We arrived into San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica after taking a 5-6 hour red-eye
flight from LA, prior to a 2 hour drive from San Diego. From San Jose, we still needed to hop onto a small 12-15 passenger plane that would
take us into Guanacaste, a Northwestern region of Costa Rica that meets the Pacific Ocean.
We chilled out..er...or passed out, in between flights.
There are lots of little critters running around Costa Rica. Plentitude of different
kinds of lizards, iguanas, geckos. Beetles and bugs of varying sizes, with
varying amounts of scare factor. We came across some scorpions, which I thought
were pretty cool looking. They were like one-inch long lobsters. However, I hear
their sting is as painful as bees. They have an assortment of crabs there.
Sand crabs, fiddler crabs, hermit crabs...We saw a blue-shelled, one-claw-bigger
than-the-other crab.
We also came across the most infamous character in Playa Avellanas...
Her name is Lola. She is a show pig....
She even has a surf spot named after her, Lola's Point, according to the locals.
We took advantage of a rental car, piled seven people into this micro-mini
SUV that could really only fit four people comfortably, and headed into town, to Tamarindo.
We spent the afternoon walking around, looking at shops, going to the local
supermarcado for tidbits to eat, and doing the tourist wanderings til sunset.
They had vendors selling handmade jewelry on the streets and it was fun walking and
checking out the creativity of the artwork. Lynn is such a cutie. It was awesome
having another girl there to hang out with. She would come up with the zaniest
things - animal jokes, animal shawdow puppets, hum that tune game,
and the battle between the Scorpion versus The Leperchaun. (Sorry Lynn, he's got
to have a stage name!) She continued the laughter that Aurum had started. Keep
reading for the Aurum laughter detail.
In Tamarindo, amazingly enough, I saw the first sets of monkeys on this trip.
There were bunches of them swinging from trees, hanging upsidedown with their
tails from the branches. There were more closer encounters with them later on
in the trip, though I didn't get any pictures of them. Rumor has it, if you
get them mad enough, they'll start chucking food and monkey wastes at you.
Aurum always had that smile and laugh on his face the
whole duration that I saw him. I think this is one of the few pictures
where he doesn't have some sort of alcoholic drink in his hand. QUICK! Must
Photoshop a Pilsen in! Aurum has one of those infectious laughs. There was
one evening where he just laughed and laughed..and still laughed for a good
two to three hours. It was hilarious. Everyone was laughing... and
I don't think anyone really remembers why.
In spite of the laughing and drinking, he still made it out for early morning
surf before everyone else! Impressive...but not a "dawn patroller" yet.
