Today was diving / snorkeling day, it did not go well. Tamarindo Diving was as good as any average shop, the people were very nice and the equipment was used but serviceable. The sea was rough today and I didn’t feel well going out. I did suit up so to speak but my mind wasn’t right so I went snorkeling with Emily. She was the only one signed up for today and they were still willing to take her, I find that to be a definite positive for Tamarindo Diving.

The water clarity here wasn’t the greatest. It’s not as vibrant as the Caribbean. We did get some shots of a turtle. That was the highlight of the day. It was good to go out but it took it’s toll on both of us. We had to take Dramamine and take more on the boat. We are going to find a different activity for tomorrow. Maybe Splash Buggies or maybe just take the boards to the beach.

We had dinner at a Food Truck Garden, Emily picked the better truck. Mine was okay for a burger but I was expecting better. Her fish and chips were good. We also got dessert, chocolate lava cake and lemon meringue pie that we split.

Bill and I went snorkeling and got sea sick today, so it was a mixed day. I’m sitting in a bean bag by the pool right now and I still feel like I’m swaying back and forth on the water.

We got picked up at 6:45 this morning and headed out around 7am. It was a two dive trip and I tagged along as a snorkeler. The water was pretty rough. I was fine for the first half of the trip but was feeling a little nauseous by the end of the first dive site. I also got smashed by a wave and almost lost my top and my snorkel gear. I was busy looking at some fish swimming around a submerged rock and didn’t see the wave until it hit me. It can be dangerous because the rocks and waves can create a washing machine effect that’s hard to get out of. I don’t remember being on the water when there were waves crashing in the middle of the ocean. Bill and I took a bunch of Dramamine but even that didn’t completely prevent the nausea. If we hadn’t had Dramamine, both of us would have been wishing for death. We came back to our apartment and slept for a couple of hours. Between the sea sickness and the Dramamine, we were wiped out.

The water was reasonably clear though and we did have a turtle try to surface right beside us so that was neat. There were big schools of jacks, which are a variety of silver fish. We saw some parrot fish and a variety of other fish too. We had planned to do a second snorkel day tomorrow but neither of us feel like we can do another day. We will find another activity.

One of the women doing a dive had just gotten her certification. On her second dive, her equipment malfunctioned and she ran out of air. She swallowed a bunch of water and choked. Her dive master had to give her his back up regulator and they did an emergency surface. She said she was lucky that the dive master was close by. She had tried to clear her regulator and try the backup regulator before the dive master came to help. That’s why I snorkel instead of diving. She took it really well though.

Yesterday, Bill and I bought body surfing boards. Those are super fun and we’ll probably do that again tomorrow. Bill is interested in ATVs so we might schedule that too.

I tried out the local Falafel bar. I’m generally really disappointed with falafels I get. The Israeli’s make the best ones, but the ones here are pretty good. It’s a restaurant with a Mediterranean menu and they have a bunch of stuff that looks good. The girls who work there are from Argentina.

Tonight, we got food at the food truck court. The food was fine but dessert was delicious! We shared a small chocolate lava cake and a lemon pie with meringue. The lemon pie was particularly good.

I’m still pretty tired and planning to go to bed early. Bill is working on pictures from the GoPro.

We got to spend time at the beach this morning! The water is cool but it wasn’t bad. There are some bigger waves here. After we went back to the apartment for lunch we went and procured us a couple of boogie boards! They are cheap ones, about US $7. Mine is still usable but it has a break in the styrofoam from when I got a beat down from a big wave. We had to try them out after we got them. We had fun!

After the tide started rising the current got strong so we came back to Ten North and swam for a short time before getting cleaned up and debating what we wanted for dinner. There are plenty of places to choose. We went to a BBQ place, the beef ribs I had were good and massive, I brought half back to the apartment, the beans were okay and the fries weren’t very crispy.

El cheapo camera is no longer going to be available for in the water usage. When I opened it up to get the memory card out part of the hinge broke. I have to say I got my money out of it. The camera still works and the case may be fixable to use it on land but I don’t think it would seal enough for going into the water.

We’ve decided that Tamarindo isn’t a bad place. It was not as crowded on the beach today as we expected. We’ll have to see what the rest of the week looks like though.

Tamarindo is probably a good spot for first time travelers that want a lot of options for eating and drinking. There’s also a lot of shopping but, a lot of the souvenir shops have basically the same stuff, occasionally you will find something different.

If you think about traveling and don’t want to go to an all inclusive place Tamarindo would be a good option, most people we’ve come in contact with speak English, you can walk to about anywhere you need to and there are a lot of rental places for golf carts and atvs. There’s also a bicycle rental place. It has enough of a Latin America feel to it but bordering on excessive touristy. Emily and I think we need to try some other areas in the future to try and balance someplace like here and Brasalito, which is about eight and a half miles from here. We may try Portero next year. Costa Rica is a good choice around May compared to the Caribbean, there’s no sargassum here to speak of.

Tomorrow is diving / snorkeling day!! I have two days booked, I’m debating adding another. So far the Tamarindo Diving Center has been very good. They responded promptly to my emails and they held a reservation since January. They said they would for a year. They are picking us up in the morning at 6:45. There will be two dives in the Catalina Islands. It will be a 40 minute boat trip out. I have dived there before the last time I was in Costa Rica. They are volcanic rock formations. I’m looking forward to doing some scuba diving.

Hopefully I will get some good shots diving tomorrow, I will have the GoPro so if there’s something to see I should be able to get it!

Thank you for reading!

They have a street market here in Tamarindo that happens right next to our hotel. There are all kinds of vendors, fruits and vegetables, smoked meats, ready to eat food, arts and crafts. There also was a lot of “hippie” products like incense, patchouli and other essential oils, happy brownies and little pipes that the gal selling then offered to fill it up for me if I purchased one, she didn’t say with what though and I didn’t ask. I’m not sure what the laws are here currently. There’s a lot of times it smells like someone is smoking the Devil’s Lettuce when we’re out walking.

I do have some pictures from our adventure yesterday that I took from the waterproof camera. Al the adventure pictures yesterday were from Ivan’s phone.

A couple interesting things in our apartment .

We went out this afternoon and did some looking at the shops here. We were hoping to find something unique, but we didn’t find anything that we wanted. I did pick up some cheap sunglasses for wearing here. I always forget to bring the ones from home.

After we got back we swam for a while in the pool. I don’t think any of the hotels or resorts run their shimmers during the day. There were a fair number of leaves and bugs floating in the pool.

After swimming we went to a pizza place that’s pretty close to where we are staying. It has excellent pizza. https://www.facebook.com/PizzeriaLaBaula?mibextid=LQQJ4d I may have to go again.

While we were walking around town we did visit the beach, it was less crowded than expected. It was high tide and one of the entrances we went down, the water had come right up to the edge of where the restaurants were and we could not get on the beach without getting wet. Tomorrow we are going down to get in the water. The waves here are bigger so it may be pretty fun.

Readers feel free to contact us about questions or if you want to join us sometime, we are getting pretty good at getting around different places and finding interesting things to do. You’re welcome to tag along and join us or go off and do your own thing. We’re fairly active on our trips but we do stay at places where you can also take it easy. It’s not resort life lining up for meals and limited options, we can get you out and see some new things, find less crowded places to relax.

I’m not sure Tamarindo will be my favorite place in Costa Rica, but it will be fine. I spent part of the morning and afternoon camped out on bean bags by the pool working on posts for the blog and reading a book. It was a pleasant way to spend part of the day after after several days with lots of activities.

Around mid-morning, Bill and I went out to explore town. We found a super neat farmer’s market right behind our hotel. We wandered around there for a while and bought cheese, smoked meat, and empanadas and quiche for lunch. We also found an octopus picture that both of us think would make an awesome tattoo. I bought some of the best mangos I’ve ever had and a really good watermelon. I like farmer’s markets. There are a lot of Americans and Europeans who live here so the tables were managed by lots of different kinds of people. We also found a better grocery store that has peanut butter and an ATM so it was a useful morning.

This afternoon, we wandered around town. There are lots of shops and restaurants here. We found the Sol Bakery that Tracy recommended to us and bought brownies – just regular ones, not the “happy ones” that Bill found at the farmer’s market. We found a place to buy body surfing boards, and I found a super cute pair of palazzo pants. I recently became an Associate Dean and I have almost no professional summer clothes. I’ve been wearing Cuddl Duds leggings in the summer, which are wildly inappropriate outerwear. They are really thin and comfortable so they make good summer leggings because I get cold at school, except that you can see through them. If I wear colorful underwear, it’s almost like not having pants on. It’s only slightly better with dark underwear. I’ve been pretending like it’s not that noticeable, and I’m not promising to stop wearing them, but I probably can’t wear them in my new capacity as associate dean. The new pants will be an upgrade. I may look for an another pair while I’m here. They seem to be popular.

We briefly walked down to the beach this afternoon. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as I had expected. We are planning to go swim tomorrow morning an I’m looking forward to being back in the ocean. We just swam in the pool this afternoon before supper. We ate at a good pizza place close to our apartment. Overall, it was a pleasant, low-key day. Bill has some pictures.

We had a lot of driving yesterday but a super fun activity! Our drive from La Fortuna to Tamarindo was about 4 hours, but we found a driver who was willing to take us to a waterfall on the way. I had planned for us to go to the Rio Celeste Waterfall. I’ve been there before and it’s really pretty, but our guide suggested that we go to the Leona Waterfall where you can swim. I’m so glad we took that option! It was one of the most fun things I’ve done here. There were two different waterfalls and the hike in to see them was beautiful. We did a little bit of rock climbing and caving on the way. We saw some vampire bats and some fruit and insect bats. Our driver was awesome! He’s a young guy building a tourist transportation business. He took his phone on the waterfall hike and took some great pictures for us.

The water was spectacular. It must be part of Rio Celeste because it has the same blue color because of the metal (mostly aluminum) and minerals in the water. There are no fish or invertebrates living in the water because of the metal, but the water is clear and ultra blue in places. We came to a couple of small waterfalls first, then we got to do a cliff jump. I’ve wanted to do one of those but haven’t’ had the opportunity. This one was perfect. It was high enough that it felt like a long fall, but not high enough to be dangerous. The bolder I jumped off of seemed much higher when I got to the top than it did when I was looking at it from the ground. I would have done a second jump but our guide as already leaving for the next location.

After boulder jumping, we hiked a little further, then swam into the main waterfall area. The whole trip was stunningly beautiful and not too crowded. We met a couple from NY that was doing the hike without a guide. I asked if they came a lot and and that’s how they got to go alone. It turns out that the guy had done a waterfall hike in the area a few years ago. He thought it was this one but realized half way through that it wasn’t, so they were on their own to find their way through the trails. It’s wasn’t too hard and there were other groups coming and going, but he seemed relieved to have found the waterfall and hopefully they found their way out okay.

I was wiped out and headachy by the time we go to Tamarindo yesterday afternoon. Tamarindo is much larger and more crowded than I had expected. I had expected it to be more like La Fortuna or Samara, which are smaller, quieter cities. There are bars everywhere and the beach was really crowded last night when we walked down. I’m on the fence about whether I will like it here, but I didn’t feel great when I was trying to evaluate it last night and that made everything seem worse. I’ll have a better idea about it in a day or so. We are planning to wander around town today and find a good way to the beach. There are lots of shops here so I can probably find a coffee cup to bring home. I’m hoping to find a good bakery. I was craving a brownie or some good chocolate last night. We didn’t find anything but I’m sure there are some good chocolate shops somewhere.

It’s Saturday so the beach is probably packed today but it may be better during the week. There are other beaches in the area that might be quieter so things should be okay. Bill and I have had a lot of activity and sun for the last few days. We are both burned so we may use this as a more leisurely day by the pool and out of the direct sun. I have a book to read. We like our hotel. It smells mildly like weed but most places smell mildly like weed these days. Even our waterfall hike smelled mildly like weed yesterday and that was a big, forested space. I suppose there could have been a skunk in the area, but probably not. Our apartment is really nice and quiet. The pool area is also quiet for now and shaded. I’m currently camped out on some big bean bags beside the pool. They have a place where I can get all the tea I want any time so if I can find some chocolate and baked goods, things can’t be that bad.

I am sunburned! We went swimming this morning. It was kind of cloudy and I wasn’t going to be out long, so I didn’t sunscreen. I’m going to pay for that. I’m going to soak in my hot springs pool tonight and hope the minerals will be good for my skin. I’m usually really careful, but I wasn’t today.

This afternoon, we went spelunking. I like caves so I enjoyed the trip, but it was a more difficult spelunking trip than we did in Belize. There were some really tight passages that we had to squeeze, and in come cases swim, through. It was ultra humid. It was definitely an easier trip for the smaller people in the group.

The cave had a good number of bats. It’s probably not really that good to do tours in this cave because people shine lights on the little bats all the time and it disturbs them. Our guide said they were little fruit bats, but when they are hanging upside down from the ceiling, I don’t know how you tell the fruit bats from the insectivores. They were super cute. We also saw a little snake and a big spider. The cave is underneath a river. In the rainy season, there are waterfalls in the cave and the water is waist deep. It was shallow today. Some of the cave is formed from fossilized shells and coral and we saw a fossilized turtle shell. Overall, it was a good trip.

Today is our last day in this area. Tomorrow, we found a driver who is going to take us to the Rio Celeste waterfall on our way to Tamarindo, our beach location. Rio Celeste is more or less on the way. It’s a long drive to Tamarindo so this will break up the trip and give us an activity. I’ve been there before, but Bill hasn’t. It’s a beautiful location so I’ll be happy to go back.

Between my sunburn and the activities today, I’m expecting to crash tonight. I’m posting a few pictures that Bill sent me. He took these with his waterproof camera and they are all screen shots so the quality isn’t as good as usual. It’s hard to take pictures in caves.