Tamarindo, Costa Rica - aka Tamagringo, Costa Rica

Here's a quick look at the center of town.  Tamarindo is pretty touristy, LOTS of gringos, most shops take US dollars, and people from counties other than the US that come to Tamarindo to learn Spanish say that their English actually improves during their visit.  

The center of town is small, only a couple city blocks long, but it has most everything you need: restaurants, shops, a couple small grocery stores, a small pharmacy, one bank, AND a Subway!  I need to stop in and see if they do a 5 dollar footlong (because of all the Americans here), or if they have their own catchy song for a 2500 colones footlong.   Not important.  Moving on....

The roads are mostly dirt, but the main road is pavement- cappy pavement, but pavement nonetheless.  The big snazzy resorts and hotels are a several minute drive down the road (or a 20 minute walk).   Conveniently, my school is a 2 minute walk from the center of town, which is great.  From the school to the far end of the town center is only about a 10 minute walk too, so everything is nearby.

Monkey Business

In the mornings, I hear this loud noise off in the distance.  It sort of sounds like a pre-bark grumble from a very large dog; maybe even similar to the start-up roar of a small lion.  I finally asked my teacher what the sound was, hoping he didn't say something like, 'oh, it's the coffee maker from the hotel next door.' It certainly was not.  It's howler monkeys!

I spotted some monkeying around this morning AND this afternoon.  This morning's pictures are fuzzy cell phone pics (only thing I had with me), but this afternoon, they were hanging right by the apartment balcony, so I snapped some better ones with my camera. 

Morning monkeys

Morning monkeys 

They are small monkeys (maybe a little bigger than Ross's monkey on Friends, the TV show).  Their loud howl is not quite indicative of their smallish size, but their voices carry.....big time!

Afternoon monkeys

Afternoon monkeys

Escuala y Apartmentos

Here's a quick look at the school grounds:

'Cafeteria' - although no food is really served.  It's more or less a big open space with tables and chairs; it's the coolest place to hang during class breaks.  Totally!

Classrooms- all the classroom buildings are open air.  Each building has several classrooms, separated by bamboo patricians.

More classrooms

Surf school and dormitory: my apartment is top right

Inside the apartment:

kitchenette

Living room 

Bedroom (my nicely organized things are on the right).

Patio that overlooks the school grounds

It's me.  I am here!

Good Morning, Grasshopper!

This morning I woke up to find a GIANT grasshopper (probably about 6 inches long) hanging out on the bedroom wall (thank you, roommate for leaving our patio door open yesterday afternoon).   Catching it was a very unpleasant experience; one that involved mustering quite a bit of bravery.  I may have also peed my pants a little during the entire removal process.  I was pretty impressed with myself, and I did it all without waking said careless roommate. I moved the grasshopper outside, snapped a quick pic, and he flew away.  He had beautiful blue and red wings hidden under his green exterior, which I wasn't expecting at all.  He must have been a boy grasshopper (no, I didn't check out his privates, but boy animals are usually fancier and more colorful than their girl counterparts).  Anywho, as grossed out as I was, it was pretty cool.

Looks small in the pic.  I promise you, he was anything but.

It was equally as cool as the large iguana that plopped off our apartment rooftop to the school rooftop right across the way.  When inside the apartment, if an iguana saunters around on the tin rooftop, it sounds like a couple of 300lb beasts are fighting right above your head.  Eek!  Imagine my reaction to that noise, before finding out what caused it.  

 

Again, nothing here to show scale, but he's maybe a little bigger than a mini schnauzer (Hi! Mei Mei)

Had my first day of class (more on this in another post), but hit the beach mid-afternoon for a swim with the girl from the apartment next door.  Fairly warm, fairly clear water, but super windy conditions.   Once we got past the breakpoint of the waves, the spray from the back of the waves smacked us across the face, and the windy was almost deafening- not unbearable, but, geez, I need something to complain about, right? Surprisingly,  not many people out in the heat of the day.

After a quick shower and some studying, we went back out to the beach to see the sunset.  So very lovely.  And LOTS of people out at this point: couples on romantical walks (us not included, although I did ask to hold my friends' hand.... just kidding), lots of people with their dogs (I miss Dusty), surfers, impromptu games of soccer, etc.  

Sunset in Tamarindo, Costa Rica 

Pretty swell stuff.  A nice way to close out my first day at school.

Whew! Landed.

Peaced out of Houston yesterday. I boarded the plane to San Jose, CR- a quick 3.5 hr flight. 

Touchdown in San Jose, Costa Rica

View from the runway

My connecting flight to Tamarindo was actually out of a smaller airport about 10 miles ?from the main Sn Jose airport, so once I landed, I went through customs and then hit up the Dollar Rent-A-Car booth (shouldn't it be Colones Rent-A-Car here? Hmmm) to ask where the heck I needed to go.  Thankfully the gentleman there spoke English.  He  pointed me to the line of official taxis and said 'ask to go to Pavas' (that's the smaller airport).  I ended up getting a ride from a super nice taxi driver named Alejandro.  He spoke about as much English as I spoke Spanish (which isn't much of any), so we attempted a lovely 20 minute conversation during the car tide.  He was very skilled at driving, talking, and including very grandiose hand gestures so I could somewhat pick up what he was saying.  

 He spent most of the ride reassuring me in his best Spanglish that we were in fact headed to the airport (the ride goes through a lot of small side streets-  he may have sensed my nervousness), he repeatedly pointed to all airport signs along the way, showed me his official taxi ID no less than 3 times, and said the rojo (thank goodness I knew that was 'red') taxis, like his, were  bueno!  We even passed some kind of special building dedicated to an American astronaut of Costa Rican decent- Franklin Cheng.  How the heck we both  managed to successfully communicate/understand that topic, I'll never know.  I even googled post taxi ride-  Franklin Cheng is legit!

Shortly thereafter, he dropped me off at the world's smallest airport.  Holy moly.  I think it only takes a crew of 10 people to run the whole joint.  There are 2 gates.  And only very tiny little planes parked next to the runway. Eek!

Pavas Airport

Our plane held 12 people, including the 2 pilots.  The plane was so small, it felt like we were in a flying car- maybe like the flying car in Flubber?  

Mini plane

View from the plane

View for the plane

Anywho, the Pavas airport is NOT the worlds smallest airport. My final destination, Tamarindo, had an even smaller airport.  It's essentially a pre-fab carport. 

Super tiny airport

In any case, there was a guy there, holding a sign with my name on it!  Hot digity!  This was a first for me.  Who knew.... a sign with MY name on it.... all whilst being unemployed.  Awesome.

Got to my new digs.  Super basic, but it has everything I will need. 

More to come....stay  tuned