And the Doctor said. . . (no, this post has nothing to do with monkeys)

Yuppers.  I already took a trip to the doctor-  1.5 weeks into my trip.  We can thank surfing for my visit.  Although, it's probably not what you think.

For starters, surfing is going fairly well.  Day 3 saw major improvements.  I correctly popped up on more waves than waves in which I wiped out, I did a switch (a 180 body flip whilst up on the board), and I learned how to turn the board whilst standing up to ensure a longer ride.  I have a great instructor, but I think the pop-up practice on the extra bed in my room helped.   :)

Mattress surfing = good pop-up practice.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200342660465596

Hopefully this link will get you to my day 2 highlight reel.  I feel a lot more comfortable now, after day 3, than I looked and felt on day 2!

However, my ear got clogged with salt water yesterday, which made Spanish class a bit tricky today . I only understand half the stuff the teachers say anyway, so minus hearing in one ear, I did a lot of nodding, smiling, and responding with only 'si.'

After class, I headed to the doctor. It's located just above the Super Compro, one of the (not so super) supermarkets in town.   I walked in, with my ailment well prepared in Spanish (agua en la oido), but thankfully the doctor spoke English, which made for a much quicker visit.

I went back to his office after only 5 minutes of waiting, and he irrigated my ear the old school way, with a syringe of water and some mostly-cleanish looking tools.  I am not even prepared to talk about the amount of stuff that came out of my ears (this issue was not solely caused by salt water, I can tell you that), but I now have what feels like super human hearing.  Sixty bucks and one prescription of ear drops later, I was on my way.  Best $60 bucks I have spent so far in C.R. 

Doctor Piloto's office: just above the Super Compro, and just below the Rooftop Bar & Club.

Afterwards, I stopped for a Subway sandwich combo deal (it was close to the doc's office), and I even ordered and interacted with the folks in Subway entirely in Spanish!  P.S. 1. ALL Subways smell exactly the same, no matter where they are located and 2. No $5 footlongs here!  In general, the food here is a little pricier than I thought it would be, but Subway takes the cake (or takes the sanwhich, in this case); $9 for a 6inch, drink and chips.  Boo.  But after a visit to the doctor, a nice slice of Americana was worth it.  

Tamarindo Subway.  Exciting, eh?

Prescription and Subway in hand.  Me gusta!

Plus, to top it off, I caught a very lovely pink sky during sunset, as I headed up my apartment stairs after my trusty Subway meal!

Sunset from the staircase

  

The Long Road to Samara

My new friend, Danielle, planned a nice weekend away.  She rented a car for the weekend, and after a 3 hour ordeal trying to pick up the rental car, we were headed to Samara Beach mid-Saturday.  Google maps made the coastal, scenic route look easy and fast, so off we went.   Five words: in Coasta Rica, Google lies!  Our '2 hour' drive was dirt/gravel the entire way, the GPS didn't even recognize some of the roads we were on, and it took us roughly 5 hours to arrive at our destination.  PLUS the coastal, scenic route wasn't that scenic, and it was barely coastal.  But as they say 'always an adventure in Costa Rica.'

The road wasn't too busy (for obvious reasons), when it comes to vehicles, but there were plenty of other things on the road along the way: people on bicycles, roosters, chickens, cowboys hearding cattle, dogs, monkeys, big lizards, and A RIVER.  Yes.  At one point, the road went right into a river.  We got out to investigate and thought 'no way.' So off we went to find another crossing with a bridge.  Ps that does not exist.  We found a more shallow crossing, and took the car for a swim.

Just some cows heading down the road....

Scary narrow bridge

The only, very fleeting, coastal view of our 'coastal, scenic' drive

The part of the river we were NOT going to cross.  Yikes!

The part of the river we thought we could handle.... and we did! 

A semi-scenic view from the road

All was worth it though.  We stopped for yummy grapefruit sodas along the way, ended up at a nice little hotel right on the beach, ate some super spicy fish tacos at a local Mexican joint (holy hot mango salsa), and spent most of Sunday lounging on the hotel hammocks and in the hotel pool.

The hotel had a bunch of little haciendas, so this was our cute little casa for the evening. 

View from the hammock (ps there is a lizard on the tree)

Sunset on Samara Beach

 

More from the beach

View from the hotel restaurant 

Needless to say, we took the inland highway back to Tamarindo.  That ride was only 2 hours.  Plus, we saw 2 18-wheelers and a Burger King on the highway too.  Felt just like home....not really.  Haha.

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