Snorkeling Trip

We had a pretty fun day. We started this morning with a snorkeling trip that we organized yesterday with a guy named Kevin. Bill has now dubbed him Sketchy Kevin. He told us he would take us to a beautiful snorkel place with lots of coral and showed me a picture that was probably taken in Hawaii. We got to the beach and he introduced us to his brother who came over with two fishing harpoons. A younger guy swam out to get a very small fishing boat that is clearly their fishing boat and not designed for tourists. There was no water or snacks provided and I’m very glad we had our own snorkel gear because the stuff stored in a compartment under the boat bench did not look sanitized. They dropped us off in the water near some volcanic rocks that must equal ”corals” for Kevin and we snorkeled in pretty murky water for about an hour and a half.

Despite this, it was still a fun trip. It was a good day to be in the water and it gave both of us a chance to try our our new equipment. Bill has new fins and I have new goggles and snorkel. My new equipment is fantastic! The goggles don’t fog up or cause a bruise on my forehead. Bill is going diving tomorrow and I’m going along to snorkel and we are hoping for better water quality. We saw several puffer fish, a couple of starfish and a variety of other smaller fish so it wasn’t a bad trip today. Costa Rica isn’t the best place for snorkeling but I already knew that.

This afternoon, we went boogie boarding again. That’s super fun but it takes a lot of energy. I got sunburned this morning and that always makes me tired. We ate supper at a little restaurant right on the beach. I had garlic shrimp and Bill had fried fish and we watched the sun go down while we ate. I had guanabana juice with my fish. It’s a fruit of some sort but I have no idea what kind. The juice was white and looked like milk but tasted like some sort of fruit juice. It was good.

I’ve had lots of opportunities to speak Spanish here. In most places, people prefer to speak their good English rather than listen to my mediocre Spanish. Here, they would much rather deal with my mediocre Spanish than speak English. I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my Spanish, but I think it’s only because people are relieved that they don’t have to speak English. A shop owner I talked to earlier wanted to know if Bill spoke Spanish. Bill is darker complected than me and I think the guy though I had married a Mexican and learned Spanish that way. Bill wants to learn Spanish so he can tell people I met him in Mexico and he’s trying to get a Green Card. Every evening while I’m typing this blog, Francie, the server at our restaurant, comes over to talk to me. Tonight she’s wearing a Santa hat and a string of Christmas lights around her neck. She’s super nice and I’ve enjoyed the conversations.

I talked to a shop owner earlier today about the mask situation here. There is a mask mandate for all of CR. Shop owners are required to wear them and required to make customers wear them. If the police come by and see people without masks, they fine the shop owners and can shut down businesses for 15 days. Everything here is open air, even the grocery stores usually have the front of the store mostly open. Nothing is air conditioned so it’s scorching hot for the employees who are wearing masks all day. The shop owner I talked to also said that almost everyone here is vaccinated and can get boosters so he’s really frustrated with the continued rules. Lots of shops are already struggling with low numbers of tourists and large, repeated fines or closures are financially disastrous.

I think Bill is working on some pictures he took with his new GoPro so I’ll add pictures to his post once he sends them to me.