hostel to play pool. We had a meeting before going out to a big group meal to round off our R&R and belatedly celebrate Ed’s birthday. The service was pretty slow so the restaurant distracted us by sending over three guys with a guitar to serenade our large table.
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