Costa Rica!! First destination: Tamarindo, The northern pacific cost

29 August

+ As already mentioned, it was difficult to leave Nicaragua for two main reasons we had heard:
 1- Costa Rica is much more expensive, especially the food and the transport. 2-It is called: Costa Gringa since most of tourist are from US. To be honest both things are right. We would even add a third one: the people were much more money-focused as in Nicaragua.

+ But it is not all bad in Costa Rica and if you think about it: how is it possible that it is such a touristy country? we have two simple but important aswers: THE heaven beaches with their waves and palms & THE nature with its wildlife and flora. In this and next posts we will show you some examples of them.

+ Our first stop was at Tamarindo, on the North-West. We found a hostel managed by a great South African dude. The place was awesome. A house on the beach with a nice kitchen, sofa, movies and even the playstation!! Even more important, a great atmosphere in the evenings with people from Argentina, Brazil, Australia and the US, playing guitar and exchanging stories. 

+ The House was on the beach, next to a river. The damn river had crocodriles and those had been seen next to the garden. So basically, going to the beach meant potential encounters with those non-loved little animals.... quite of an experience!!

the house at evening

+The beach in Tamarindo was great. Plenty of good waves the first day but it got really big the following days making it impossible to enter into the water. A very amazing thing of the beach there is the tidle. With low tidal, the beach was more than 200m long. In the afternoons, such large beach would completely disappear.

  The beach with low Tidal: inmense 

The beach with high tidal: completely disapperared

The mega Waves!!

 + The first day, actually, we had one of the most AWESOME moments which help out to overcome the overpriced country: We were in the water when all of a sudden, a plastic blue bag comes floating towards us.- We picked up and show it around to other people surfing but nobody claimed ownership. So we opened it to find there was money. Well, there wasn´t just money. There was a loooooot of money!! 400 €€€. No ID card or any other identification so that we could return it. ohhh....... :)

 Celebrating our lucky day with expensive dinner, mojitos and a nice bottle of wine (first one since we left Europe)

Welcome to the Pacific!! viva the great waves and the great surfers

21-28 August

+ After a large dose of volcanos, lakes, hikings and colonial cities, it was a good time to visit the see; this time the pacific ocean which we did not visit in Mexico (and would had really liked to do).
+ The pacific ocean was nicer than expected. Warm water, a bit of palms and great waves for the professional surfers :)
+ We stayed at a Hostel in San Juan del Sur were we met a lot of cool people from everywhere. We also met the israeli friends we had been with before in Guatemala and Honduras; they were staying at the same hostel: What a coincidence!!Actually, how it happened is the following: When arriving on sunday morning to check in, we see one of this guys (Ben) lost in traslation with one of the hostal staff trying to get some water for his gigantic hangover!! actually, we had to give him the money because he didn´t have.  

+ We were there for one week going everyday to different beaches and enjoying the cool evenings at the sea side. It was really hard to leave such a nice place.

The Town and our favorite place to eat: Cheap and greasy tacos and burritos

The beaches and the... Professionals

The good parties with friends, the unbeatable happy hour (basically free drinks during 3hours) and the killing "ring of fire" card game

+ During the last days of our days in San Juan, there was a Surf competition. We got good pics but they didn´t allow us to surf :(