Wonder Bread

We had an extremely early start this morning as we needed to catch the 6:00 am bus east to Tamarindo, a beach town on the Pacific coast. Our alarm went off at ten past 5, and much to our amazement, we were showered, packed, out the door and at the bus stop by 5:30. We watched the town dogs roaming around the empty streets, and Nige got us some coffee at the pandaría while we waited. Finally around 6:30 our bus took off. We had to get off at a crossroads somewhere, then waited for our connecting bus on the side of the road to get to Liberia to get another bus to Tamarindo.

When we finally arrived in Tamarindo around 1:00, we walked around for quite a while searching for an affordable place to stay. We settled on some cabinas for US$16 with outdoor, cold showers. But that didn't matter as it was hot, humid and sticky in Tamarindo. We got ourselves the cheapest lunch we could find (a shared casado) then headed straight to the beach for a swim. The beach here is long and perfect, but we could actually have been just about anywhere in Southern California, especially San Diego. And nearly everyone is American here anyway. Actually, we may have even preferred to be in San Diego as at least then we'd have a better chance of finding cheap food. I think my sister Shannon put it best when she described Costa Rica as the white bread of Central America.

We got ourselves some beers at the supermarket and drank them on the beach. Earlier while swimming, we saw that some guys were setting up a small area with flowers for what looked to be a wedding. Sure enough, when we returned with our beers, we saw that there was to be a wedding. It turns out that the only people there were the bride and groom, the celebrant, a photographer and a videographer. So we inched our way closer to watch, but not close enough to hear. The couple couldn't have asked for a more perfect sunset ceremony. With the huge rain clouds in the sky, the sun broke through just before the horizon, spraying the sky with bright yellow and orange light. It was gorgeous, and the couple was totally cute. Nige took some photos and I gave our email address to the celebrant in case the couple wanted to have the photos we took (they've since emailed us and we're in the process of sending them).

For dinner, we treated ourselves to "Nachos as big as your ass." That's actually what the restaurant calls them. Granted, they were not nearly as big as my ass, but they were pretty big and absolutely delicious. We even broke down and bought ourselves each a beer at the restaurant. Over the course of the day, it became apparent to us that 'Tamagringo' as some people call it, is actually 'Tamareemdo' as the prices are sky high. Very unnecessarily I might add. As we finished our meal, we watched a huge, spectacular storm come in off the coast. The lightning was so bright that it lit up the whole ocean, and the thunder was loud enough to make us jump. The rain that followed bucketed down. Even though our hotel was only across the street from the restaurant, we were drenched through to the bone by the time we reached our room. Nigel had a shower in the water pouring off of the roof, and I had one in the outdoor stall amid cracking claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. We watched the storm for a while longer before heading to bed.